WK 5 Identity

 

While thinking about this question, I couldn’t really think of anything to say. It was much harder than I thought it would be, and in the end, I still don’t know the answer, which, I think, is perfectly fine. No one can describe themselves and their identity perfectly and accurately, especially because it changes over time. Identity is not something you were born with and that will stay the same for the rest of your life, it changes constantly.

I am a female, I feel like a female and I like being a female. I have never experienced any trouble with the question of my gender. When I was younger, I used to play with LEGO’s, tiny race cars, toy ships, trucks, sticks I found outside, I used to play football with the boys from my street, hide and seek and so on. I was spending plenty of time playing games with boys and with “toys for boys”, my favorite color has always been blue, “a boy color”, I never chose to wear a dress or a skirt unless, for example, my mom made me do it, I never liked to tie my hair in a ponytail. When someone mentioned the possibility of getting me a doll, I wouldn’t get excited, because even when I had them, I rarely played with them. Me doing all of these “boy things” actually never made me question my gender. I think that it was simply because I never thought that what I was doing was making me “a boy”. I simply enjoyed doing this stuff, I have had a lot of fun doing that and saw nothing wrong with it. Never did I think that something is “for boys or for girls only” and that I had to act more “girly”.
At least up until my teenage years, when my girlfriends decided to give me “the talk”. This conversation we had was basically them telling me that I should change the way I dress, as it was “not girly enough” and “not pretty enough”, that I need to start wearing dresses, skirts, V-neck and tighter shirts, so that “my body features are more visible” and so on and so forth. Those things they told me made me feel bad back then, but it was only a few years ago that I realized that what they were saying was simply stupid and rude. I have the right to choose what I want to wear and no one can tell me that it’s wrong or “not girly enough”. Today I wear both what is considered “boy” and “girl” clothes, even though I think it is dumb to separate them in these two groups, because, again, everyone can wear whatever they want to wear, no matter the gender.

In the article Gender Roles and Behavior, Aron Devor says that both male and female gender are associated with characteristics and behaviors which make them either a male or a female. For example, some male characteristics would be strength, courage, assertiveness, and some female ones sensitivity, gentleness, empathy and so on. The problem occurs when either a man or a woman does something or acts in a way which does not coincide with the way they are actually supposed to act in. Then their behaviors are seen as weird, strange or unacceptable.