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I grew up with strong female role models--my single mom and my grandma, whose husband had died many years before. My family subscribed to really traditional roles, and I couldn't help but see how the women were always doing so much of the care work that held us together--seemingly with little appreciation or support. I think this opened my eyes to the inequities inherent in traditional gender roles. I have also always been very stubborn and independent and being told I couldn't do something always made me fiercely indignant that I could...which naturally led me to feminism!

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I think I knew as early as elementary school that there was a fluidity and queerness to my gender that I did not have language for- a dissonance that went beyond gender expression (though I was a very androgynous child), but that felt really embodied. My parents gave me a lot of space to play with gender expression and while they supported me when i came out as queer, there was a lot of resistance to the idea of non-binary gender. I still haven't been able to share with anyone in my family other than my sister that I use they/them pronouns despite these being my pronouns and being out in professional and other personal spaces. It limits my ability to share with my parents about things in my life that are important for fear of the conversation that I need to have with them about my gender identity. As someone who identifies as a femme enby, and presents very feminine, which aligns with my sex assigned at birth, I also get misgendered often at work despite the nod towards inclusion.

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I'm a cisgender, queer man; I first started to reflect deeply on gender during my undergrad education, where I was able to both take classes on gender/queer studies as well as explore the ways I wanted to express myself, which aren't always traditionally masculine. Through the years I spent there, I was able to (and still do) reflect both on how gender was intertwined with my experience with queerness, as well as how sexism, heterosexism, and genderism impacted me and those around me.

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i was assigned male at birth, and grew up with zero awareness of gender expression so I basically agreed with the world around me. even with examples of queer identity in my family and friends, I was encouraged to think of gender as something outside of myself

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I am a queer cisgender woman. I often feel that my queerness doesn’t fit into the bubble that folks need it to and make a lot a assumptions about me. I have spent a lot of energy undermining these assumptions for sport, but it’s exhausting, too.

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I am a cisgender female and I am still working on learning about gender-related vocabulary since it is a new topic for me. I started thinking about gender when I moved in the US, where the conversation on gender is more predominant compared to many other countries. Growing up with two cisgendered straight brothers and straight parents, I really didn't know there was any other "structure" possible outside of the heteronormative family until my early 20s.

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I grew up seeing my dad during most of the cooking and grocery shopping. My mom was much busier with working so I really appreciate my dad doing this. 

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I grew up seeing my dad during most of the cooking and grocery shopping. My mom was much busier with working so I really appreciate my dad doing this. 

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I am a cisgender female. I grew up in a conservative Jewish community wherein there were specific responsibilities allotted to people of each gender at home and at school. My parents and grandparents followed these traditions, with the women cooking and cleaning while the men studied, rested, or worked. I see some of the same habits emerging in my own relationship now although not to the same extent.

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Cisgender, queer woman: I was a highschool freshman and saw two seniors start a Gender Forum lunch club and clicked in my mind “of course this should exist.” Stayed involved with gender clubs, worked for the Women’s Resource Center at my college (I don’t think it’s called that anymore though). As a high-school teacher, I was so impressed about how visible my gender-nonconforming students were, because it’s not something I’d seen.

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I’ve always been drawn to people who publicly subvert gender expectations. It’s like they’re radiating a special kind of freedom.

There was a time when I thought I might be trans. Right now I’m playing with identifying as gender non-conforming. I saw a t-shirt that said, Gender Unconcerned, and honestly, goals.

As an educator, I feel like we’re so far behind on this. I want to be a possibility model, and a support system, for young people who don’t feel represented by the ways we encode gender.

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I identify as a cis-gendered male. My earliest experiences of exploring my gender expression came from playing with dolls, watching America's Next Top Model, doing photoshoots, and recreating and recording songs from the musical Chicago with my sister. I hid these activities from my father out of shame and fear of how he would react. I dressed up as Snow White one time and my sister took a picture and teased me about it (her childhood "blackmail"), which made me feel insecure. Today, I feel more secure in the fluid expression of my gender but I don't have many friends who share these sentiments so I have a lot more self-exploration to do.

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Growing up in a community with what felt like heavy imposed gender roles (as well as heteronormativity) that came out in different ways- games, stories, etc. Having a desire to understand how those roles continue to emerge in my life- why? do they feel resonant?

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Growing up with the ideas that women cook, care for the home, mother, etc. and men work, do finances, etc. Facing these now

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different views on gender depending on locality, nationality, community, and family (including family structure)

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conflict between what our parents do and what they expect from children depending on gender (ie. going against gender roles in parenting but expecting children to do different things based on gender)

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with family, in school, in church

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It feels like a really big gap between the understanding of gender in activist and higher education spaces - where starting with pronouns is totally routine - and k-12 spaces, where groups of children are regularly sorted into boys and girls.

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Unlearn a lot of clichés and stereotypes deeply engrained in society.

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job descriptions that hold gendered language (teaching --> nurturing, accountant --> strong)

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men being financial supporters, men

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My expectations of gender come from the family I grew up in, the media and society.

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Discussions with staff and faculty about how to support trans* and nb students, staff, and faculty.

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As an educator, it would be nice to have at least one required class that focuses on gender when you plan to work in a classroom after you graduate.

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As a STEM student, it hasn't come up explicitly in coursework. I've mostly engaged with the topic of gender through panels (e.g. women in STEM), workshops (e.g. gender and sexuality 101), and through my personal and professional relationships (e.g. seeing female postdocs navigating having and raising children while working in lab full-time)

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Gender courses - shoutout to the WAPPP gender course guide!

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explicitly naming and complicating gendered expectations, roles, and microagressions- making gender visible

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I've only heard it addressed in an HKS course I took, but not in any at HGSE

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It would be useful I think to have optional workshops like this one during the summer leading up to the school year

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As a HGSE students, none of the classes I attended in the Fall and J term mentioned the question of gender in schools.

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I would like Harvard to spend as much time educating about and dismantling patriarchy as they are doing the same with anti-Black racism.

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I would like Harvard to spend as much time educating about and dismantling patriarchy as they are doing the same with anti-Black racism.

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One professor explicitly made a point of calling out research or data that relies on gender as a binary and identified alternative approaches to gender in research

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I would like to see it more integrated into all of the curriculum. We shouldn't have to specifically seek it out in order to learn about how to be a gender-positive educator while we're here.

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Intersection of Identities (Gender + Race)

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Intersection of Identities (Gender + Race)

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More conversations about Title IX and recognition of the intersection of gender with other identities.

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Training our educators to teach 21st century skills including conversations of identity