Discussion #1

My name is Anaya Alcantara; I’m currently a Liberal Art student. I am in my last semester here at BMCC, and looking forward to becoming a Respiratory Therapist. Being a therapist it’s been my dream for so long I can not even remember, choosing to help people to live and feel alive by helping them to just breathe makes my heart full. I was born here, in the United States, but raised in the Dominican Republic by my maternal grandmother. I came back to the United States at 12 years old. In the Dominican Republic, where I grew up, gender is a topic of discussion; it is a hard topic to open up and speak about during a conversation. Such a controversial conversation can lead you to create conflicts with the others who do not have the same point of you, ending up by not talking to each other anymore. Adults will not speak in front of children certain topics when you are around. In my case, my grandmother said I was too young to know about these things, they said it is “inappropriate”. While I was growing up, my family thought me that girls can not play with boys, because then people will call you “machera” which means tomboy. Also, they always tell you that girls should not seat on any men’s lap, it does not matter if it is a family of yours, you can not do that. In a country like the one that I was raised in, we are not allowed to be ourselves, we have to be a mirror of what society wants us to be, especially if it’s a very religious one. They do not ask you what do you want to be or if you feel comfortable that way, because for them that is an irrelevant conversation. My family might have stopped me from playing with boys or restricted me from being part of conversations but never told me how I was supposed to feel about myself with a bunch of rules to follow because of what society might think about me. On the other hand, even If I was not comfortable, back then I had to live the only way I was tought, it was the only thing I knew. It was until now that I have myself thinking about my gender, how did I end up liking boys? was it because it had to be that way? I mean, I have never tried something else.