Hunter College WGST

Hunter College was an interesting experience because we got to join a first year Women and Genders Studies class to discuss Gender performativity in everyday life, discussing our encounters with social expectations of gender and sexuality and seeing them form their opinions based on the knowledge of their professor. Many of them had never even considered how their actions were influenced by their gender, even though many claimed to feel the need to wear heels to the bar, to avoid the subway because of how people react to their dress and to walk the long way home to avoid that certain shop with the preying men.

The class itself was dominantly female which is not uncommon in a WGST course, but made me contemplate how men have been influenced by gender expression as well. Not only do a lot of them carry the same ignorance towards how gender expression is influenced by the world around them, they also avoid ‘womens’ studies classes that explain these social constructions. While some of the women in the class will progress into feminists and realize how gender constricts identities, a lot of men will continue to define women by their gender expression – catcalling to women in sexy clothing, and judging women who choose to be feminists, which continues to be a negative definition.

A lot of the participants in the class were confusing sex and gender, which made me realize that a lot of people often interchange the two. Sex is your X and Y chromosomes, which often define genitals from birth. This is often seen as the same as gender because from birth penises must be masculine and vaginas must be feminine. Men throw footballs and wear baggy pants, women wear dresses and cook Thanksgiving dinner. It is something that is drilled into us from birth, when our parents say “MY boy will not wear purple” or “She’s wearing a pink bow so people know she’s a girl.” What most people don’t understand is that genitals do not reflect who a person is, they are merely a small percentage of a body’s topography and do not define their gender expression. Gender describes how a person feels in terms of masculinity and femininity, despite their genitals. People carry a lot of fear and animosity towards people who have male genitals but feminine gender or vice versa, because they expect gender and sexuality to match.

I encourage people of any gender to express their femininity or masculinity as they would like, but the pressure to be a certain kind of feminine (or a certain kind of dyke) makes women often dress for the attention rather than for themselves, as well as for the reactions of others in the public sphere in judgement of their femininity, often causing people to restrict their true gender expression. Being aware of what you are portraying to others and why you are choosing that tiny dress are the first steps towards being comfortable with your true gender identity.

So when we speak of Women and Gender Studies, we are not speaking of women and their position below men in a struggle for power. We speak of learning what gender means to men and women, and how that influences and changes the way we view the world. A lot of Women and Gender Studies programs are dropping their long title and identifying as Gender Studies, because it is not exclusive to the male but explores gender construction outside of the patriarchal dominant lifestyle.

I hope the participants of this class will continue in WGST and begin to understand gender and sexuality differently. Continued disagreement in gender is often based in knowledge or lack of it and I encourage learning about gendered issues for everybody to embrace things they do not understand and find a greater understanding of gender identity, especially in terms of transgender individuals.