Gpers Homework Blog

Homework Blog

After watching the documentary and reflecting on your personal views, to what extent do you think gender identity is determined by the environment? The questions below may help with your thinking.

• How much has the environment influenced your views on gender and your own expression of gender?
• How important is your gender to your identity? Why?
• How has it shaped other aspects of your life?
• What has influenced your perspectives about your gender?

My environment has definitely shaped what I think and associate gender with. We grow up in a world where stereotypes are everywhere, and even though we are trying our best to get past it, I feel stereotypes show up stronger. And because of this, as a girl I could say that many girls who identify as girls express their gender as a stereotypical girl one way or another because that is what we are inclined to do since we were children. We grow up surrounded by items specific to our gender, and as young children we wouldn’t know any better. I feel I am a girl, and I am proud to be a girl. However I know many girls (including myself) who had gone through a ‘tomboy’ phase. Girls who loved dressing like boys, and loved ‘stereotypical boy things’ (robots, cars, video games), but now love to dress more feminine and wear makeup and go shopping, etc. Going through that phase I remember it was just ‘so much cooler’ to have something different, and being able to relate to more children because I was interested in both ‘boy things’ and ‘girl things’.

My gender is very important to my identity. However I feel this is only because of the stereotypes. With stereotypes there are things ‘girls can’t do’, ‘girls should do’, ‘girls must be’, and of course as girls we are likely to want to defy these. For example, of course some girls will gravitate towards helping people, or animals, or taking care of something. This is in our nature. As women we are meant to take care of children and be…motherly and sensitive. And the men are (stereotypically) meant to be strong (in a different way because childbirth sounds to need a lot of strength…). We are made like this because in the past we needed roles. But I don’t quite understand where the ‘girls are weaker’, stereotype had come from, in the past I don’t think women were even given a chance to prove their strength. Now we are able to prove our strength, and maybe men are only better than women in so many aspects because they were given more opportunity earlier on, giving them more time to be better.

There are jumpers worn around school saying, “Because I’m a girl.” and I think this is a really powerful statement. —

If we were to have no gender, our identity will be based solely on our interests and personality. But what is gender really? If you dress ‘masculine’ but do ‘feminine things’, walk in a ‘feminine way’ but talk in a ‘masculine way’, what would make you decide whether you are male or female?