Loved this week’s reading. What is gender identity? Gender identity is the personal sense of one’s own gender. Gender identity can correlate with a person’s assigned sex at birth or can differ from it. Gender expression typically reflects a person’s gender identity, but this is not always the case. Beyond the Gender Binary” attempts to give us the tools to build a better future. In doing so, Alok indirectly gives us the tools to more clearly understand how we feel. Beyond the Gender Binary, Alok Vaid Menon challenges the world to see gender not in black and white, but in full color. Taking from their own experiences as gender-nonconforming artists, they show us that gender is a malleable and creative form of expression. As a person, I should be able to do whatever way I want to show the world. I should not have to worry about what society will think about me. When the focus is placed solely on normative gender and sexual binary identities, it gives gender creativity an “abnormal” label and can prevent people from exploring a full and healthy range of gender identity and expression. That’s why interventions in health care that support moving beyond the binary are so important. Moving beyond the binary not only validates the spectrum/continuum of gender identities and expressions but also asserts that there is nothing wrong with existing outside of the gender binary. Some gender non-conforming people are nonbinary, and some are men and women. It depends on each person’s experience. Two people can look similar and be completely different genders. Gender is not what people look like to other people; it is what we know ourselves to be. No one else should be able to tell you who you are; that’s for you to decide. 

 I loved ‘Fem’s’Post. It was very powerful to me. It said “That means I sometimes identify as Girl? Boy? Neither? Or Both?. Honesty we should be able to identify ourselves as we wish to. It should not matter if I am Gay, Straight, Lesbian, Bisexual, or Transgender, because we all are human beings and we all are equal. I believe it is the same as being tall or short, black-brown- yellow or white, being thin or fat, having a short nose to a flat nose or whatever. WE ALL ARE UNIQUE, the way God made/sent us. We all have the right to exist, equally. We don’t need to oblige anyone by believing their beliefs and faking our own life! Period. We should never fake ourselves to make someone else feel comfortable around us. We should find a way to educate people to understand that it’s okay to be Gay, or Straight, or Lesbian, Bisexual, or Transgender. We want a world where boys can feel, girls can lead, and the rest of us can not only exist but thrive. This is not about erasing men and women but rather acknowledging that man and woman are two of many stars in a constellation that do not compete but amplify one another’s shine.