In this reading, we learn about the feminist approach to the language and psychology of the language. Feminist researchers have shown how language has intentionally or unintentionally created a barrier between the understanding of gender neutrality and made women invisible in this process. This topic was very interesting to me as while reading it, I was comparing it to my own mother language. Especially sex-marking was something I noticed is there even in my mother language. We usually don’t use it as a pronoun but end our sentences with certain words denoted for the specific gender like “cha” for male and “che” for females. But the modern language, like the one we talk back home, only includes “cha” for all gender which I guess shows maleness as a norm but we can also see as a revolution of neutral-gender. Because then we do not need to know the sex of an individual to refer to them.
Using man as a reference to humans has surely made women invisible but it also has highlighted the work women do. Instead of calling a woman just a doctor even in my country, we call them “Doctornee”. The “new” is added at the end because she is a female doctor. We can also take the example of teachers. Most of the school even now in our country calls female teacher miss instead of a professor or teacher. All the highlights in the language of what women do show how language has been dominated by males, whichever language you talk about.
Generic claims are very common everywhere we go, especially regarding femininity and masculinity. Courage and strength are always associated with masculinity and emotions and families are associated with femininity. It is okay for a father not to be close with his children but it’s not okay for a mother to have a distant relationship with her children. As suggested in the reading women take a normative concept, an ideal standard. When I decided to come to the USA I had many people questioning me and telling me, being a girl going away from your family will you be okay? I was kept in the ideal standard of what a girl should be doing, living with their parents and after a while getting married. As I see, generic claims are the stereotypical definition of gender difference. And it states a hypothetical sense in people of what they should be doing.
Author: Srijana
Srijana Bhandari_Gender Identity Project Draft
Gender Interpretation
Today, people decide the gender of a baby even before they are born. When we ask what gender is to people, there will be the same answer of either of two sexes, male and female. But is it true? What is the gender of a person who likes both pink and blue, or the one who loves both Barbie dolls and toy guns? Binary gender is a classification of two distinct genders, male and female. It has been the most significant issue, especially now when people deny following the social construct and move on to find themselves.
I was born into a huge family. With five sisters, including me and only one brother, anyone can imagine the importance of him, the only male bloodline after my father. Son or male bloodline was very important in my country; a son was someone who can send their parents to heaven; someone who runs the home. Among all the other sisters, I was always considered a different one—someone who doesn’t like to follow the social norms. The social norm, in this case, was gender as a social construct. The social construct of gender is the theory of the cultural origin of masculine and feminine character in people. Mostly girls are expected to have feminine nature, good at cooking, cleaning, crying, or having too many emotions. I never fell into those categories. At a young age, I started living in a city with my brother; he was the only guardian I had. I do not know if it was the influence of my brother, but I was “tomboy” during my schooling years. I loved basketball, so skirts were not my things, I had more male friends than female, and I was not good at expressing my emotions. Even after I came to the United States of America, there was a phase in my life where I had short hair. One of the most asked questions to me at that time was whether I was into girls. I was not offended by them for asking if I like girls but annoyed by the prejudice because of my appearance. Now when I think of it nothing has changed in me except that now I wear more skirts and play less basketball, have long hair, and without any doubt, I am a woman now.
I am a woman now just by the fact that I am wearing a more feminine dress. In my childhood, there were times when I was mad at people for calling me tomboy, as it was usually associated with me having feelings for girls. Even now, I must clarify to my friends when I am telling them my childhood story that I never suppressed my feeling towards the same gender due to fear. It was never the case, I just liked the fact that men had so much power and control. I had always seen my dad solving problems for my mom or my dad taking the lead. I wanted to be someone who can take the lead for my family, especially for my mother. And for me, as a child, it was only possible if you were a man. The fact that our society is built so deeply with the concept of binary gender, that me someone who likes taking the lead and wearing pants was always thought of as being a semi-boy and attracted to the same gender.
We people concentrate so much on the fact that there is only two sex that we start creating other categorizes for people who don’t fall under the construct, the constructs of masculine and feminine. The gender you have been classified as during your birth also, by default, has a specific role in society. Like my father brings food, and my mom cooks. My sisters get married right after they finish their studies, but my brother looks for jobs and opportunities for self- development. Socially taught gender lines to have much influence and power over who we think we are and our gender.
A gender role, gender identity never stopped me from self-identifying myself. I was someone who decided for myself instead of falling under the social construct of gender. As a girl, I was expected to stay at home until I finished my studies and then get married. But instead, I challenged myself and applied for the United States without telling my family. It was one of my many steps to challenge the gender construct within my family. I got into a good college and started my studies. Slowly without knowing, I became the so-called “male” of my family. I began to take responsibility for my family, and I did that, sometimes wearing pants to my work and sometimes wearing a skirt, sometimes writing with my pink pen, and sometimes carrying my blue coffee cup. Gender is a social construct that will take a very long time to change, but what we all can do is identify yourself and march towards a genderless society challenging the binary gender concept.
