I have never thought of gender much until I came to University in Canada. I will be the first to admit how naïve and clueless I truly was to all of the issues surrounding “genders”. After learning about the content we have this semester it all makes sense to me. In my brain it’s like a puzzle being put together. Every topic has been a piece and although it’s been broad it still makes sense to me and I know enough to make connections.
Gender: What is it?
“How have you come to know yourself as gendered? Share one specific, vivid story. It can be from childhood or otherwise.”
My personal experience:
Most kids grow up very close with their siblings if they are close in age. That was the case for me but I also grew up very close to my Ehman cousins. For this blog post to make sense I’ll introduce you to them and refresh my brother’s names.
Liam and Alexei: My two younger brothers. (1998 & 2001)
Patrick, Bobby & Jillian: My cousins that I grew up very closely with. (1994, 1996 & 1998)
So, my dad Jeffrey is my cousin’s mother’s sister, Lisa. Auntie Lisa and dad grew up on a farm located on the Stongfield grid. Glenside, SK is a tiny village off of highway 219 about 5km south of the 219 and 15 junction. This town which is technically a village means nothing to a lot of people but to my family it’s where we grew up learning how to skate. Little did we know our childhood would be shaped around sports specifically hockey. You may wonder how this can relate to gender but if you’re familiar with skating I’m sure you can see where this is going. Our parents told us we were going to start skating lessons so we got so excited so with this, they took us to get skates. At this point I had no idea what the difference was between “boy skates” and “girl skates”. (Hockey skates and figure skates). Our parents put Jillian and I in “girl skates” and had all the boys in “boy skates” because they were going to play hockey as well. We started our lessons and had potlucks with all the families after lessons, then would play hours and hours of shinny. After noticing the difference between skates I remember Liam and I switching one night and I went skating on his skates without the pick and I loved it. It was so much easier to get around on the ice and I decided to ditch figure skating and move onto hockey. My parents didn’t care that I wanted to get hockey skates and start playing hockey they were honestly just surprised. My dad was so pumped! It sounds weird to say this now but back then women’s hockey (Saskatoon Comets) wasn’t that big. I remember it starting to blow up when I was in like Novice. It went from having two teams to six within a year it was so crazy, but good crazy! I chose to tell this story because being put in figure skating first was more of a gender “norm” and with me choosing to go against that by getting hockey skates and joining hockey I went against my gender “norm”.
I am also going to include my thoughts on two Netflix documentaries where I picked out gender related issues that infuriate me.
Heroin(e) – Netflix documentary
-prostitution for drugs
-girls are ridiculed for this
-male undercover cops
WHY aren’t there female undercover cops arresting the men picking the prostitutes up, because last time I checked that’s illegal too.
This documentary isn’t even about prostitution or gender but I noticed how corrupt the “power” and “inequality” of genders are. It is about the opioid epidemic in West Virginia and the United States as a country. A month ago I would have never noticed this but tonight I sure did.
Liberated: The New Sexual Revolution – Netflix documentary
This documentary made me sick watching and actually triggered a lot of emotions in me. Being a victim of sexual assault (I don’t tell anyone this) I can’t believe how objective women are now a days. This documentary was about spring break in America based in Florida. Anyone can imagine how crazy it is but not to the degree this documentary showed. The men interviewed were absolute pigs and I know not all men are like these ones but it just made me sick. These college guys would brag about having 5-10 different “knotches” PER night… yes, you read that right PER NIGHT! The one guy chucked saying “yeaaaah I probably have a few kids out there”. In what PLANET is this OK? How is it that we have let these issues get this bad? Why are women nothing but a piece of ass? Why is sex meaningless now? Why do men hold so much power over us women still in 2018? Why is it that girls are “losers” if they don’t engage in sexual activity before the age of 15. How hasn’t this changed? How… after all of this world’s history that women are still so “useless” in a sense? It honestly seems like that is how men see us. That we are just a “quickie” to them.
This blows my mind because the media does nothing but sexualize women and honestly due to my past I could be a bit biased but I am definitely no prude. Why am I called a prude because I find sex to be meaningful? Sure when I was in my prime at 19 and 20 years old a “hook up” after a night of partying was normal but come on. Why does this start so young and why doesn’t sex mean anything to anyone anymore? I know this blog post is about gender and I kind of got off topic but I just have so many more questions and research to do. Gender shouldn’t matter and gender does not define who we are as people. What I mean by that is there are NO superior genders and there is nothing wrong with being transgender or female… I say we all need to accept and embrace who we are. Life is too short to hate and diminish our peers.