Gender: A Spectrum

What you wear, how you talk, how you act are all matters in which how you present yourself to the world. Before this week I had never really put much thought into that - but after this week I have a new sense of knowledge on what it means to struggle with that sense of self and the overcoming of it. Alex Myers is the author of the book Continental Divide in which the main character Ron battles with gender and more so feeling of completely feeling like the gender he was meant to be. In his talk, Alex Myers shared a bit about his own personal story and how he struggled to show the world what he was feeling inside at times. Additionally, he showed pictures of different ways gender had been interpreted in the past. I found this very fascinating since I thought this was a more recent thing - but as he showed pictures of women who wanted to fight in war and then lived life as a man after or monks who wished to be male it demonstrated how the topic of gender is one which us as humans have been dealing with for a long time. Also how fashion and gender roles in it have changed. When he showed a picture of Franklin Roosevelt dressed as a baby it is clear to see the change in what we believe is feminine and masculine and how it has changed through the decades. Alex Myers also showed us a diagram which was called "The Genderbread Man" which shows the three different components that go into gender: Gender Expression, Gender Identity, and Anatomical Sex. All these different components helped me better understand that gender isn't clear-cut and it is made up of several different components. Regardless a human being is a human being and no one should be treated differently based on what they choose to identify as.