Source: Soylemez, 2010įrom a very young age, gender-diverse kids such as Alex face many binary gender expectations in schools such as seating charts, dress codes, girl/boy lines, bathrooms, etc. For kids where the two differ, they grow up facing difficulties and have problems all throughout their life. While birth sex and gender identity may match for most kids, it’s not always the case. Sex is your biology and exists between your legs whereas gender is how you feel about yourself and exists between your ears. In the article, “The Gender Spectrum”, Carrie Kilman discusses how there is “a common myth that goes like this: Every person is either male or female, and the distinction is based on that person’s anatomy” (Kilman 27). Broad shoulders, muscles, and a buzz cut? Male. Does the person have long hair, makeup, and heels on? Female. Similarly, whenever we meet a person for the first time, we look for gender cues, a process that is done in a matter of seconds and is so automatic to the point that we don’t even know we’re doing it. When we meet a newborn baby, most of us ask the same question: is it a boy or a girl? The answer is often easy, but not always. She further describes how this performance is seen through a stylized repetition of acts that ultimately determines the gender identity one takes. In this sense, gender is always a doing” (Butler 25). In Judith Butler’s “Subversive Bodily Acts”, she describes gender as a performance: “Gender proves to be performance-that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be. Understanding Gender Identity Source: Kids Helpline, 2017 However, its TV shows like this that contribute to the negative stereotypes of gender roles portrayed in the outside world and lead today’s kids to harmful conclusions and false assumptions.
In the popular Netflix television series Orange is the New Black, director Jenji Kohan reveals the gender identity of characters in the show through their nuanced and repetitive actions. Gender identity is closely related to the concepts of gender role and gender expression, which is manifested within society by observable factors such as appearance and behavior. Gender identity is defined as a personal conception of oneself as male or female.
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