Me, Myself, and the Social Construction of Gender
Hello. My Name is Nellie Philius and I am a regular old senior in a Gender Studies class.
Seeing that I was raised in a traditional Haitian family with a preacher as a father and a worship leader as a mother, gender norms have always been, well, normal to me. Though I believed that I was equal to all the boys in my class growing up, it never occurred to me that all of my beliefs about gender were products of a social construct.
Through my exploration of gender and race during the past three years of my high school career as well as my gender studies class, my ideas have evolved significantly. I have learned how to critically think about how different aspects of my identity such as my religion, race, gender, and class have shaped how I see the world. I have even begun to question some of the values that I brainlessly adopted from my parents.
My parents, church, and television taught me that a person born with a vagina was automatically supposed to wear skirts and a person born with a penis was supposed to be macho and masculine. They were wrong.
In truth, biological sex, gender, and sexuality are three separate aspects of one's identity. Biological Sex refers to the body parts an individual was born with. Gender is the way in which an individual identifies themselves (ie. woman; man; genderqueer). Sexuality is who an individual is attracted to.
With this information, I have begun to not only challenge my conditioned thoughts about biological sex, gender, and sexuality, but also use my new knowledge to educate my friends and even family members about how they are also product of society's norms.
Below you can find my first explanatory paper about gender as a social construct and its effects on my life, as well as two different journal entries that show the expansion of my thoughts about gender.
Seeing that I was raised in a traditional Haitian family with a preacher as a father and a worship leader as a mother, gender norms have always been, well, normal to me. Though I believed that I was equal to all the boys in my class growing up, it never occurred to me that all of my beliefs about gender were products of a social construct.
Through my exploration of gender and race during the past three years of my high school career as well as my gender studies class, my ideas have evolved significantly. I have learned how to critically think about how different aspects of my identity such as my religion, race, gender, and class have shaped how I see the world. I have even begun to question some of the values that I brainlessly adopted from my parents.
My parents, church, and television taught me that a person born with a vagina was automatically supposed to wear skirts and a person born with a penis was supposed to be macho and masculine. They were wrong.
In truth, biological sex, gender, and sexuality are three separate aspects of one's identity. Biological Sex refers to the body parts an individual was born with. Gender is the way in which an individual identifies themselves (ie. woman; man; genderqueer). Sexuality is who an individual is attracted to.
With this information, I have begun to not only challenge my conditioned thoughts about biological sex, gender, and sexuality, but also use my new knowledge to educate my friends and even family members about how they are also product of society's norms.
Below you can find my first explanatory paper about gender as a social construct and its effects on my life, as well as two different journal entries that show the expansion of my thoughts about gender.