Journal 1

The reading reiterated my idea of a few concepts, and introduced some new ones.
There are three concepts of gender: gender as an equivalent to sex, e.g. you body autonomy tells you what gender you are; gender as separate from sex, e.g. sex is the body you’re born in, and gender is something you grow into through interactions with other people; and gender as assignment of meaning to bodies, which was the concept that the book is based on, and means that gender is constructed socially, and bodies themselves do not determine if you’re one gender or another.
What I found interesting is that people have not only multiple identities, but also multiple genders that differ depending on the situation you’re in/people you’re with. I never thought of it that way, but feel that it’s very true.

I liked the idea that you personal stories are the way to understand yourself as a person. I’ve noticed that the stories you tell yourself (and others) usually become your reality. If you think you’re lazy, you’ll end up being lazy, and vice versa. It was useful to learn that one can apply change one’s life by just thinking differently, aka “fake it till you make it’, or the more official term – enactment. That’s when you act like the condition/change you want has already occurred, e.g. you got to be/feel productive (even if you didn’t), and you eventually will.

I learned about agency – the capacity to act or make a difference; it’s obstacles and ways for it’s enacting. For example, the obstacles are that different genders are expected to enact agency differently, that sometimes you might feel unsafe doing so and feeling that you cannot cause any change. To enact agency, you can either do it yourself – and change it with your actions, influence others to do it when you don’t have enough knowledge/resources or ask for help, and reframe your situation – change your view/interpretation of what’s happening to you to try and find a positive viewpoint.

My culture, similarly to the culture of the US, operates on a binary, and only within the last five to seven years, I’m happy to say, there are educational and cultural opportunities that became available for and about people who do not fall on that binary.