I think of gender as a purely subjective idea, such as race. Who’s to say that there is only 2, 3, or even 4 genders, because it’s subjective. On the top of my idea, there are 3 genders that come to mind which are male, female, and non-binary. I’m not saying these are the only 3 genders, however, they are the only ones that I know of at this point in time. There was a point in time when people didn’t know what non-binary was, myself included, so people during that time would claim theirs only 2 genders. This is why I believe you can’t pinpoint a specific number of genders because people are forever evolving and discovering their identities, and their might just not be a word for how someone identifies yet. For most people, they associate pink with girls and blue with boys.
Outside these two colors, people tend to associate things such as dolls, dress up, skirts, heels, etc with women while men are associated with trucks, suits, sports, etc. For me, I identify as male however, I don’t let societal norms direct me in how I dress, act or speak. I guess I’m referring to the question asking how I would describe my gender without using explicit terms like man, male, etc. Because if I were to explain myself to a stranger, they would most likely associate myself with a girl. I grew up playing with dolls, Bratz were my favorite, and I always had a pull to the “girly” things. In high school, I challenged myself fashion wise by showing up to school at 7 am rocking coresets, skirts, heels, sheer tops, hot pink tracksuits, etc. I never trapped myself in a box of what a man should look like or how they should act. Again, I identify my gender as male, however, I’m wearing things and doing things that are usually associate with female.
I would like to claim that I somewhat look male, however, when I would wear those type of clothing I mentioned, I would often get mistaken as a women. There have been numerous times where I would be in a bathroom, and men would say the ladies room was over there, look confused, or even walk out of the bathroom because they thought they were in the ladies room. This phenomenon never affected me but it always got me wondering about gender and the association game that we like to play with it. Like I said, I would like to think I present male, especially considering I didn’t always have longer hair. However, people would see the pink tracksuits or corset and immediately assumed that I HAD to be female. Through my experience, I have come to be more passionate about gender association, because at the end of the day, it shouldn’t matter. Especially now with non-binary individuals, who don’t see themselves on the gender spectrum, I think the concept of gender association is dated. In 2024, why are we still so adamant about blue being boy and pink being girl. I’ve seen it in young kids who refuse to wear pink because “it’s a girl color”. This whole idea is not only dumb to me, but potentially dangerous because we are implementing an idea to kids at a young age of what a man is supposed to be like and the same for a woman. Being a woman today, for example, means so much more than it did 50, or even 20 years ago. The gender spectrum is so wide and vast, so to pigeon-hold a color, for example, to a specific gender is wild to me.
