Learning to Teach With Tyana

i.)         Normative narratives

Social media is a scary place. When you have thousands upon thousands of people critiquing what someone should look like or how they should act, or who they should love, this can cause a lot of heartache for people who do not fit the stereotypes on gender or sexuality. In society, things such as clothing, makeup, names, jobs, sports and even colours are separated into girls and boys. However, as the world evolves, so do the stereotypes and normative narratives of gender and sexuality. Growing up in a small town and a Christian household, everyone around me was very narrow-minded when it came to identifying something that didn’t fit what society thought was expected. Because of my upbringing, it became a personal struggle for me when I grew up and realized I was not meeting my parent’s or society’s expectations of being a girl. Reading my classmate’s stories and listening to the struggles they had to endure because of their gender or sexuality was a real eye-opener in how far society norms have yet to come.  

A story that caught my eye was Kacie’s story called “Gender Identification #4”. She talked about when she was a child, and the teachers would say, “I need a strong boy to help me carry this” (Gender Identification #4, 2021). She would get upset and be the first to offer help because she wanted to prove to others as a girl, she could do the same things a boy could do. She then goes on to talk about how she loved playing in the mud and climbing trees, but other people didn’t think that was right. She says, “When I asked my peers what else I should be doing in my free time, they told me playing with dolls, they told me playing in the mud might ‘ruin my precious hair’ or playing in trees could cause me to ‘break a nail.” (Gender Identification #4, 2021). In Kacie’s story, we see the normative narrative that girls are supposed to do girl things, and boys do boy things. Because societies need to divide everything and label it as girls or boys, we start to see more and more people who do not fit those gender binaries. 

Clothing also continues to be categorized as girl and boy. You walk into a mall, and in every store, you see the women’s department and the men’s department, but why? As I started to get older, I questioned why it was such a bad thing for me to wear boy clothes; they are all made of the same fabrics, so what does it matter?  As I grow in my understanding of social norms, it has become more apparent that society needs everything to have a place, and if it doesn’t, they can’t understand it. This leads to normative narratives and social norms, gender and sexuality being a big one. In my story called “The Blue Dress” on my blog, I wrote about when my mother was very adamite about me wearing a dress to my brother’s wedding. As a young girl, it was necessary to my mother that people saw me in a dress because how would it look to have a daughter dressed in clothing mad for a boy; people wouldn’t know what to think. Jerico’s story called “I Am A Man” is an excellent representation of how gender is not something you can put a label on and stick in a box. He talked about when the girls in his class wore skirts to school, and he wore a sundress. A couple of his guy friends came up to him and found it necessary to congratulate him on “wearing something a man wouldn’t” (I Am A Man, 2021). At the end of Jerico’s story, he says, “A man does not limit themselves to the boxes that society demands we live in. A man does not define his manhood but lives their own truth. I am a man.” (I Am A Man, 2021). This quote stood out to me because, as a woman who does not fit into society’s boxes, it is reassuring to know that others just like myself go through the same thing. 

ii.)        Disrupting Normative Narratives

Jerico’s story is also a great representation of disrupting those gender binaries. In the end, he does not succumb to the comments made by his peers but instead goes about his day proud of being a man regardless of what he is wearing and of what others think. Society will not become comfortable without labels if we don’t make an effort to see past the division between girl and boy. Kacie and Jerico’s storey and my own all have the same narrative in the sense that gender binaries need to be disrupted, and society needs to start unboxing and removing labels.

It was only two more days till my brothers’ wedding, and I was still fighting with my parents about what I would wear. My mom was determined to have me wear a blue dress with shiny sparkles on it with dainty little shoes to match. Still, I was dreaming about the black pants and fancy collared shirt I saw in the clothing store the other day. My mom asks me, “Why do you keep refusing to wear the dress?”

“I can’t stand how the sparkles feel so itchy, and I want to be able to dance at the party, and if I am wearing this dress, I won’t be able to,” I replied

My mom replied in an annoyed voice, “Your sister and all your cousins will be wearing a dress as well. Don’t you want to feel pretty and get dressed up like them?”

“But mom, I would still feel pretty and dressed up in the pants and fancy shirt from the store. I’ll be able to actually dance and run around, and I want to feel comfortable the whole night.”

“You haven’t even tried the dress on. Can you at least try it for me? I’ll leave it right here on your bed.”

There laid out was the hideous dress I was supposed to wear, mocking me as if it knew I had no choice but to wear it. I try the dress on just to please my mom. As I walk into the kitchen to show her, she turns her head and lets out a sigh of relief. ” See, you look beautiful. There is no need to go and buy the pants and shirt when this dress fits you perfectly and makes you look like a young lady.” Right then and there, I decided to wear the dress because I knew how much it meant to my mom. Even though I wouldn’t feel the prettiest in this sparkly blue dress, my mom thought I was, and that’s all that mattered.

