bashoGWSS1

Gender is a performance. I get up in the morning and put on make up and it makes me happy. It makes me feel more like a girl. What makes me wonder though is who is to decide these gender roles that we perform unconsciously everyday? I guess we perform gender to be recognized by others, because humans can’t handle being confused about someone’s gender. We perform gender, because we are expected to perform it and that’s what we expect from others too. So it is like a cycle. We act gender to be categorized and identified.
It’s true that while gender is inauthentic it also produces the very real social conditions we live in, because we have been performing gender for a very long time and it has become real to us. I don’t think people stop and think about gender, they just perform their part and that’s their reality.
The way we present ourselves definitely impacts the way others treat us. The simplest things can impact the way others treat us, such as clothes, house, hair and so many other things. We always judge people and make a decision on how to treat them. When I am talking to guys I always present myself differently and treat them differently based on how they present themselves.
Changing the way we do gender would change our social conditions. If we all performed gender the same, then boys could talk about shoes and maybe play with dolls. There wouldn’t be categories based on gender. I think this will take time though and we have to be patient. I still would want to identified as a female, but maybe not perform gender, because it’s not something that we have to do.