UniversityAccommodating Gender Identity
Gender identity and gender roles have been going through drastic changes over the last few years. Gender roles have been strictly challenged as women are continuing to do well in the work force, and yet there is still so much about gender identity that is misunderstood. Considering the rise of multiple gender identities, including nonbinary and genderqueer identities, it’s important to realize that the way people have been approaching gender roles and identity has been extremely hurtful. This is especially true considering that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) still labels the dislocating feeling of not belonging to a gender as Gender Identity Disorder, which places a stigma on the experience. Traditional gender roles serve to harm, alienate and further stigmatize people, and there should be more open discourse about gender identity.
With recent trends, “the emerging recognition that people come in bewildering sexual varieties is testing medical values and social norms,” (Fausto-Sterling, 2000, p. 18). But the fact that the DSM lists Gender Identity Disorder still is problematic. It seeks to stigmatize those who do not conform to traditional gender roles. While it is true that this distinction has opened opportunities to institutions with financial support and psychological care for transgender people in some areas, the DSM “specifically defines mental disorder as a constituting a dysfunction of the individual, not ‘deviant’ behavior nor a conflict between an individual and his or her society,” (Dreger, 2013). It is entirely counterintuitive to label feeling gender non-conformative as a mental disorder, since it furthers the stigma that millions of teenagers and young adults face. Since there is little medical insurance protection, high employment discrimination, and high murder and suicide rates for transgender people (Dreger, 2013), being labeled as mentally disordered when it does not fit them “leaves them in a sort of Never Never Land legislatively,” (Dreger, 2013).
Society has had gender role issues throughout the majority of human existence. It is imperative to understand the established traditions of gender roles in order to determine the harm that they cause to anyone who labels themselves as their biological gender, as well as those who identify with less traditional gender standards. Gender identity is normally assigned to a person from birth, and it is based on the biological sex of a child. In other words, the way people are decided by gender is completely based on a two-identity system: either male or female. These gender roles, or otherwise thought of as traditional behaviors for men, who are the breadwinners, and women, who are the homemakers, have been so ingrained into human behavior that people fail to notice them anymore. They are being taken for granted (Lorber, 1993) (Grossman & D’Augelli, 2006). Essentially, “gender signs and signals are so ubiquitous that we usually fail to note them – unless they are missing or ambiguousThen we are uncomfortable until we have successfully placed the other person in a gender status; otherwise, we feel socially dislocated,” (Lorber, 1994, p. 112).
Already, when there is a person who is non-conforming to traditional gender expectations, people are already quick to label them into a group that they feel like they should belong. Usually, this comes with verbal harassment and even violence (Grossman et al., 2009). This is because gender acts as a social institution. In other words, “gendered people emerge not from physiology or sexual orientations but from the exigencies of the social order,” (Lorber, 1994, p. 117). In this way, gender acting as a social institution becomes a “process of creating distinguishable social statuses for the assignment of rights and responsibilities,” (Lorber, 1994, p. 113). It is a structure that is full of inequality, even for those who identify and comply with traditional gender roles. Women workers are exploited in the workforce while their male counterparts earn more for the same type of work, for example.
Traditional gender roles have very specific definitions of what constitutes a masculine person or a feminine person. Normally, this would constitute that the masculine person is a man and the feminine person is a woman. But since “gender is a major component of structured inequality, the devalued genders have less power, prestige and economic rewards than the valued genders,” (Lorber, 1994, p. 116). This is not only imposed upon by peers and family members, but by the media as well. The media glorifies male athletes while it blatantly ignores female athletes. This is because is congratulates male athletes for being prime examples of masculinity, since sports construct “a masculine identity, a legitimated outlet for violence and aggression, and an avenue for upward mobility,” (Lorber, 1993, p. 571).
But this cannot apply to women in sports and the Olympics. For them, “media images of modern women athletes tend to focus on feminine beauty and grace (so they are not really athletes) or on their thin, small, wiry androgynous bodies (so they are not really women),” (Lorber, 1993, p. 573). For women, they can never really establish a feminine identity while playing sports, because it is an activity that is deemed too masculine for them. This is because success based on physical merit is attributed to masculinity. In essence, people make large assumption just on the biological sex of a person, and the sports industry assumes that women would not be able to compete with men physiologically. The “taken-for-grantedness of such everyday gendered behavior that gives credence to the belief that the widespread differences in what women and men do must come from biology,” (Lorber, 1993, p. 575).
In essence, devalued genders include women, but it also includes those who are unable to conform to these traditional, damaging expectations of gender. The current environment is not accepting for women who may not have alternative identities of gender or even sexual orientation, but as shown, they are not very tolerated if they do not conform to their traditional gender roles, still. For those who “express characteristics ordinarily attributed to the other gender are stigmatized and seen often as social deviants,” (Grossman & D’Augelli, 2006, p. 112). More than half of non-conforming youths “indicated that they were called a ‘sissy’ or ‘tomboy’ under the age of 13 and approximately half of all the youth reported that their parents tried to make them stop acting like a sissy/tomboy,” (Grossman et al., 2009, p. 29). This means to say that their school peers and their own family members push them into strict masculine or feminine behaviors as a reaction to their alternative, androgynous or non-conforming behaviors. This is the heterosexual youth using “their perceived and actual sense of power over sexual minority youth to deal out consequences for violating society’s heterosexual norms and gender role expectations,” (Grossman et al., 2009, p. 31).
