Dear Readers

For the past few weeks, I’ve been writing two blog posts per week as a part of my freshman English class. We could make our blog about anything. Since I had to do this assignment well, I decided to write about something that I was passionate about. I hope this passion came through in my posts.

Going into this assignment, I wanted to write about topics that people shy away from. I guess this says a little bit about my personality. I’ve never been a person to sugar coat things or give someone a compliment just to make them feel good. I wanted this same theory to apply to my blog about gender equality.

I want my readers to take away these simple words of advice from me:

1. Safe and consensual sex should be nothing to be ashamed of.

2. There’s no correlation between clothing and sex.

3. If you see or experience slut shaming, culture appropriation, or trans-phobia on your college campus don’t be afraid to turn to this blog.

Being that I am so passionate about this topic, I’m not stopping with these 10 posts. I will continue to share my personal experiences and observations with you, my readers, as they come.

She, Her, He, Him, but not It

My sociology professor began our discussion on gender roles by saying “The hardest thing for my students to understand is that sex and gender are 2 different things.” I guess this not only applies to Sociology 101 at Stevenson University, but the larger society as a whole. 

According to my sociology textbook, sex is the biological differences between male and female. Sex is based on anatomy. Gender is the culture or socially constructed differences between males and females. Gender is based on beliefs, meanings, and practices a society associates with being masculine or feminine. 
 

This is only the second time I picked up my textbook this entire semester, but I had a very good reason to.

According to the Huffington Post, “in the first four months of 2014, 102 acts of violence against transgender people have been reported.” As staggering as this statistic is it could easily me 3 times this much. Such reports are voluntary, so many incidents go unreported. The Transgender Violence Tracking Portal says that 10% of these acts were done to minors.

This circles back to the difference between sex and gender. 

Parents need to understand that even though they gave birth to a baby that has male sex organs, that baby may grow up and identify with the culturally constructed attributes of being female. Children as young as 3 know their actions don't correspond with their sex. This freaks most parents out simply because in the society they grew up in boys had to be masculine and girls had to be feminine. Change is hard. 

The only crime here would be people not calling this transgender person out of the pronouns they identify with. Even worse, calling them the “I word.” Hate starts with misunderstanding and lack of respect. As I mentioned in an earlier post, calling a transgender person demeaning names or pronouns they don't identify with is denying them the right to be human.

I, like my sociology professor, think that hate towards transgender people would end with the basic understanding of that gender and sex are not the same.  

Key to Happiness... Continued!

 

In one of my previous blogs, Key to Happiness, I talked about loving yourself and my experiences in the past with feeling self-conscious.

I didn’t really go into detail about WHY you should love yourself. The “WHY” is significant for many reasons.

A big concern I have for teens and adults is the fact that not loving yourself on the inside and out can not only cause emotional disputes, but it can cause problems with your physical health.

According to ANAD, “91% of women surveyed on a college campus had attempted to control their weight through dieting. 22% dieted “often” or “always.”5.” This is a big majority of women that try to control how they physically look. It’s scary how easy it is to fall into this type of habit.

Our generations are becoming so focused on having a certain “image”, and we are forgetting that we need to love our bodies just as they are.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to better your body, but there are healthy ways to do so. Something that most girls don’t think about is that eating disorders can lead to depression. Depression is a very serious matter and it’s not something you can just get rid of overnight.

Becoming more self-loving and accepting is such an important thing for us women to do.  We need to stop letting others influence how we want to look.

Be yourself, know yourself, love yourself!