After months and months of being on social media, doing a ton of research and being friends with gender fluid people, I do realize that sex and gender are in fact not the same thing! The article Sex and Gender 101 by Kyl Meyers was very interesting. It is important to take note the three main categories of gender; gender assignment gender identity and gender expression. The article really stood out to me because no matter the gender a person was given upon birth, it is their right to discover their identities and expressions. This means that any person at any age is free to decide what gender resides with them. In Sex and Gender, Kyl mentions how during early ages of a child, parents usually tend to teach them gender roles based on their assigned gender. How young boys are taught to be strong, fearless, not emotional, interested in cars. While young girls would be taught to be weak, submissive and into the color pink. This holds huge pressure on young children. I grew with a friend whose father had intense toxic masculinity. He disliked it when his son would sing certain songs that had majority women audience, refused to pay for his son’s dancing classes which he was so passionate about, and continuously asked him if he had a girlfriend yet. Clearly this was incredibly toxic behavior, which resulted my friend to feel neglected and caged, he could not do anything he wanted to do. Unfortunately many parents and parent figures hold this tremendous pressure on their children in which they practically force them to follow their traditional gender roles. I believe this is very unfair.
I stumbled on an Instagram page of a 5 year old boy (@bossbabybrody) https://www.instagram.com/bossbabybrody/?hl=en, who loves to dance his little heart out, his parents are very encouraging of it, they post his videos for others to see. Looking at the comments in some of his videos where he may be wearing a tutu for a ballet dance or a colored wig, or anything “feminine-looking”, there are some people bashing him and his parents for allowing him to be wear these certain things or do certain dances.
“People are afraid of what they don’t understand. They don’t know how to relate. It threatens their security, their existence, their career, image.” quote by Bill Laswell, American bass artist. Raising your child with no harsh gender roles is fine, because eventually at a later age, they will find what suits them.
