Crossing the Gender line

Crossing the Gender Line 

I never paid attention to how much people care about what others are wearing or doing. Reading the articles has showed me people are actually very judgmental on other’s clothes and actions. Everybody has their own way of doing things and if they do it in a way that relates to a particular gender, why should it matter.

 Before I started high school I never really interacted with people who acted like the opposite gender. One of my very good current friends was one of those people. She was a girl who loved to dress up in boy clothing and loved to act like the boys. I accepted that about her, but other people seemed to shy away from it, treating her differently. I remember one boy asking me, “Does she ever act like a girl,” and, “Why does she wear boy clothes”. My simple response was, “because she likes to”. Before she was my friend I never really looked at her differently; I think it was probably because I was a tomboy myself. Being a tomboy allowed me to accept anyone for who they were no matter what clothes they wore, or what they looked like. I didn’t care. My parents till this day have taught me to accept people for who they are, and to always get to know the person before judging them.  

 When reading the article “Can a boy wear a skirt to school” written by Jan Hoffman, I realized a few things; my teachers could overlook everything, or could have  ”to discipline a student whose wardrobe expresses sexual orientation or gender variance, they must consider antidiscrimination policies, mental health factors, community standards and classroom distractions” (Hoffman 2). I never knew my teachers had the responsibility to make choices based on how a person dresses. Why does it make a difference, its just clothes. I used to wear boy sweatshirts to school because I hated wearing dresses and wearing my hair down. Why would my teachers have to look at me and ask if I was presuming a problem for the students for showing my own style? After reading this article I not only feel like I caused a problem, but I want to know if my teachers ever thought I was a distraction to the school.

 As I read through this article I found it quite interesting how some students couldn’t dress the way they wanted in school pictures, like the girl who wanted to wear a tuxedo. Her mother had put a page together in the yearbook of her in her tuxedo and she had to change that picture. This honestly surprised me so much. In my school we never had a problem of what girls and boys had to wear in the yearbook or in a school picture. Last year the girl’s soccer team had a game on picture day and they had dressed up in spirit. This spirit included them wearing face paint and all black clothing. None of the administrators had a problem with this.

 Another interesting thing that had caught my attention would be “cross dressing”. I went to Hudson High School where there were many different people. We had boys who wore make up, and we had girls who wore boy shirts and pants. We also had boys who painted their nails. My school was the type of school that had teachers and kids who wondered why these kids did these things, but never really cared. Yes, there were questions asked but there wasn’t bullying. In my school there were a few students who liked to cross dress, and “when a boy came to school wearing high-heeled boots, a stuffed bra, and a V-neck T-shirt” (Hoffman 3) nothing happened. People asked him why, and he told his reason, and that was the end of his story. I can see how this would be a problem for the school and present as a distraction, but it amazes me why it should matter how this boy wanted to dress. He chose to wear that. No one told him to wear it; he was expressing himself in his own way. 

 Reading the article “It's OK to Be Neither: Teaching That Supports Gender-Variant Children” by Melissa Bollow Tempel has also allowed me to see how much people care about boy vs. girl habits, and how there is not a difference between boys and girls. When I was in first grade, we used to line up to go wash our hands for a snack. We were always lined up boy, girl, boy, girl. When we had to sit in a circle we had to do that too. This was because the teachers assumed that girls only talked to girls, and boys only talked to boys. When this had happened, she informed us that all the girls were “chatty” together and all the boys were “wild” together.

Melissa Tempel had done something completely different. Tempel had stated that she had “thought up a new way for them to line up each day. For example: "If you like popsicles, line up here. If you like ice cream, line up here.” (Tempel 2) I can see that she did this to help one of her students to not feel out of place because one of her students liked to dress in boys clothing. I wish my teachers had taken this approach. Being a “Tomboy”, I did consider myself a girl but some of the kids in my class questioned why I liked to do boy things. Even though my mother used to call me a Tomboy all the time, when I got into elementary school I knew it was something to do with my boy habits, and I didn’t care. The day a boy from my class came up to me and asked me why I wanted to play their tag game instead of playing with the girls on the swings I kind of realized that I was different.

 Throughout the article there were things that I would recommend to the elementary school that I don’t believe they have even thought about when helping the gender line. Tempel had took an approach of making the students write a list of things that were okay for both boys and girls to do. Students had said things such as, "It's OK for a girl to marry a girl . . . "My dad carries a purse, and that's OK!"” (Tempel 3). I really admired the way she had proven to the students that it was okay to do both of these things. I had always been in a world as a child to know that boys can’t use purses and gay marriage isn’t acceptable. My parents were never the type to discuss gender differences, but my grandparents did. My grandmother always told me she never liked gay people; she also used to tell me to be more like a girl. I now realize that it doesn’t matter what boys use or do and what girls use and do. It shows just how different people can be.

Learning from teachers like Tempel allows me to get a better understanding of why people care so much about gender, but people shouldn’t. As Tempel stated “ My job is not to judge but to teach, and I can't teach if the students in my class are distracted or uncomfortable. My job is also about preparing students to be a part of our society, ready to work and play with all kinds of people” (Temple 3). She has taught me to accept everyone.