The Insecurity of Gender

Gender, fundamentally, is nothing more then a distinction in reproductive parts. One has the label of “man” the other the label of “woman”. Each of these labels bears with a role, and a long legacy of people who have fit, challenged and changed it. It’s a role defined less by what body you are born with, but more by those who identify with the group and the things that distinguish them. It’s a socially defined role. While we cannot choose what body type we are born with it is becoming more and more accepted to choose what gender you identify as. Oddly enough these decisions are not made based on the wide variety of benefits one gender can get over another, but some inner desire to be considered another sex. Despite the increasing commonality of this, it is something our society is struggling to understand.

I, for one, will readily admit I do not understand in totality the concept of transgender-ality. I didn’t know it existed until a few years ago, not only was it not present in my life up until that point, but the idea that a person could choose their gender was just as foreign. This essentially means that I was raised with an identity. I was a girl, and there were boys. I acted the way I perceived girls acted or the way I was told was “ladylike”. Boys acted the ways boys did. In a way it was analogous to traveling in different social spheres. I didn’t choose to be a girl, I was raised and happened to identify as a straight girl.

I believe that this has resulted in a rather large insecurity. I had one of my first panic attacks over the concept of my sexuality, and whether or not I could be certain in what sexuality I was when I barely knew of what I wasn’t. I was terrified I would discover something that would change how I was perceived, or who I was. I’d double check myself, wondering if the outfit I was wearing would make people think I was gay, not knowing really how gay people dressed. It was not out of contempt of gay people, but of an uncertainty that unsettled me individually. I feared how I would be seen, how my life would change, how my role would be altered if I suddenly found myself not being who I had thought I was for years: a straight girl.

In contrast to my experience, my roommate is able to articulate her appreciation to her parents for giving her the wholistic understanding of sexualtiy and gender when she was young. She grew up aware of the fluidity of gender and sexuality and was therefore able to choose and grow into her own. She is grateful to her parents for making sure she knew that she is female, and that means nothing about who she was, and thought people are going to try to tell her how to act, there is nothing that demands she do so. This is a childhood very different from my own, happy cloistered one. I can’t help but wonder if it has affected who we are as women.

Does feeling secure in your gender make you more secure as a person? Gay people are more likely to commit suicide than straight people, and I wonder if this is because they are not given the environment to be secure in who they are. Though some of this comfort may come from within, there is an extent to which everyone needs to feel secure in who they are with other people, in what role they fulfil and what expectations there are. People naturally fear what they don’t know, and that is what makes gay rights and transgender issues so difficult to deal with. Some people haven’t been raised to understand them, many of Americans are like me: they have a fear of identifying as something entirely different. It is a fear they give into and allow to control how they perceive the identity that is so foreign to them. Therefore, when people see the same in others, they cast their doubt, fear and sometime hatred at them. It’s a prejudice based on an insecurity, and unfortunately a national one. Does that mean that feeling secure in your gender, and living in a society aware accustomed to the fluidity of it, would allow for less prejudice?

It is difficult to be able to look at gender without encoutering sexualtiy. Quite literally men and women were made for each other (well the parts were). Their roles were as well. Society has generated gender roles that allow for a balancing effect of traits. Unfortunately this has lead to a “superior” sex, a gender more capable than the other “weaker” sex. It’s a legacy that goes back far into the past, back to when a male was desired to carry on your name, back to when women were property of whatever male they were attached to, back to Lysistrata and so on. These roles are ingrained not only in our culture, but also in our identities. What place is being made for people to choose their gender?

Gender, in many ways today, is defined by sexuality. A girl is to pride herself in her sexual appeal, a man in his strength. Women are emotional, men are emotionless. Yet, we are a society entirely dependent on the codependency of men and women. Of course then people fear when others do not fall into the two categories, or threaten the “natural order” humanity. It’s an irrational insecurity and yet one that is understandable when generated by the same people who begin to define their children with an ultrasound and the gender it displays. Sexuality and gender are the building blocks of our society, and our identities, when they suddenly become unknown, some feel as though they are left stranded in the rubble.