Being In The Neither Category Of The Gendered World

Gender identity is a topic of discussion in our everyday lives. You see it everywhere and people are doing it everywhere. Is it right to judge people based off their gender and what you call gender, no, it’s not right. Yes, the outside may show that he is a male or that she is a female, but the problem comes in when they feel that they are totally the opposite and the society doesn’t accept it.

According to Tempel, in her article, “It’s Ok to Be Neither,” she basically is informing us on how some people don’t consider their selves to be neither female or male. Some people are in the mist of still trying to figure out who they really are. Even though society has chosen for them who they’re supposed to be based on viewing them from the outside, a lot of people are comfortable with remaining neutral until they have finally found their selves. I myself am a female. Yes, I do carry female characteristics and body parts, but my mind is made up like a man. I like wearing tee shirts and sweats pants majority of the time. That doesn’t label me as to being a lesbian or interested in the same sex, its just something that I’m comfortable with doing. Even though you would see mainly the male gender wearing tee shirts and sweat pants. Society see’s us females as wearing dresses, make-up, high heels and other women related duties.

Especially the elderly women. They always felt that a woman’s personal business should remain amongst us women. No man should be aware of what goes on amongst us, including, our body changes etc. , But in today’s generation, it’s so easy to find out information on the opposite sex. Technology is a very powerful tool and there is nothing that you can’t find about the opposite sex that you would want to know. According to Ciwko, she stated that “there are no girl-only or boy-only questions. ” At first, I asked myself what does she mean by that? How is that not possible? In my mind I was saying don’t too many men want to hear about a woman’s personal issue. But after doing some critical thinking, you would be surprised to know that her statement is so true. You have a lot of feminine men that’s interested in knowing things about the opposite sex. For example, I have a feminine friend who I have been knowing since primary school days. Coming up, I always knew that he was different than all the rest of the boys. Not one time did my friend play football or basketball but wanted to be part of the cheerleading squad. Yes, at the time I was very young, and I could understand why he wanted to be a cheerleader when cheerleading for girls only. Now let’s take a step back to our reading. Temple described how she sat down with her students and had them to identify some things that boys like to do and some things that girls like to.

After getting all the items, she began to ask everyone who likes to play with Legos or who like to play with doll babies. I was so surprised to read that a few of the girls liked to play with the Legos just as well as the boys enjoyed playing the dolls. She introduced an important subject and she got the students to realize and understand that you don’t have to only like doing and playing with things based off your gender. So now that I’m much older and looking back from my primary days when my best friend wanted to be a cheerleader, there was nothing wrong with him wanting to be one. Because now all you see are male cheerleaders. That doesn’t necessarily say that he’s gay because he wants to be a cheerleading, that’s just saying that it’s okay to be different. Another article that I can relate to is when my friend was very uncomfortable with going into the male’s bathroom. He always said that it was smelly and nasty in there. He would wait til the very end of the school day when everyone was gone home, and he would go into the girl’s bathroom. I remember one day staying after school and I walked into the girl’s bathroom and I saw him in there. At first it scared me because I was looking at him in a weird way. But he finally came out and told me that he enjoys coming in the girl’s bathroom because he feels that is where he belongs. He always stressed to me not to recognize him as a boy but recognize him as a girl and I did.

Ericka Sokolower ‘s situation in her article reminded me of that very same incident that I had. She wasn’t comfortable with going into the girl’s bathroom and she was always mistakenly to be a boy. All because she chose to do activities that was in the boy category. Sokolower stated that she had struggled for years trying to find her place in the gender binary. Basically, Sokolower placed herself in the neither category. She as well had to try to find herself in this gender mix up. But it was in 9th grade, when she finally was able to speak up and express how she really felt. All those years, she had to try to find the exact words to say to express her gender identity, but when she finally was able to, she lived more freely in the gendered world.