Blog 6

Words: 471

Our opinions and perceptions about gender continuously change over time. Throughout an individual’s life, the various things about a person that pertain to either one gender or the other change in smaller ways and also bigger, more profound ways. Research has shown that the younger people of this generation have much different views about gender than the previous generations. We are all flooded with information about gender from birth, but we don’t work hard enough to ensure that children have a genuine understanding about what gender is. Understanding gender and the concepts around it is necessary “for children to understand their own gender, engage in healthy relationships, identify and place media and social messages in context, and have agency in determining aspects of their gender now and in the future”(genderspectrum). Society’s views regarding gender has a significant impact on children’s lives as they grow up. It affects many different areas of life including their academic affairs, their vocational life, money related issues, relationships, etc.

I learned about gender from reading this website. I felt that it was informative and presented the information well and in a way that was easy enough to understand. The website states that people use the words gender and sex synonymously. Most of the time we give a newborn infant either the male or female assigned sex based on the genitalia they have. Once the sex of the baby is determined, we assume the gender of the child. The main thing I learned from this website was about the three dimensions of sex. The three dimensions are body, identity, and expression. The body dimension entails the body itself, the way in which we experience it, the way society assigns genders to certain bodies, as well as the ways that other people engage with us on the basis of our body. Our identity is our personal sense of self as either masculine, feminine, both mixed together, neither of the two, or something completely different. Identity includes the term individuals use to represent their gender. Gender identity can be the same as or different than the sex they were given at birth. Expression is the way that we show off our gender to the public and the ways in which society, culture, community, and family understands, behaves toward, and tries to mold our gender. Gender identity is connected to gender roles and the way society uses those roles to try to get people to abide by modern standards related to gender norms. Something interesting that the textbook mentions about gender that website doesn’t is the concept of intersex. Intersex means an individual has “a variant chromosomal makeup and mixed or indeterminate male or female sex characteristics”(Ferris & Stein, 2018, pg. 253). There are approximately 17 in 1,000 babies that are born intersex(Ferris & Stein, 2018, pg. 253).

http://www.genderspectrum.org/quick-links/understanding-gender/