Reflection 2
After reading the chapter of Alox Vaid Menon’s book “Beyond the Gender Binary”, and watching the short video on youtube. I have better clarification on Gender Binary. There are certain statements that the author speaks about that I agree with and did not agree with. When Alox stated what moving on beyond the Gender Binary is he states that “Manhood and Womanhood should not be defined in opposites and he says he views it “as 2 stars and a galaxy” I didn’t really understand that phrase. I was raised to believe that in this world there are only two genders males and females. Growing up in church the chapter of the bible there is only one woman and one man. In this world we live in people make the decision to be the gender they’d like to be but not who in reality they really are. We all have different opinions and beliefs with it comes to gender and sexuality but to me, my belief is the reality. In aloxs belief, he will make what he believes known and wants us to also believe his truth and opinions. I also believe that if you personally aren’t in that galaxy alox claims there is you wouldn’t really see what he sees. Some people might agree with me and some people might disagree with me. The truth is nobody is right. people have the right to believe and think what they want. That’s why he made this book and video, for people to be more open-minded about the binary world. Everyone deserves to see the bigger picture of every situation.
I bold-face all instances of misgendering in this post. Please be aware of pronouns in both your writing and speaking. A lot of the work in this class is asking you to rethink what you were raised to believe now that you are provided with more information. The problem with continuing to believe that gender is binary is that you are denying someone their ability to live in their reality. Is their room in your belief, what you call your reality, for people like Alok? You said nobody is right, but you also said everyone has their own beliefs. If your belief says Alok doesn’t exist, how can that be right? None of us choose our gender. It is taught to us and we can then decide if we want to go along with the teaching or express it another way (while being aware of all of the barriers and oppression we will face).