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Have you ever had the experience of walking down the street with friends and spotting somebody who doesn't quite look like a man or a woman?
"Is that a man...or a woman...?" you wonder out loud just as your friends are about to say the exact same thing. You find yourself staring at the person, transfixed, and strangely bothered that you can't figure it out.
Most of us can deal with not knowing immediately what somebody's occupation, race, religion, or favorite sports team is (although we might ask these burning questions during an initial conversation). But not knowing somebody's gender leaves us thoroughly baffled. In fact, not knowing somebody's gender is likely to bring social interaction to a standstill.
Anyone who's ever watched the popular SNL skit "It's Pat!" knows this as the truth. In the skit, the gender ambiguous "Pat" stymies, irritates, and exasperates everyone he/she interacts with. Jokes and hilarity ensue as the characters on the skit try their hardest to reveal Pat's gender by asking Pat probing questions. The skit is amusing for a lot of reasons, but I think it's a great example of illustrating how important gender is in relating to others.
It's not just gender ambiguous adults that can leave us tongue-tied: people also feel uneasy around a newborn until they know whether it's a boy or a girl. It's often the first question that we ask to a pregnant woman, "Is it a boy or a girl?"
Unbeknownst to this unborn fetus is that this simple distinction of being a boy or a girl will profoundly alter its experience here on earth in almost every way possible.
In this blog, I will attempt to explore the important role that gender plays in our lives. I believe that gender is the most fundamental category that we use to understand ourselves and our world. It defines who we are and how we expect ourselves and others to be. The reason that most of us don't realize this is because of the simple fact that we spend our entire lives as one gender or the other. My next post will explore the experiences of people who have switched genders and were brave enough to tell the world about it.
