An Open Letter to My High School
A Response to Pop Sugar’s Article on Genderfluid Identities
I truly believe that gender is a social construct used by society to organize and classify aspects of our everyday lives. After all, how is that doctors can classify a person’s gender before birth based on their anatomical sex? Currently, there are three recognized sexes: female, male, and intersex. I understand that biology is relevant in the sense that a higher prevalence of testosterone in men and estrogen in women can attribute to stereotypical ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ traits we are commonly told about.
However, society has a greater influence in the way we view these differences as they are capable of telling us how to think about such aspects through the use of media which infiltrates our everyday life. It has been researched that a child begins to perceive ‘gender’ almost from birth, beginning with distinguishing the gender of their parents’ voices and their face. By age two, they are already subjected to gendered language and begin the process of figuring out further gender cues based off of the distinction between two people. All around us, the media depicts what society believes a woman and man should be through television programming, fashion trends, and tabloid magazines to name a few. But most confusing to me is the emphasis of blue and pink as gendered colors used to represent the celebration of a newborn baby. Although it may have lost its influence, the fact that people are capable of embedding the concept of gender before birth prohibits the ability for a child to grow up in an environment where they can figure out the gender on their own, independent of pre-designated ideas.
So if the concept of gender is so rigid, why can’t two of the most trusted dictionaries come up with one unified definition? According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, gender is defined as “a: sex; the feminine gender [or] b: the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex”. Whereas the Oxford Dictionary describes it as: “Either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones. The term is also used more broadly to denote a range of identities that do not correspond to established ideas of male and female”. Yet when searching for their individual views on what gender identity means, they both acknowledged it as someone’s perception of gender which may deviate from their assigned gender (sex) at birth.
For the past three years, I’ve struggled in figuring out where I fit within the gender spectrum. It wasn’t until the beginning of my freshman year in high school that I felt myself deviate from my female peers as the divergence between boys and girls grew more apparent. Although unspoken, there is a clear set of standards that separate the two which to me felt toxically rigid. Watching the girls act and express themselves in a certain manner that prioritizes appeal, cliquish behavior, and a façade of openness — I felt a disassociation grow between me and them. I know that this does not encompass all of who a girl can be, nor all do all of them act this way, but the majority do whether or not they’ll admit it.
Experiencing a mixture of physical dysphoria and social discomfort from the gender roles seemingly expected of me, I’ve come to terms that I’m non-binary. Identifying as genderflux which falls under genderfluid, it’s a fluctuation between feeling gendered and agender. For those who don’t know, agender means there is no gender and can be defined as a mixture of male and female or no relation at all. As for genderfluid, this terms means that a person falls outside the binary and can experience any range of genders for to any degree and for any duration of time.
I feel closer to the agender side when at school, whereas at home I feel closer to the gendered side as a girl because there are no constraints to what a ‘girl’ means. To me, the fluidity of gender is beautiful, as it can change depending on the environment and allows me to be a truer version of myself. Being an Asian adoptee to white parents, in a city where other Asian LGBTQ+ people don’t appear to be prevalent, finding online role models such as Joon is extremely exciting and reassuring in affirming my identity.
Author’s Note: This piece was originally written in November 2017.
