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School is fair to all of its students and is a safe place for people to truly express themselves, seen in this Physics Lecture; or so we thought.....

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The classroom is a place where all come with one main purpose; to study and learn. However, through the media, our own personal experiences, and just the idea of bunching a bunch of kids into a space and expecting all of them, with all of their differences, to get along is quite hard to believe. Certain social factors make it extremely hard for some to learn and feel safe at the same time. Bullying is the most common cause of difficulty learning from an outside source. After learning about the spectrum of sexuality and gender, I realize the troublesome lives many people on this spectrum have to endure. The classroom setting is, in my eyes, the beginning of hardship people of the LGBTQ+ community have to face. Peggy Orenstein’s Miseducation of the American Boy sums up why people, in this case specifically men, of the LGBTQ+ community are often considered “outcasted” and bullied in American classrooms. Orenstien speaks about a 2018 national survey that revealed men think of the “ideal man” as a person that sucks up his emotions, acts stoic at all times, has sex with many women, and is rugged and athletic. These traits are far from what a man might be queer or trans. Because of that, those who have trans or queer traits would stray far from what an ideal man is and is then lower on the social hierarchy of schools. People of the LGBTQ+ community have to live with the fear of judgment and prejudice with how teachers and their peers will treat them; fears that a straight person wouldn’t know how to deal with on a daily basis.

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Christmas in my household involves gifts under a brightly decorated tree. I thought the biggest issue was going to be what present to open first.

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The holiday season is the best time to end the year off with. Family time, great music, yummy food, and of course, lots and lots of PRESENTS. Presents are among the best things that come out of going through the dreaded holiday season with all the traffic and weather. The idea of getting dollhouses and Barbie dolls and dresses for the girls and the toy trucks and basketballs and footballs for the guys always seems to work right? Well it's not as easy as it seems. The idea that a children’s toy needs to be only for one gender is not right. The toy industry has greatly succeeded in marketing colors for certain genders. The blue gift box is clearly for the guy and the pink one is clearly for the girl. I know for a fact a lot of guys love the color pink and girls that hate it, and vice versa for blue. The only difference between a girl’s doll and a boy’s action figure are the packaging and marketing that came with it on the TV advertisement the child probably saw it on.

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A nice relaxing pool on a summer evening is perfect for all to enjoy equally.....right?? Wrong. 

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Swimming is a pastime many people partake in, especially on hotter days. The idea of cooling off in refreshing , cool water would excite anyone hot enough to dive into that water(granted the fear of water doesn’t overtake you). But the attire of what to wear when one swims becomes the real issue. Swimwear is quite revealing, and often shows parts that a person maybe doesn’t want to show. Men’s swim clothes can be reduced down to a speedo while a women’s swimsuit is just a glamorized bra and undies that are often uncomfortable and itchy. In this scenario, both sides of the sexes have to endure gender stereotypes that have been around for generations. I have had my fair share of being around pools. I have been a competitive swimmer for practically my whole life. FRom as long as I could remember I was hacking away at the pool, racking up lap after lap after lap. I became in very good shape, and comfortable around my body. However, when it came time to take off the shirts to go to a friend’s pool party, some of my friends were hesitant to. I wondered why such a normal thing to me looked like the hardest thing to all my close friends. It was then I realized how hard it is fore the majority of people to go to the pool. Men must be ripped and have 6 pack abs with muscles or else they are fat or skinny. Women must have a large cleavage and a big butt or else they are fat or too flat to be attractive. Stereotypes such as these make having just a normal time by the pool into a mental nightmare for almost everyone as nobody can be the “ideal body” 24/7. The greatest of the great bodybuilders and athletes have their off days where even they could feel insecure about their body. Bottom line is the pool is a place where everyone has to fight off these old gender roles that are known to be impossible yet are never forgotten.

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A very busy bathroom in a packed mall from my hometown of San Jose (What could be wrong with that???)

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Those blue signs in front of every single public bathroom often go unnoticed as nothing more than something that tells which bathroom has urinals and which don’t. But what if someone doesn’t look like what's in their “actual” bathroom? This is seen frequently with those of the transgender community. While the signs on the bathroom tell what sex, such as male or female, the gender of the person still is up for debate. An excerpt from Susan Stryker’s Intro to Transgender  speaks on how sex and gender are often mixed up and thought of as the same thing. While sex has biological markers and genetic markers, gender is more of a social marker to fit someone into a category to identify. Gender is totally up to the person of who it is. A person can be born a male but may identify as a female and vice versa. So when the bathroom sign has a male on the sign, a person born male with male genitalia might not identify as male but rather female or nonbinary in gender. This would prove to be quite the struggle once approached with the issue and shows how an ordinary bathroom sign can have such a difficult issue connected with it.

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The very first gym I ever went to, East Valley YMCA in  San Jose. Even when I first started I knew not everyone would be treated equally in this setting. 

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Working out is a necessity that all people should partake in on a regular basis. A place where one can work out freely and not have to feel judged seems like something that shouldn’t be so hard to do as everyone has their own image of what their body should look like, even if it doesn’t fit the societal norms that most would know. Norms such as men being strong and muscular, with women being thin and petite, are what people and programs online push onto the masses. Despite recent efforts from brands such as GYMSHARK and YoungLA, these old fashioned norms are still prevalent in today’s media such as Hollywood and modern day film and media. Movies such as BayWatch and other films that show off male and female characters in a sexual setting show off what Hollywood and consumers think is attractive in male and female bodies. However, women are often judged in many aspects in life. In Night to His Day by Judith Lorber, Lorber speaks about how women in the US Marines were often criticized if they didn’t wear lipstick and women like etiquette. Criticism in the gym is no different. Women are deemed as “too manly” if they lift heavy weights in the gym, and can only escape this criticism if they lift light and do cardio and bottom half exercises to get the “hourglass shape”. Women don’t want to have to be constricted by this and some women want to get strong and get stronger upper halves. At the end of the day, if men can work out any part of their body and choose what not to workout without prejudice, women should have no difference and can get as jacked as they want anywhere in their body and do whatever they want in the gym, just like everyone else.