The Genderbread Man

In the lecture led by Alex Myers, we talked about the question "What is gender?" We started off the conversation by looking at a diagram of a gingerbread man labeled "Genderbread Man". The diagram included identity, anatomical sex, expression, and sexual/romantic attraction. Each had two dials, one labeled man and the other women. A person could move the dials however they preferred. He then showed us an older model of the Genderbread Man. This model was slightly different, there was only one scale with woman on one side and man on the other. I found this really interesting because the models were only a few years apart, yet constructed so differently in the way people could use the scale. I really enjoyed how Alex used the Genderbread Man to show us how people can identify based on expression, identity, anatomical sex, and sexual/romantic attraction. It was a really coforful and creative way for people to better understand the wide spectrum people can identify on.

In another point of Alex's talk he talked about transgender people in history. Transgender was a phrased coined in the early 1990s, however people identified as transgender long before the early 1990s. We discussed many women who left their homes and dressed up as men to fight in battle or become celebus monks. Many people could say that these women just wanted to fight for their country but that could also not be the case, maybe they really did want to become a man. I found this particularly interesting because I never thought about these women I had heard about in my 7th and 8th grade history classes as being transgender. I believed what many others thought; that they just  wanted to fight for their country and then would return back to be a women in the matter of a few years.

In Alex's convocation speech he talked about his journey into becoming a man. He spoke to the audience about how he moved to Wyoming in pursuit of what it was really like to be a man in the United States. He began at a ranch, in a bunkhouse with all boys. Everything started off well until he received a post card from a friend asking how he was doing and if people accepted the fact he was transgender. When his boss found out he was transgender he was fired. In the state of Wyoming it is perfectly legal for a transgender to be fired from the work place. Alex went on to say that transgender people are only protected in the work place in 18 states to this day. This took me by surprise because I thought with the great steps our society has been taking towards acceptance more states would protect trans people in the workplace. After Alex was fired he went to work somewhere else for a few months and he came out to no one. When he returned back to Boston he was taken aback when he heard of a gay man killed in Wyoming named Matthew Shepard. Alex realized that he was willing to risk his life in order to find out what being a man meant. All together I really enjoyed Alex's lecture on "What is gender?" and his convocation speech about his journey because it opened my eyes about what people have to go through to become themselves and how wide the spectrum is for how people identify.