#gender

Good Morning Gremlins

“Boys and girls,” is the universal call to attention for most school-aged children. Gendered language subtly sends the message that those of us that might not relate to the gender binary are not included. These inequities must be addressed more directly in our classrooms and institutions.

From an early age, children reinforce gender stereotypes they learn, and it influences the way they think about themselves and others. All students must be empowered in order to provide an inclusive and safe learning environment. True gender equality can be reached when these needs are met for all students:

  • Equitable access and use of resources
  • Equitable participation
  • Safety or freedom from violence

The first step is to ask ourselves: How are you using language? Using nongendered terms and encouraging discussions about gender and identity opens the floor for exploration and acceptance. Advocating for a more diverse curriculum and calling into question shortcomings is important in creating a modern counternarrative to build a more just learning environment for all kids.

In the past few years, news articles have surfaced in outrage over school districts enforcing nongendered language. Referring to students as “friends,” “scholars,” or whatever it may be is not an attack on cisgendered students. In fact, it removes the gendered assumptions and competition that strong enforcement of gender roles evokes.

The U.S. Census Bureau collects the most comprehensive data about the demographic makeup of the country. The 2020 survey wholly excluded the identities of those who exist outside of the gender binary. Census data is used to inform policy, and without an accurate representation of that population, it is harder to provide evidence of necessary service and policy changes that protect those people.

There are many great resources out there for inclusive lesson planning and readings for class made by teachers for teachers. Pay note to the depictions of people in your readings: call into question stereotypes, read nonbinary and trans authors, challenge student’s assumptions. Engaging with more inclusive vocabulary and facilitating discussions about the influences and effects of biases and identities is a step all educators need to be taking.

As Winn explains, in “The Right to Be Literate,” hybrid learning environments including multiple forms of literacy serve students and teachers better. Collaborating with students and inviting them to share their lived experiences grants them agency to pursue their right to literacy.

Ultimately, diverse learning materials and methods are necessary to accommodate the diverse learners you are working with. These practices can and must incorporate all facets of identity. Classrooms should provide a safe, and inclusive environment that challenges and supports all students, without adding the burden of assumption.

Imagine: (Y/N) Wrote A Blog Post

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be in a toxic relationship with your favorite singer? Or day-dreamed about how your favorite show would play out if your favorite characters finally started dating? Welcome to fanfiction, my friend.

Fanfiction is a genre of writing that uses other sourced characters or realities. The authors of these works engage with the community of fans to expand the “narrative universe.”

When I was 13, I fell hard for Harry from One Direction. After watching every 1D music video on the internet, a picture came across my Tumblr timeline.

Tumblr introduced me to imagines and other short fanfiction writings like one-shots and flashfics. Eventually, I came across a post linked to wattpad.com and thus, my addiction to fanfiction (sorry, I had to). I devoured thousands of words about the relationships and manipulated worlds of my favorite celebrities and fictional characters. The best part was it was written by other teenage girls that knew exactly what I wanted to read. 

In my opinion, fanfiction birthed a new generation of writers. For some reason though, fanfiction is usually dismissed as amateur or obsessive because it is popular with teenage girls. Even if it’s not good writing, it’s still a worthy expression of creativity. Also, how do you manage to make sexist comments about simply liking things?

Many fic authors also write professionally. (P.S. Fifty Shades of Grey is a Twilight Fanfic.) Fanfics fill the void between new content, and sometimes even the backstories of the content they source from. The summer I spent devouring After — by the pool, or under my desk, or literally, anywhere I could use my phone — changed me as a reader, and a human being. 8 years later, there’s a book series and film-adaptation of the toxic Harry Styles fanfic.

 

Although a generation of young teens should not have had unrestricted internet access, a rich and diverse writing culture was born. Since the pandemic has started, fanfiction has seen a spike in popularity again. After all, fanfiction is there for you when no one else is.

 

Science fiction becomes science reality

Fiction may be a useful tool for processing dilemmas, but what do we do when an author’s imagination becomes reality?A woman's head seems to protrude from a space ship

In 1969, American science fiction writer, Anne McCaffrey, imagined a future dystopia where governments melded human mind with machine so that those deemed unworthy had a function in society. Her story focuses on Helva, a compelling character who becomes the “brain” of a starship and completes missions alongside a pilot. The story’s first line, “She was born a thing,” immediately probes how our society’s preoccupation with gendering affects our relationship with technology.

You may not have read “The Ship Who Sang” or its subsequent series Brain & Brawn, but McCaffrey’s world might still remind you of technologies that exist today.

Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa are two examples of gendered-feminine technology. And in 2018, Heather Suzanne Woods studied the phenomenon of gendered technology using the rhetorical concept of persona, or the character that’s presented or perceived by others.

As virtual assistants for home and for work, Alexa and Siri mobilize traditional stereotypes of femininity. Specifically, Woods points to persistent conceptions of femininity related to homemaking, caretaking and administrative labor. McCaffrey’s story likewise provokes the idea that woman and machine have the same capacity to function as utilities.

This concept of “digital domesticity” is powerful because it reworks femininity into technology to connect what’s familiar about the past/present to the unfamiliar future landscape. But in doing so, we egg on problematic gender stereotypes.

If we look to McCaffrey’s story, there isn’t a happy ending…