Srijana Bhandari #Discussion 3
Nose/I feel insecure This is the very first body part of me which I kind of feel uncomfortable speaking with direct eye contact when I am not wearing glass. I feel like it’s very big compared to my face. This is sad that I do not have any positive message that has would contribute to feeling insecure about my nose in particular. My all siblings are beautiful, a perfect face I would say so I always used to look myself in the mirror and have felt insecure about it, though I know physical appearance doesn’t matter a lot sometimes we just can’t control on what we feel about it.
Hair/I embrace I love my hairs; they usually grow very fast and I have been changing a lot of hairstyles since the last couple of hairs. Also, I have heard a lot of compliments and its human nature you feel good when you hear a compliment. I had long and thick hairs since my childhood and not me, but my mother has taken care of a lot of my hair. In my culture where I grew up, a girl’s hair is taken as her dominant part of her life. I have seen and felt that when girls chop their hair too short then not directly but Indirectly, I have heard a lot of people making comments on it which would not make you feel good. So, one reason I don’t want people taking negative and another reason I love being myself in long hair, therefore I have not had very short hair.
Fingers/Makes me laugh every time I see them If someone sees my fingers by paying attention to It, then I feel like they are going to make fun of it. My fingers are weird shape, but I feel myself extra having weird shape fingers When I reach the age, where people define, what is beauty, being perfect, or what defines not perfection, I started to analyze different parts of the body. Being born with 5 girls’ siblings, I didn’t have to go anywhere to explore how I feel about my body part. We used to sit together and compare our body parts. And after my nose, it comes finger. I never felt insure about it but like said I used to join my sisters to make fun of my fingers. They are wavy like sea waves.
Theories I believed:
All these bodies part that I have explained in the last three columns are more relatable to:
Biological theories and Cultural theories.
My two-body part “Nose” and “fingers” I was born with whatever shape these are, there is nothing I can change about these body parts besides the feeling that I can develop if people make bad comments about it or good.
The culture of girls having long hair in society has influences a very large group of female groups. And I grew up learning this culture of being a girl you need to have long hair from my mother, grandmom, my elders’ sisters and a lot of female elders.
In what ways does your embodied communication comply with the command performance?
Are there any ways you have refused a command performance? How would you explain your embodied communication using theories from the texts?
– Like I have mentioned in my chart, I won’t able to make a face to face contact when I don’t have glass on my face. I kind of try not to make any direct contact. Similarly, trying to move my fingers/hands in an unnoticeable way to the people while communicating. I believe I have refused command performance in a way that sometimes when we communicate, we forgot what we feel about our body parts and totally get lost with the topic. It’s difficult to choose particularly one as I believe all these theories are somehow related to each other directly or indirectly. Growing long hair for being a girl (social/cultural), feeling uncomfortable with what you were born with(in this case my nose- Biological) and during the process of developing these feelings as we grow up by the influence of people around us, or by what beliefs based on our family and society, we assume to be one. (Psychological and also related cognitive).
Srijana Bhandari #Journal 3
As stated in chapter 2 it states three theories that are subdivided into the parts for better understanding:
Biological theories: Chromosomes and Brain Development, Psychological theories: Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic feminism: Cognitive Development and Social learning, Critical/Cultural theories: Shared assumptions, Multiracial and global feminists, and queer theory.
Biological theories state that gender is determined by two biological factors: hormones and chromosomes which lead to brain development and create gendered behavior. In psychological theories states the development of human thoughts, emotions, and behavior similarly critical/cultural theories states the reflective assessment and critique of society and culture to reveal and challenge power structures. Despite the major influence and co-relation of all these theories in our life, here I would like to talk about psychological theories more in detail relating to the other two theories. I feel like whatever we do is based on our emotions and our emotions are again affected by the activities that we perform in day to day life. Let us take a basic example. If I do not have enough sleep in the night or have bad dreams, we are going to have cranky morning developing anger or stressful morning. As a human, we develop a different kind of emotions like love, anger, fear, shame, excitement, embarrassment, and so on (social learning). Then it also talks about cognitive development which basically includes how we develop our skills and knowledge to understand what’s going around us which is includes the part of brain development and cognitive development again somehow affected by our social values and norms.