This is especially difficult for men who do not conform to masculine ideals (Grossman & D’Augelli, 2006), and will become targets for physical and emotional abuse from male peers. Aggression and violence by straight men towards women and other men is normally encouraged and celebrated through the media, literature, warfare and sports (Kaufman, 1999). The violence is internalized, and anger becomes the only acceptable means of showing emotion for men. This has generated a completely intolerable environment for boys and men who do not identify to the strict definition of masculinity. These masculine expectations “are impossible to satisfy or attain,” (Kaufman, 1999, p. 545), and due to this, it pushes men into a “vortex of fear, isolation, anger, self-punishment, self-hatred, and aggression. Within such an emotional state, violence becomes a compensatory mechanism,” (p. 545). This helps to reestablish their masculine identities. Young boys, therefore, have no support from their friends many of the time, and with little help from parents as noted earlier, there are many non-conforming people who have no help otherwise. It is also prevalent that “LGBTQ youth are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide as their heterosexual peers,” (Scelfo, 2015).
The medical field has also lagged in providing to the needs of gender non-conformists. Considering that gender is assigned to new-born babies, when it comes to happen that a baby may have ambiguous genitalia, surgeons most often perform emergency corrective surgery in order to assign the child a gender (Fausto-Sterling, 2000). Babies who are born with genitalia that is essentially outside of the two-sex system are known as intersex. This shows that the “two sex-system embedded in our society is not adequate to encompass the full spectrum of human sexuality,” (Fausto-Sterling, 2000, p. 19). According to studies, roughly 1.7 percent of infants are born with intersex biological identities, and this includes chromosomal, anatomical and hormonal representations. Out of these, several adults will reject the gender they were assigned due to these corrective surgeries, which will further complicate their adult lives and put them under strenuous financial, emotional and physical periods in order to reverse the initial surgery. It normally best, therefore, to “favor treatments more centered on psychological counseling,” (Fausto-Sterling, 2000, p. 18) and put a stop to emergency surgeries unless they are absolutely necessary for survival.
In reality, if youths needed to learn about the way they feel and why they feel these ways, they normally learn from the media and use the Internet in order to connect with others, (Grossman & D’Augelli, 2006), and through blogs that will show photos and interviews with androgynous and other non-conforming individuals (Hesse, 2014). Universities have stepped forward and are actively recognizing these non-conforming identities, calling them either genderqueer or neutral, (Scelfo, 2015), non-binary or agender (Hesse, 2014) on their admissions. The point of Californian universities establishing this trend will help the campus atmosphere be more inclusive towards people of all kind, and that the demographic data collected on the admissions “could help the campuses better provide resources to students,” (Kohlhepp, 2015).
Questions like these appearing on admissions are a reaction to legislation that was passed in 2011 in California, that requested colleges and universities provide prospect students the ability to self-identify themselves based on gender identity, sexual orientation and gender expression (Kohlhepp, 2015). Getting governmental legislation on board that is supportive to the LGBT community is a step in the right direction, since many other avenues are unavailable or misunderstanding for students and other young people who cannot identify traditionally. Better resources provide by universities interested in collecting this data would be more access to counseling, safe spaces and gay-straight alliance support groups.
The University of Vermont has also acknowledged an existence of a “third gender” (Scelfo, 2015). For those who wish to identify this way, it gives them “an opportunity to self-invent, unburdened from social expectations about dress and behavior,” (Scelfo, 2015), which is a refreshing freedom from the constraints of traditional gender norms. Pronouns have also been adapted by progressive groups who want to focus on moving away from gender identity, by using the pronoun “they” as something that feels much more appropriate for those who do not want to identify themselves as either gender. So for one person, it will be “They will go to college. They will study engineering. They will get a job,” (Hesse, 2014), as opposed to using he or she.
In order to continue to make positive changes for non-binary people, several ideologies must be adapted. The DSM must acknowledge that being non-binary is not a mental disorder (Dreger, 2013). The medical field must start applying therapeutic processes that can address gender ambiguity for babies when the time arrives (Fausto-Sterling), and universities should continue to provide safe spaces nationwide (Kohlhepp, 2015), (Scelfo, 2015). Traditional gender roles for men and women must be challenged (Kaufman, 1999), in order to free everyone from the constraints of traditional gender roles and address the issue of gender violence. This would not only help the non-binary people, but it would be liberating for any woman, (Lorber, 1993). It would also provide a much more open environment for anyone who needs to address any concerns they have about gender, considering that “nobody could judge [anyone] for being non-binary if nobody recognized what it was,” (Hesse, 2014). Essentially, education is something that needs to be implemented across several spheres in order to address this overreaching problem. Then, all can be identified fairly.
References
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