Identities and the Identifiers by Ashley Mercado

Gendering

amerc064_ — 2023-11-28 06:16:59 UTC

To keep track of newborn babies, hospitals use crib cards to provide descriptions of the babies. The card shown in the picture is my crib card with the words "Baby Girl Hernandez" as a placeholder for the name my parents would eventually choose later on. This was one of the earliest examples of the concept of the social construction of gender in my life, that people decided to identify me, with a pink card, by my assigned sex, a "girl."

Gender roles

amerc064_ — 2023-11-28 06:25:30 UTC

In the picture, my older sister and I are seen with little pigtails in our hair, and even at that age, I can see a glimpse of earrings on my ear, demonstrating gender signals as discussed by Judith Lorber in the section "Night to His Day." Something from my childhood that stood out to me was how people gave children different toys based on the gender assigned to their sex, placing the expectations of gender roles in our lives. Since my sister and I were little girls, we were given baby dolls to play with. When I was born, my older sister would always use me as her baby doll, so she ultimately took on many responsibilities of raising me and becoming my second mother. This plays into the normalized gender role of having females as the matriarchal figures in raising children.

Effects of Gender Roles

amerc064_ — 2023-11-28 07:10:36 UTC

The image above shows Jin, a member of the K-pop group called BTS. Growing up, K-pop was seen as a 'girly' interest as the artists wore makeup regardless of gender to produce media they could capitalize from. Homophobia is commonly seen when bringing up the topic of K-pop boybands. Some people who were in my social circle would use gay as an insult to explain why they did not like K-pop music. This topic was discussed in Suzanne Pharr's reading called "Homophobia as a Weapon of Sexism," as Pharr mentioned that gay men are perceived as threats to the Lon standing male control and dominance.

Androgyny

amerc064_ — 2023-11-28 07:39:15 UTC

"What if I had been born a boy?", is something I've always asked myself. The Mkobabe excerpts caught my attention because they had some of the same thoughts I've had in the past. Since I started to dress myself in elementary, I've done complete 180s in my casual style. Some days I wore extremely baggy clothing and other days I chose to wear frilly pink clothing. During the pandemic, one of the trends on TikTok was the gender swap filter and the Face App made it possible for me to imagine a world where I was a boy. Similar to the Mkobabe excepts, I thought that I would still wear makeup, care about my looks, and wear whatever I wanted. If I had been a boy, I would have been the same besides the changes in my physical anatomy and appearance.

Breaking norms

amerc064_ — 2023-11-28 07:56:50 UTC

My best friend has wanted to become a pilot since we were in 6th grade. Recently, she's had the opportunity to begin her path to becoming a pilot at the Christian Baptist University located in Riverside, California. Every time we meet up, she tells me about her stories of being one of the three girls in her aviation program. There's usually a misunderstanding whenever she explains to someone that she is studying to become a commercial airplane pilot since she comes from a cultural background that sets lots of expectations on the women of the family, having to go through an arranged marriage and taking care of the children. She tells me about how one of her instructors tends to call on her during class to answer questions and her inability to blend in with the other students as the great majority of the room consists of men. Although the rate of female airline pilots grew by 72%, in 2022 there were a total of around 8,000 female pilots in the total of 110,000 airline pilots in the United States. Her courage to raise the unbalanced rates of female pilots in the US is something I admire.