Let’s take a child born in East Asia (example Myself) and a child born here in the United States (example my first cousin). Though we are related by blood due to the differences where we were born, grew up, surrounded by people with totally different social and cultural values, we have totally different perspective. A very common example, while living my life back I develop the very strong emotions of fear. And it’s very common in Asian society. And I am not talking here about the fear that rises due to insecurity but due to physical punishment. Because when we make any kind of mistake either it’s in-home or school, we used to get the physical punishment, so the development of fears is in every single child, in the society where I grew up and so did I. But my cousin grew up in the environment, where she didn’t have to worry about physical punishment, but she did develop the fear in different ways. My aunt used to detent her from going to the swimming class (which she loves the most) if she happens to make a mistake knowingly. Personally, I believe she developed healthier emotions than mine (Just relating with the fear)
SOURCES
Cherry, Kendra. “How Theories Are Used in Psychology.” Verywell Mind, Verywell Mind, 3 Feb. 2020, www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-theory-2795970#:~:text=In psychology, theories are used, make predictions about future behaviors
“Critical Theory.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 4 June 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory#:~:text=Critical theory is reflective, by individual and psychological factors.
Srijana Bhandari Discussion 2
I have chosen to be in “Sex, Gender, and Sexuality” because I believe I can explain myself via this particular diagram.
I got an idea gender itself is very broaden and the characteristic that we carry is just a part of it.
I am a girl, by birth I am given the identity of a female. Like all other human beings, as I grew up, I started changing my behavior as well. The change was according to the environment I lived in.
Here I have characterized myself in 4 different roles. Me at work, with family, friends, and School.
My boss and my colleague at work find myself very quiet, as I am not very outspoken, and I don’t bother to talk in meetings and all unless it becomes necessary to. I am the youngest one at work, so I always feel I always have a place to learn from colleagues. I work with honesty and believe in work ethics.
With my friends, I am really outspoken, very soft-hearted and I trust them and always provide support and encouragement. I have a similar figure with my family members besides the fact I am more committed to my family. They are my greatest strength as well as weakness. I am always bold in front of them, as I take care of most of the family responsibility, either its financial or emotional support. But again, I am a bit of childish in front of my boyfriend. He treats me like a high school kid. And I can be worst in front of him. I think that’s because I am able to develop that comfort zone with him which I cannot in front of any other people.
It also true, I don’t express too much of my weakness to anyone. Especially when I am feeling bad and alone. I guess that’s how I have trained my mind
Similarly, when it comes to school, I am a very shy person to speak upfront but can easily communicate and I can say I am kind of organized and believe in discipline life.
Srijana Bhandari Journal 2
Coming from a developing country, where most of the social roots are stills grounded by very conservative and religious beliefs, I get the term “Binary System” which has influenced by a large number of people. Not only the country I come from, but the concept of the binary system has influenced every single individual in this world. In the Binary system, males and females do not look beyond how they have been framed. For example, Male is masculine, are strong, are characterized by a certain kind of work which is just done by them and similar with a female, defined by term feminine, are weak and certain kind of work are just assigned and done by females.
The binary system does not give a place to the people who are transgender or develop the different characters than the society has specified what male characteristics should be or what characteristics females should have. So, the group of transgender and identities highly challenge the binary system.
I typically come from a family where we were assigned what we can do or what we cannot do because you are a girl or boy. I could literally list growing in the family where my parents had restricted me on so much stuff to do just because I was born a girl and I was not supposed to do those tasks. And I cannot deny the facts that “Abby Ferber (2009) has argues, how the social system produces differences between men and women and not the reverse.”
A system where transgender is not given any kind of place is typically a binary system.
This chapter does not only talk about the binary systems but also covers the other complexities of society formation: Race, sexualities, masculinity, etc.
We can see how a single individual life is based on all these complexions. We can find people who are still influenced by the binary system and living their life accordingly. I would like to add up a very common example on this, I was watching this series on Netflix “SPACE FORCE” there is an episode “It’s good to be back from the moon” where out of few characters, it specifically highlights the Black women who happen to travel to other groups to the Moon. In that scenario, what I observe as she was thinking about how she going to respond to the crowd back in the earth to be the only Black women traveling to the Moon for the first time. This was just a movie, but it was made on someone’s idea and concept. It was reel but definitely carries what our society has held up. I personally think, in the current era, though the majority of people have already started to think beyond what binary system has given the definition of social construct, somewhere in certain scenarios it still exists. Mostly, in developing countries where people cannot express their real emotions. Gender, race, identity, sexuality, all these terms were human creation, but it should not lead any kind of discrimination and hatred among the people. I believe, no matter what race you are, what sex you were born with, what gender qualities you grow up with you are identified as one -“Human” and have the right to live a dignified life.
Srijana Bhandari Journal 1
All these years, I have this misconception gender and sex these two are synonyms. But after going through the very first chapter “Gender Stories” I could differentiate between sex and gender. In our society, we are determined either male or female via our sex but as we grow, adopt the environment, the changes that come to our behavior, change in our needs, transform our attitude and perspectives, which determines our gender.
Conceptualization of Gender is very vast to understand because once we are able to get it then we can actually understand how sex is different from Gender. According to Gender Stories the 3 Conceptualization of Gender:
1. Gender as Equivalent Sex: A person’s determination is made by the physiology of their body.
2. Gender as Separate from Sex: In this conceptualization, sex is what you are born with or is your body buy gender is one’s behavior, personality, or roles that you gain from the socialization.
