o Week Four Gender Identity Response o

        

           Hi All!

           After watching the videos on gender identity, I really sympathized with my transgender and non-binary friends. I will never be able to understand their pain and suffering with me being a cisgender woman. Why is gender identity so important to us? I think it gives us a sense of belonging and comfort in our skin and bodies. 

        I, admittedly, hadn't heard of transgender people until high school when all-gender bathrooms were a hot topic. My thought process from the beginning is 'If it makes them happy, who am I to say it's wrong?' I feel that gender identity is a part of who we are, and wanting to be acknowledged as what we feel is right for us is crucial to growing as a person. In my COMM 250 class, we spoke of Maslow's Theory. 

        Maslow's Theory is about humans having a hierarchy of needs that need to be met in order to achieve self-actualization. The first and 'bottom' piece of this hierarchy is the physiological need. This means food, water, and sleep. Once that is met, then you can 'move on to the safety need. This is shelter essentially. If both of these needs are met, then we move up the hierarchy to the belongingness need. Many of those on the spectrum or between the poles of the spectrum, don't feel that they belong. With only male or female restrooms, dressing rooms, and locker rooms. Transgender and non-binary people didn't, and many still argue still don't, have a feeling of belonging in this either/or society. 

        In "How Colonialism Killed my Culture's Gender Fluidity," I felt enlightened. I was not aware of all of the different views on transgender and non-binary people. I agree that colonialism definitely was a contributing factor to these stigmas and discrimination against these people in the western world or simply in our society as a whole. All of the speakers in the video described their fluidity as something that was once highly respected in their cultures. I found this interesting and wondered why it isn't as accepting now. It's exactly as the title says, colonialism. Colonialism killed lots of these cultures' peoples and their ideologies with them. 

        I also am aware that native American children would be put into schools after their people were slaughtered into assimilation. These schools were designed to kill the Indian but save the man. This phrase was first spoken by Captain Richard Pratt, "Captain Richard Henry Pratt's speech in which he used the now well-known phrase to describe his philosophy of assimilation: "Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."  

        When I learned of this phrase as a high schooler, I immediately knew that colonization is not what we were taught it to be. This seems to be a recurring topic when it comes to conversations about misinformation. 

        After watching, "A little More Blue - A film on Gender Identity," I sat for a moment with my thoughts. I have seen this animation before, but I never really thought about the meaning behind this animation. It shows a baby born with blue and pink on them while all other people in this animation are either solely pink or blue. I just thought, how great would this be if it actually worked this way? I feel that if people were naturally born with multiple colors that signified our genders, we'd have green and yellow and all kinds of patterns. I feel this would really portray to people that gender fluidity is more natural than we think.