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#DealingWithStereotypes

Day #2

#GENDER

Well Derp-da-derp-da-diddly-diddly-derpa-dur, today I'm talking about gender; one of the more powerful stereotypes I'd like to talk about at length.

Once I've gotten over laughing at this picture.

So; when you're born, a person with a qualification in medicine looks at your genitals, makes a note, and you're male or female, and if the doctor can't tell, that person will usually cut you up to try and look like one or the other.

That part of my body looked like a penis so, if I get out my birth certificate now, it says 'male' on the front.

This is essentially a free ticket to all sorts of things, and you all know what they are. You can't get through this life without hearing or experiencing something first-hand about male privilege.

It can be subtle - much of the way I portray myself and say on this website can happen without complaint or stupid comment because I register as birth-male.

The fact is, I have never felt very male at all. In fact, I am not entirely sure what a man is supposed to be.

It isn't about genitalia, because nobody can tell what's down there without looking, and neither is it about hormones or chromosomes - I know people of whatever gender who have a biology that a doctor would not approve of at birth - yet they get along fine as whoever they know themselves to be.

Well, what is it about then? Is it about frocks and petticoats, and t-shirt and jeans? Well, no. Legal men and legal women can wear either without the sky falling down.

That men are more dominant and egocentric and women submissive and community-centric? Nonsense, I know legal men and women who are any of these, not to mention my suspicions that this is only a result of centuries of a gender-system that grants a suspiciously fabricated group of legal men rights over a suspiciously fabricated group of legal women, and gives them roles to full-fill.

I'm still at a loss.

I'm at a loss further still that it's never questioned.

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As a man it was bad enough having to step into the shoes of someone who has to walk a certain way, talk a certain way, slouch a certain way, learn in a certain way and compete in a certain way and of course, look a certain way. I imagine it was even worse for those reading this who were brought up as a woman.

Unfortunately I hated this training, and liked to play with dolls, Polly Pockets, dress up and make-up, magic wands, pretend marriage or skipping; or being cuddled and petted and making people breakfast, just as much as I liked using axes, playing in the mud, making little gooey monsters and shooting aliens down in tanks.

I was often called a poof; a girl, freak or weirdo, and stood in front of a mirror as a little kid pulling my face and feeling ashamed and hating myself. I hated P.E., and got through it by ignoring everyone and everything else and trying not to cry out of frustration when I fell over or knocked myself against something, and eventually just tried to sit out every time.

Eventually, however, as everyone does, I realised that some people don't care about this, and even like me for being myself - skipping and crossing my legs and all. I got over my terror and shame after I realised that these things didn't make me a woman just as P.E. didn't make me feel like a man - because I didn't have to be either and could leave that sort of thing to other people.

Nowadays, I'm not really referred to particularly as either outside of a joke. I'm particularly delighted when I'm referred to thus: 'we have several girls, a few guys.. hey, we have a Marshall!'

It reminds me that I, or anyone else, can make their own gender and can get recognition for that rather than something on a birth certificate.

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How did you find your own experience of being brought up as a little girl, or a little boy?

If gender is more than man and woman, what would you describe yourself to be?

If you feel like a man or a woman, what would you do if you had to spend the day as the opposite gender?