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those in one gender differently from those in the other, and the children respond to the different
treatment by feeling different and behaving differently (Lorber, p. 65).
My gender became much more apparent when I entered grade school. My hair grew out
and I wore pigtails every day along with my female school uniform. The toys I had were usually
stuffed animals and Barbie dolls, and I could not help but notice the glaring contrast between my
toys and my brothers Hot Wheels and action figures. Despite these differences, my brother and I
often shared toys, and I can still hear the echo of my parents scolding me for making him behave
more effeminately. As an innocent child, I was saddened to feel like I had done a bad thing when
I purely just wanted to have fun. It was then that the idea of boys have to be boys and girls have
to be girls ingrained itself into my mind as the natural (and only) way of things. I saw this idea
come into practice when I encountered separate restrooms for boys and girls for the first time.
Interestingly enough, I realize now that whenever I was defiant as a kid in performing my
correct gender, the people who would reprimand me tended to be female. One of many
examples happened in preschool when this girl named Jackie would constantly bully me and
knock over my Lego creations to make way for little brother to play with them. I reminisce the
days when my grandmother would relentlessly nag me to wash my face, brush my hair, sit
upright with my legs crossed, clean the house, etc. because girls must always be orderly. When I
was still hungry at the end of dinner and there was only one piece of food left on the table, she
would give it to my younger brother because he was the growing boy. My mom yelled at me for
cutting my own hair once with craft scissors, lecturing me that girls should keep their hair long.
My hair has been long ever since. Sometimes she would bitterly question me, asking if I was a
girl, if she even had a daughter. She subjected me to either become a doctor or marry a rich,
Asian husband. I do not intend to pose my grandmother or mother as being cruel, as I have come
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to understand that everything they did was out of their best intentions, but at the same time the
checklist of things I was supposed to do and be became tiresome. From these incidents, I found
myself drawing closer to my dad (I was a daddys girl) and my little brother.
Around kindergarten was when I reached the age where I was able to make the distinction
between who was male and who was female. To some extent, I could differentiate male and
female treatment by comparing parental treatment of my brother vs me. In the 1st grade, my first
best friend was this girl named Jasmine and we did nearly everything together, playing house,
coloring, arts & crafts, doing each others hair, etc. (i.e. typically girly activities). Suddenly,
she abandoned our friendship for one with a different girl named Elaineto this day I still dont
know why she did thisand from then on we stopped talking entirely. This painful event scarred
me for many years when it came to trusting and engaging in female friendships. I believe it
played a significant role in my gender journey because it marked the turning point for me to
partake heavily in male friendships and adopting masculine behaviors. This is not to say that I
was actively seeking male friends as a seven year old, but on a less conscious level, I [learned]
how to read peoples gender by learning which traits culturally [signified] each gender and by
learning rules that [enabled me] to classify individuals with a wide range of gender presentations
into two and only two gender categories (Lucal, p. 73).
Negative connotations on gender stemmed from dark childhood memories triggered me
to shy away from intermingling with my female classmates throughout my adolescence; as a
direct result, I detached myself from the typically girly activities that I used to do with
Jasmine. As a pre-teen, I grew self-aware that I was becoming one of the boys (and would say
this proudly) when I started to associate with a close-knit group of male friends. Gender was
becoming more than just what I looked like and what I did, but also how I responded to lifes
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events and who I was connecting with. Lifes situations pushed me in a direction that craved a
sense of belonging, and after years of being a loner post-Jasmine, I found my social niche
connecting with this small group of guys who I now refer to as my closest childhood friends. I
relate these thoughts to West and Zimmermans 2014 article on Doing Gender, which reads,
Rather than as a property of individuals, we conceive of gender as an emergent feature of social
situations: both as an outcome of and a rationale for various social arrangements and as a means
of legitimating one of the most fundamental divisions of society (West, Zimmerman, p. 121).
My thought process started to change dramatically when I entered my high school years.
Growing up I learned to realize that there is more to this world than heads or tails; my perception
of society shifted from a simple, two-sided coin flip to a complicated, multi-faceted dice roll. I
took notice of classmates taunted for being homosexual, who self-identified as queer or bi, who
belonged to other genders, and it was foreign to me because all I ever knew in the past was two
genders and heterosexuality. I found myself gravitating towards individuals who shared familiar
feelings of isolation. My high school social circle was a diverse mix of ethnic minorities, gays,
lesbians, the disabled, the social outcasts, the suicidal, and the depressed. Before, my friendships
were male oriented, but now I found myself branching out into something uniquely
nonconformist. It was an interesting time when I overlooked gender in my friendships.
High school was also the time when my dad confessed to a three-year long secret affair
with another woman. He admitted to feelings of spite against my mother for having an abortion
without his permission. Simultaneously, my family fell to bankruptcy due to my dads company
going under. Both events deeply wounded my family; it hurt us as a whole when we almost lost
our house, it hurt my mother who was betrayed by the man she loved, it hurt my younger brother
who lost trust in a male role model, and of course it hurt me, daddys little girl who I respected
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dearly. From his actions, my views on gender roles changed exceedingly. When it comes to
bodily autonomy, I am prochoice due to my moms situation. My faith in my future romantic
relationships crumbled with insecurity, but also made me to vow to stay committed in them as
well. I see now that male dominance and female submissiveness was apparent in my household,
but I hope in my future home that the only power struggle would be if the electricity went out.
Instead of lecturing me to find a rich man, my mother now tells me to find a nice man. I no
longer agree with the standards that women should be dependent (especially financially) on men.
When I was filling out my FAFSA, I found out my mom actually made more money than my
dad; and so I learned that the father figure was not always the breadwinner. I recognized that
society treats men with more respect, despite violent statistics, such as higher rates of criminal
activity and the emergence of rape culture. The unfairness visible in sports, the work place, the
classroom, etc. against women disturbed me. To see the world through patriarchal eyes is to
believe that women and men are profoundly different in their basic natures, that hierarchy is the
only alternative to chaos, and that men were made in the image of a masculine God with whom
they enjoy a special relationship (Johnson, p. 29-30), but I was starting to see the world
differently.
I feel that gender journeys are reflective of one looking through a microscope; the whole
time looking at the same specimen (society) but through different lenses and magnifications,
some showing me the bigger picture while others the finer details. Ironically, looking through my
lens the lines dividing male vs female blurred with clarity. College life has fated me taking two
gender studies courses, learning about feminist theories, and participating in a club called the
Asian American Student Association, I have more confidence in myself as an active scholar,
thinker, budding social justice advocate, and feminist in progress equipped with a critical lens.
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Johnson, A.G. (2009). Patriarchy, the System: An It, Not a He, A Them, or an Us. In G. Kirk &
M. Okazawa-Rey (Eds.) Womens Lives: Multicultural Perspectives (p. 25-32). NY:
McGraw Hill.
Lorber, J. (1991). Social construction of gender. In G. Kirk & M. Okazawa-Rey (Eds.) Womens
Lives: Multicultural Perspectives (p. 64-68. NY: McGraw Hill
Lorde, Audre. (1984). Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference. In Sister
Outsiders: Essays and Speeches (p. 114-123). Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press
Lucal, B. (2011). What It Means to be Gendered Me: Life on the Boundaries of a Dichotomous
Gender System.
West, C &. Zimmerman, D.H. (2014). Doing Gender. (P. 121-133).