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holsn39's picture

do it yourself?

I read some of Gender workbook as well and I actually didn't really like it that much either, I also felt it was kind of pointless and that the exercises weren't really doing anything for me. I think I agree that the workbook isn't needed, but I'm not sure about what you said about "do it yourself" is the only way. Maybe I'm not really clear on what you mean by that. I think that being comfortable in your gender, sexuality, body, and many other things has to be a personal accomplishment but that doesn't mean you have to do it all on your own. In high school about half of my friends were gay and then I lived with my lesbian best friend who exposed me to lots of gay culture and I grew up in a very liberal church (UU) and community that was very accepting and open minded about sexual orientation. This made exploring sexual orientation fairly easy for me, there was no fear, no threat, nothing to be scared of.  It didn't even feel like a big deal to me, I wasn't much of an outlaw within my community, I felt very normal. I  have learned a lot about myself through exposure and have become much more comfortable and confident with my gender and sexuality.  I don't feel like this process of learning about myself was something I did on my own and I'm thankful for that.  And it was the gay community and culture that made me start living my gender differently. Seeing other people comfortable with their diversity gave me a lot of confidence to see myself as a part of diversity, not uniformity.  I think that if I didn't have the same friends, didn't grow up in the same place, I think that I would still be identifying as a straight female, and wouldn't feel comfortable as being seen as anything else.  I owe a lot to the people who asked me what my sexual orientation was, who asked me what my gender was, who asked me who I was, because without them I would be much more insecure today. 
I didn't like gender workbook very much but I did like Gender Outlaw because I felt like it was more exposure, it was like I was getting to know an individual. And being exposed to other people's perspectives makes me question my own, but having them directly question it doesn't seem to be as affective.  Kate Bornstein is making me think a little bit more about my gender.  I feel like the question that seems to be pushing me is "do I want to be comfortable with a female identity?" not "am I comfortable with it", and to think about how it might be dangerous to associate a gender to my body.  I'm not sure how I feel about all of these things yet, but I'm glad that I'm thinking about them.
 

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