3. Gender as an assignment to bodies: The process by which people categorize and label.
Like I have mentioned earlier I believe Sex and gender were the same terms but after reading gender stories I realized that they are related but are not the same. I could relate who I was 10 years ago and what I have become today actually define my gender. But my sexuality is defined by my birth. I was born as a girl child in another term I can say, female. Until my high school, I grew up like a term boy, always short hair, hanging out with a lot of boys friends, very sporty and all my class girls eventually didn’t use to like me. That’s was my personality. But as I went to college, my interest got changes, I started having long hairs, love doing more volunteer works and it was strange I stop playing basketball which used to be and still my favorite game. And after certain years(present) my wants and desires are completely different than I had a couple of years ago. I am more bounded by my responsibility. This changes that I had is because along with a change in time, I have been changing as I am facing new people in every stage, I have been coping with the various environment. Me as a single person I have been playing different roles, with my siblings, I am a very quiet sister and not so outspoken, with my friends I am one of the very frank one and outspoken. Similarly, in the office, I am a very reserved person that my boss once said to me that I had to take a communication class. Theses all different people determine me as a very different personality.
I believe there is more to explore and know ourselves. The gender stories have given some concept for me personally to understand the term “sex” and “gender” but to some extent, they are co-related to create one’s identity.
Srijana Bhandari Discussion 1
Hello friends, my name is Srijana. I was born and raised in Nepal. I have been living in United states since last six year for my school. I love volunteering, playing basketball and travelling. I was more interested to take human services major but somehow end up with Finance but no regrets.
I come from a family where I have six siblings among which five of us are girl children and the eldest one is my brother. My mom has to go through a lot of struggle because my dad and his parents were very old fashioned and religious who believed on having son makes a family happy, look after them and create them a way to heaven .Truly I still don’t understand what that meant beside the face it was a lot of pain to my mother who end of giving birth to five daughters after having very 1st eldest son and as my dad and his parents wanted my mom to give birth to their 2nd child as son. The day that I realize that my mom has to go through all this just to have son and she end of giving birth to all girls (it was not her fault which she took blame for very long time), I always wanted to be a son figure to my parents, in my family and take more responsibility.
It has been always confusing to me how my father had so conservative thinking and another side I have this eldest brother of mine who completely gave me an idea that all male figure are not same and developed himself father figure to me, by looking after me when I child, helping me to go to school and always giving moral support and being there in need of any guidance.
As I grew up, my brother is only person who made me I realized that school is the only place where I can develop myself, educate myself to distinguish between right or wrong, and keep myself capable of living on my own because my mom didn’t have an opportunity of going school and got arranged marriage when she was just 18 years old.
Most of all I always wanted to prove to my dad and his parents that a girl child is never less than a son. I still find the differences he does between my brother and us (girl child) but it does not bother me at all, instead it motivates me to be better. And I came to realization along with time that I definitely don’t have to be son figure that my family has imaged of or the society has created the illusion that only son can look after family or take a responsibility or just be the decision making person in the family. I can be all that just being who am I, a 5th daughter of my mom. A girl who is capable of doing exactly what people around me would not believe a girl figure can be, being bold, responsible and hardworking. I developed myself to be exceptionally well prepared, and eager to undertake any obstacles which come my way.
School has always been a place where I find myself happy. Happy in a sense that makes me to be me, be optimistic and has helped in the growth of mind. Developed myself emotionally and mentally prepare to deal with patriarchal society I come from.
I decided to come here because the educational system of the USA is much more sophisticated than my native country, and I want to prove myself by doing the things on my own. I was the first girl child in the family who came to foreign country all on my own for my study.
I have always tried to make myself capable physically, emotionally and financially to cope with the obstacles that I am going to face in every stage of my life.
It was never easy to pursue my education here in the states, coming from middle class family and not getting full support from my dad (who kind of used to make all decision in my family). I had to go through different challenges while starting a school here in the United states. But I have always believed that if I can overcome all the challenges and then can be who I want to be
For me my decision coming to United states was a grated transitional period of developing myself and creating my own identity. Because I always have this deep down that if I didn’t make myself strong to survive this new environment, ready to cope new obstacle coming my way then I am never going to be who I want to be in my life.
Being independent, able to make decision on my own, and being financially capable so that I don’t have to rely on parents was all I wanted in my life which is not very common thought of girls back in my home country.
To some extent I have proven myself. And in 2019 I invited my parents here in United States for visit and I could see how proud my mom was to see me where I stand and my dad I really wanted to know what he feels about where I am today and what I am despite going again all his decision in the past but unfortunately even during their stay here with me I never got chance to have father-daughter talk. Hopefully someday…
