Sex Vs Gender: Exploring Modern Day Conformity

Gender issues have been going on in the world for some time now. Imagine being born and being told what you must be from the beginning. No, and, if, or buts if you are born with a biological part you are required to act and dress according to that part. As kids, one was taught to understand and see other children as binary either boy or girl. Growing up everyone is raised believing the predetermined characteristic of what a typical run of the mill male and females should look and act like. However, due to this classical understanding of gender identity, it has become a topic that is misunderstood and misinterpreted as people confuse “sex” VS “gender.” In this essay I will dive into the differences about sex and gender using information from sources such as Batya Greenwald's ted-talk to convey how the issue of gender and sex has become so misunderstood and misinterpreted, and how the classically understanding of those words are becoming a tool to restrict certain individuals from expressing themselves on how they truly feel.

Batya Greenwald's Message to the People

Gender is defined as the qualities in society that are tied with being a male and female. Batya Greenwald a passageworks lead faculty and a national board-certified teacher in her ted talk “how kindergarteners taught me about gender” speaks about the many myths about gender and in her talk amongst the many myths about gender she speaks on two that are mainstream. According to Batya Greenwald, the biggest myths about gender circulating in society since forever ago are that #1: “that gender is binary” this means that we have two choices to either be masculine male or feminine female no other choices no way around it. Myth #2 states according to Batya “sex and gender are the same thing” which according to Greenwald is false. Sex is defined as in common tongue our “birthday suit” Greenwald states that sex is “biology” she says it is “that moment at birth when someone picks us up looks between our leg and says it is a boy or it is a girl” sex is what is assigned to us at birth. In contrast to sex Gruenwald states that Gender identity is our understanding of how we feel inside. To sum up Batya Gruenwald's main point, biological sex is what is “between our legs” while gender identity is “between our ears” meaning how we think of ourselves.

Greenwald focuses her talk mainly on transgender and agender children. she talks of the hardships they faced in a gendered world where people have a hard time grasping those who fall outside the characteristics that we have come to know as boys/girls. Greenwald pokes at the common stereotypes many people face growing up by asking questions “boys were you taught not to cry?” or “women were you taught to act like a lady” and because of those stereotypes many people did not want to do something because it was not appropriate. she goes on to convey how those stereotypes are forming the minds of children by telling a story of one of her students showed up to class with a pink shirt and the other kids made fun of him because of the color of his shirt. she goes on to say that by allowing the kids to list the gender rules for boys and girls they eventually realized that the rules are unfair and stupid, this proves that by breaking the gender stereotypes and rules at an early allows children to be proud and not be defined by their gender.

I think that the video had a lot to say about how people see gender and sex the similarities between how people see sex and gender and how we are programmed to see the two as the same from early as kindergarten and that is that it all is the same and that is where we mess up “sex is our biology our anatomy” gender is what you identify with, some boys feel like girls and some girls feel like boys that may sound confusing but masculine and feminine are acts you can act masculine and not be a boy and or male gender is like race I think it is important because that is something your born with and grow up with you cant hide your race or gender but if someone were to blindfolded you and introduced you to me and you only had to figure out what my gender and race was you would probably get it wrong therefore it is not fair that you can not act as you feel.

I think the message that Batya Greenwald is looking to convey is best illustrated by seventeenth-century philosopher Rene Descartes who came up with the famous saying “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes wanted to find a way to confirm that what he was talking with his eyes was true because according to him he didn't even know there was a physical world? everything he experienced could just be a hallucination. ultimately he decided that his mind was the reality. I only bring up Descartes because the idea that there is a non-physical mind reaching outside the boundaries of the physical body is known as cartesian dualism. this notion plays a big role in what Greenwald is trying to convey. until recently “sex’ and “gender” were seen alike in literature but now “sex” refers to the male=penis and woman=vagina principle and “gender” refers to the psychological experience of being masculine or feminine person hence Greenwald's “ if sex is between our legs then gender is between our ears.”

Conclusion

I believe that the issue that Batya Greenwald brings to the table is important because for some persons, they are dealing with issues where there is a mismatch between sex and gender and they might express how they feel by saying things like “I feel like a man trapped in a woman's body’ and since we have these characteristics of what a man and a woman should be not many people can empathize with it and it has been labeled a psychological disorder and this confusion can be easily according to Batya Greenwald by “The earlier we expose children to these issues, the easier it is to address prejudice before it becomes entrenched. it’s not about putting anything into anyone’s head, it’s about opening minds to accepting ourselves and each other for who we truly are.” If we can stop the issues at its root before it becomes a problem we can create a world where everybody can live happily and how they felt was best for them rather than living their lives based on some stereotypes.

Work Cited

• Greenwald, Batya. “What kindergarteners taught me about gender”. Youtube, uploaded by TEDxCU, 15, May 2015, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvJTsrWarrw.