Language in the Classroom

So how do you combat gender socialization? And how do you begin to create a more open and understanding gender construction as children and people get socialized into their respective societies?

So many people claim that if there was no gender there would be no society. Well, yes, there would be no society as we know it, it may be different, but it'd still be a society.

In my job I work with a ton of young folks. Wonderfully happy, wonderfully crazy, and wonderfully loud and inquisitive young folk. They are still not fully socialized and haven't learned all the social stigmas that exist in their born into culture, and are not exactly privy to all the social cues and taboos that their adult counterparts may have internally socialized into themselves by now.

Before I move on, let me address a concern that some have brought up to me before: that's the concern of changing our language in schools to better facilitate the fluidity of gender. This means things like girls and boys are taken to be different. This means that "girl's talk" should never involve boys, and in societies like the one in which I currently work in,　this means entirely different uniforms, way of dress, mannerisms, etc. But this isn't exactly "out there" behavior, in fact, it's quite common behavior in many world societies. So, if we are willing to socialize our students, children, adults, and all people into certain norms, mannerisms, and values of what is right and wrong, then what I'm proposing is that rather than take the "truth" of gender and sexuality as fact, we should complicate that and push the envelope. Socialization is always an experiment, there is never any guarantee that the way you raise children will ever be what was expected, in fact, it rarely ever is.

If we're so willing to socialize our children into male and female roles, how is trying to socialize them into neither of these roles any different? The difference comes from the fact that we have values. Folks have deeply ingrained values that they receive from cultural cues, from language, from culture, that help to shape how they feel about things. And in the case of gender, these values in many parts of the world has helped feed the idea that men and women (and of course nothing in between can exist) are fundamentally different.

But the truth is, they aren't fundamentally different. It's our beliefs and mannerisms and ideals that are different and how we treat them and what we expect of them that differ from society to society. And the question that plagues me, and has for some while, is what would the world be like if we didn't segregate girls from boys at such an early age. What if the ideas and values that we hold dearly in current society weren't instilled into our young folk from the day they are born. What if there were no social ramifications for a "little boy" picking out a dress to wear, or a little girl wanting cars instead of barbies? What if the only thing that separated males from females was simply our biological anatomy, but the word we used to refer to each other was more holistic, say maybe the word "people." What if from an early age, we didn't tell our children they were boys or girls, but we sort of let them be themselves?

And for all of you who may think I'm now crazy, know that this is just an idea. I know a change as such would not be an overnight thing, it may not even happen in my lifetime, or ever. But great dreams never meant anything unless people tried them out first. Think about your own social gender identification. Are you okay or at ease with the fact that you are a "male" or "female?" And what do you think of all those other people who don't feel comfortable being cast as such in their own bodies? The bodies they were born with. And what about the trans folk who may have had sex reassignment surgery, but later still feel all the anxiety they thought would go away with their new found sex? If being male or female were so "factual" then all my points would be moot, and there would be no arguments on gender.

Ideally, I wish people could choose their own genders, that the genitalia (that in many cases can be and are altered to be more "normal") they were born with didn't determine what rights they had, the life path that'd be expected of them, and still to this day the sexuality that they will hold. I'm not opposed to roles, I'm opposed to folks not being able to choose those roles for themselves. I wish gender could be relegated simply to something like a job. You can be a postperson for most of your life, but if you change and want to be an office worker, nobody really bats an eye. Because now you still serve society, simply in a different role. But if you try to switch genders just like that, you are a terrible person (some think), there are millions of legal ramifications, social pressures and anxieties can be overwhelming, and some even kill themselves to not have to deal with all of it. Which brings me back to the point, if gender is so "factual" and based in "science and biology," then we wouldn't have to worry about women's rights, about boys being boys, about gay straight or whatever, because gender is facts, and you can't dispute facts.

And I think gender AND sexuality are based in science, but I think modern definitions are severely limited (I'm short of saying wrong). Because when you try to “naturalize” something that came out of the womb that way by physically altering it, is that really "natural" or is it just making it easier for society to perpetuate binary and finite views of sex and gender? And is that what we want? Or are we trying and willing to tell our children that there's a ton of diversity in the world, that black and white are not set in stone categories, and that ultimately, people should be judged on their character, not the roles that others expect of them and how well they play these (sometimes undesired) roles. But like I said, this is just an idea. Language in the classroom is a start though.