The reading starts off strong. Alok Manon wants us to recognize that a lot of people have opinions in places they don’t have all the right information for and I completely agree. I have heard countless conversations about people and how they identify/ express their gender and sexuality. I have grown up to be the person who tries to shut it down as soon as I hear some wrong things. By wrong things I mean ignorance, oppressive language, or just straight up lies told as facts. I believe it is one of those topics that you really need to be educated on enough to speak about respectfully, especially if it doesn’t really concern you or your health. Which is why I found the reading “Beyond the Gender Binary” very enlightening. We learned that these kinds of conversations about non-binary, transgender,and gender non-conforming are, a lot of the time, had to target them. People share opinions, even debate people’s basic human rights.
There are a few different laws people tried to set in the U.S. that go against transgender people. One quote that stood out to me was ”Bias and discrimination are not just being endorsed, they are given the green light.” I just thought that it was true. When people with power start discussing taking away the rights of certain groups of humans it allows people to think differently about these people. It encourages a hierarchy. It encourages discrimination. “I do not have the luxury of being.” This quote hit me. I feel like as a teenage girl I take a lot of things for granted. For example my health or my time and opportunities. After reading that quote it put into perspective how little I was aware of the effort people have to put to be themselves, when I can do that easily without judgment just because I express my gender in the most common way of our society. I am happy to recognize that ignorance of mine and improve it.
The author then mentions how power has a huge impact on how people view transgender, non-binary, gender non-conforming people. It makes a lot of sense to me. I have seen how power, and the lack thereof, creates a certain environment and creates almost like shields from consequences. It makes sense that when people go against these environments and make people face some consequences for their actions, the people in power are going to want to fight back in some way. So they bully, they degrade, they discriminate, but none of it takes away from the main issue being the power imbalance in people. In order to understand and become better people we need to see the power we hold in ourselves and use it for good.
The author tells us a story of how when they were in highschool they had a bully, this bully then reached out years after graduation to apologize and explain that it was their own internalized homophobia that made them act the way they did. This doesn’t excuse it. I am actually really concerned about the amount of times I have heard stories similar to this. It is almost always a side plot in shows that have teenagers as main characters. I truly do think it’s getting old, maybe I can never understand because my family were never that religious or just never that against the LGBTQIA+ community but I still think it doesn’t excuse how you treat a person. I understand that way of thinking is taught, but at what age should people start being held accountable for the way they think and the harmful things they do to people?
Some more things I learned were not to use very specific statements like “it’s common sense…” and saying that only women have children. The first phrase is just overall pretty rude but now I’ve also learned that it can spread misinformation and create some “norms” that shouldn’t be. And the phrase about childbirth, I have already started to change that, I need to solidify it and teach others around me too. Women aren’t the only people able to carry and birth a child. Men, transgender and non-binary people can also carry/birth kids. What I found interesting from earlier in the text is how people ask for the child’s gender in order to really see them as a person, as a little human being. I can see that, I wonder if I even do that. There haven’t been many kids born recently in my family so I don’t know what my reaction would be if someone told me they were having a baby and I think that’s a little bothersome to me. Would I ask their gender? And once they told me would that change anything that I say afterwards? I can go further into the reading but this is already 800 words so i’ll just say I found it all very informative with all the statistics and examples, I feel as if I was taught a lot.
