Growing up, when I heard the word gender, I thought of the binary genders male and female. Automatically, I thought yeah I am biologically a female, I have all the parts of one and I look like one, I wasn\u2019t aware of the things I know now like gender, sex, and sexuality. Society had formed this image in my head that as a female I should act, talk, walk, and behave as such.<\/p>\n
I remember growing up it was just me and my mom, we were in a shelter at first but then had an apartment; looking back at those times \u00a0I realize now that gender binary was never a thing I thought of. The way I dressed, talked, acted, and behaved was different. I didn\u2019t care about the fact that I was a female and didn\u2019t always dress girly, or I didn\u2019t hang around the girls in my class or that I played tag and football with the boys. I was being me and doing, dressing, etc., how I wanted to act; I was being the person I viewed myself as not tied down to the fact that I was born with womanly\/ girly features. Again growing up without the common gender roles that some grew up with, actually experiencing it was a weird and challenging time for me.<\/p>\n
Where my mom grew up in Grenada these roles are a very common aspect in life after my mom went to basics (in the Army) as well as my aunt, I had to live with my grandmother there and it was not an enjoyable experience. Since I was a child who is old enough to take care of people by their standards, so ultimately I had to take care of the two cousins that were also with me, not to mention help my grandma with washing the dirty clothes, cooking, and cleaning up after my two uncles. One of my uncles worked, the other one didn\u2019t do anything at all besides watch anime in the living room, on my grandmother’s computer but, even though my working uncle had a job that\u2019s all he did besides tinkering with broken electronics. As a female child, he would tell me \u201cI should know my place\u201d and that \u201cgirls shouldn\u2019t be playing games\u201d. Now at the time, he said that it didn\u2019t quite register in my mind, what he meant as he said it but now, I understand what he meant. Just because I am biologically a female doesn\u2019t mean I should be doing what a female \u201chas\u201d to do. I am a person when I see myself I don\u2019t see gender, when I look at others I don\u2019t see gender, to me you are who you are, and that\u2019s all that matters. The sad part about this is that some people in my family still think this way, for instances my grandfather; he treats the females as if they are supposed to take care of him and spoils the boys. Making me and especially my 15 year old cousin do EVERYTHING for him, wash his clothes and cook for him especially. Treated as a maid at the age of 15 because of her gender and refers to us jokingly as his \u201cgirlfriend\u2019s\/wives\u201d, this is disgusting, disrespectful, and uncomfortable. In addition if you don\u2019t do what he ask he gets mad at you and starts acting like a horses behind, we have even physically fought each other even though it was a one sided fight. It was over the dumbest thing too; a can of Pringle’s. I ended up getting punched, my hair pulled, and thrown down some steps. Some may think that has nothing to do with my gender or sex but that is where you are wrong because, again the females in my family are treated lesser than the males. My grandpa doesn\u2019t fight with the boys but will fight the females.<\/p>\n
The emotions I was feeling I had never felt before, pure and prominent rage, hate, and the utmost and purest form of disrespect. I still think about what happened and the emotions that come up aren\u2019t as bad but the respect is still the same and won\u2019t change. What\u2019s happened in the past though has really shaped who I am today and has helped me to develop my mentality further. I am a more patient, calm, understanding, and I don\u2019t dwell on what people think about the way I am, how I act, the groups I hang around and most importantly I am more comfortable in my own skin and more reassured in my own identity.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Growing up, when I heard the word gender, I thought of the binary genders male and female. Automatically, I thought yeah I am biologically a female, I have all the parts of one and I look like one, I wasn\u2019t aware of the things I know now like gender, sex, and sexuality. Society had formed … Continue reading “Gender Identity Project (Draft)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1423,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gender-identity-project"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/gendercommunication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/gendercommunication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/gendercommunication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/gendercommunication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1423"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/gendercommunication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1520"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/gendercommunication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1739,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/gendercommunication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1520\/revisions\/1739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/gendercommunication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/gendercommunication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/gendercommunication\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}