It was the first day back after Christmas break. I couldn’t wait to get back to school and show all my friends what I had gotten. It had a crack in the upper corner of the screen where the camera was supposed to be; the backside was white with a few scratches. It was the only thing I had asked for, an iPhone. I walk into class with my head held high, ready to show off my newest prized possession. The bell rings, and students meander to their seats, all in a sugar coma from the Christmas treats they had been eating for the last two weeks. The teacher wasted no time and dove right into where we left off before the holidays. As she went through attendance, she told us to divide ourselves into groups of three for the next assignment. I scurry over to my two best friends Sarah and Amy, as we had already locked eyes as soon as the teacher had said the word groups. As the rest of the class slowly starts to settle down and find their groups, I hurry up and take my seat beside Amy and Sarah, “You aren’t going to believe what I got for Christmas!”  I say with little breath. 

“What is it? Show us!” Sarah replied.

Our teacher had a strict no-phone policy, so I discreetly pulled out my phone from my sweater pocket and slipped it under the desk.

“What the heck is that?” Amy says frantically. 

“What do you mean? It’s my new iPhone my parents gave me for Christmas!”

Amy looks at me with wide eyes and says, “That is no new iPhone, this is,” and pulls out a slim black iPhone so shiny you could see your reflection on the back. “My parents actually bought me a new phone, unlike yours. They must have just given you their old one; it looks so old.”

Amy continued to ramble on, but the only words I heard that came out of her mouth were, “your family is so poor they can’t even afford to buy you a new phone, that’s embracing.” It was at this moment I realized that my family wasn’t as wealthy as I had thought. Even though I was happy with the phone I got for Christmas, there was a slight sinking feeling in my stomach; some would call it jealousy.

As a young kid, I was constantly bullied. I never felt like I belonged to a particular group in any of my classes until I met a group of girls in my grade seven class. We sat beside each other in class, hung out at recess, partnered up for group projects; basically, anything best friends would do, we did. It wasn’t until a couple weeks after we became friends that I began to notice a difference in how I was being treated by my other classmates and even teachers. Fellow students would whisper and snicker as I walk past them in the halls, and teachers would keep an extra set of eyes on me during class time and recess. It was as if I was a troubled student, and I couldn’t be trusted. A couple of months go by, and I parted ways with that group of girls and found a new group to hang out with. Just like before, anything best friends would do, we did. Except for this time, people didn’t talk about me in the halls, and teachers didn’t pay me any special attention. It wasn’t until years later that it dawned on me when we learned about racism and white privilege. The first group of girls I was friends with were indigenous, and the second group of girls were white. The first group of girls I was friends with were viewed as trouble makers because of the colour of their skin. Because I associated with them, I was also seen as a trouble maker. While friends with the second group of girls, people didn’t see it as a problem because I was friends with people with the same skin colour as me. Although each friend group was as well behaved as the next, others refused to see it that way. Back then, I noticed how others changed how they treated me, but it wasn’t until I was older that I realized why.

Are you a man or a woman? That is the question, right? Why is this question such an important piece of information that everyone needs to know? Does it matter what someone’s gender is, and if so, why? No man or woman is any less capable of completing a task because of their gender. According to Dictionary.com, the definition of gender binary is “a concept or belief that there are only two genders and that one’s sex or gender assigned at birth will align with traditional social constructs of masculine and feminine identity, expression, and sexuality.”. As we see new generations growing and the world-changing, the ways and beliefs of the past will grow and change.  Gender is simply a social construct that is on the verge of being disrupted, and because of that, today’s world is much different from what it used to be. If you were to ask a handful of strangers on the street their opinion on gender, you would get a diverse number of answers. However, if you had done this same experiment 20 or 30 years ago, 9 times out of 10, you would get the same answer, men are men and women are women, and they must act like it.

For women, these gender binaries must be brought down. If society continues to support these binaries and gender roles, we will never have the voice that we deserve. Even today, if a woman with the same education and skill assets applied for the same position at an important company, the man’s chances of getting the job are much more likely because he is a man, and in the colonial perspective, men are superior to women. In undoing these gender binaries women would have the opportunity to actually have a voice, stand up for themselves and do the things they like to do for example, I don’t always like to wear girly clothes I would much rather wear a pair of basketball shorts a baggy T shirt but society says girls shouldn’t dress like that. Not only would bringing down gender binaries benefit women it would also benefit those men that don’t feel like they fit the social norms of what a man is supposed to be like. So, what if a man feels more comfortable wearing makeup or a woman feels better when she wears men’s clothing. It’s time our generation breaks these gender binaries and starts allowing people to act like themselves and do what makes them most comfortable.