Personal Narrative: My View Of Gender

I was born and raised in the small but growing city of Perris, CA. This isn’t the best city out there but it tends to grow on you, and you begin to truly love it for what it is. The people, however, not so much. The community can vary from which part of the city you’re in. That’s because there’s diversity here in Perris. I’m a product of this diversity, being half Mexican and half African American. My parents fell in love after high school and later on began a family. I am the youngest of five. I have two older brothers, an older sister, and an older cousin who lives with us. The order is boy, girl, boy, boy, girl with my cousin being included in there too. We all live in the same house with my parents and are quite close with each other. They all seem to have raised me growing up due to the fact that my parents were busy trying to provide for us. This was a challenge by itself, resulting in lots of house moving and my father being unemployed for six years after losing his job. I never complained about moving because I knew that my parents were doing their absolute best and were working with all that they had and then some. This unquestionably made me adaptable to new environments and gave me a

Every paper, no matter how well written needs to be revised and edited as time goes on. In some ways, life is similar. We all go through changes that influence us and shape the direction we are headed. Some of these changes come from our own prerogative while others are inspired by friends and family members. I know that my worldview has gone through this revision process. Even looking back to freshman year I had many of the same ideals, same focuses on values and hard work, but over time they have come to manifest themselves in different ways. For instance, I am much more willing to share my beliefs and opinions on controversial issues. This developed as I came to realize my ideas are worth arguing for and I gained a knowledge of

Uncomfortable situations are not fun for anybody, but sometimes things are not what they seem. Last summer on an average Friday I was preparing myself for my big lacrosse tryout the following day. At the same time I was also preparing myself for the wide spread of personalities on the team, but listening to all the stereotypes and experience, I thought I knew what they would be like. I assumed I was walking into a tryout with a bunch of rich, snobby, arrogant cities boys, which knew daddy had money. As I drove the boring, simplistic hour and a half drive that’s all I could think about. I was concerned when I should have been excited. As I arrived at my grandparents, I settled myself down and prepared for bed, it was going to be an early morning and a long day.

Life is like a compass. It leads us to find new things about ourselves, and to ask new questions. Throughout history we have seen many age groups portrayed. Babies cry a lot, and live to make their parents lose sleep. Toddlers are the golden children that secretly hid the older siblings favorite things. The Grade Schoolers are at that age where they start to gain responsibility. Teenagers text all day blaring music as loud as they can, with their windows down. These are stereotypes, but some can be accurate depending on the person.

When I was younger, I had a lot of trouble talking to people. I was shy, the kind of shy that brought books to bible school classes and read them underneath of desks just to avoid socializing. People were scary, I did not know to interact with them. So I turned to spending a lot of time working with and researching animals. When I was in 3rd grade my neighbor gave me a key to his dog kennel so I could play with his puppies. I remember walking up to his house every day after school for an hour or two that year. In tenth grade, I started fostering parrots.

At a young age I was thought by my parents to ignore people who constantly make fun of me. Back to my younger days, I was always teased by my classmates and continually get called “China.” People were stereotyping and I was being labeled down because I was Asian. Students used to think I was very smart, some were even making fun of me because of my accent and how I speak. Last but not least was all Asians were considered “Chinese”

When I was 9, my dad committed suicide. My brain filled with questions about life and death that not even the adults could answer. At that age, I was also exploring my gender and identity, and the absence of guidance made me feel lost. With a pencil in hand, I drew an escape, beginning to create my own universe, where I decide who lived, who died, and with concrete answers to the questions. In high school, I transitioned from paper to a tablet, create digital art and animations. Almost all of my work is centered around the universe I have created. Over the years, I accumulated a complex cast of over fifty characters, each one a thread interwoven with others to form a quilted story. Every single character is on paper somewhere in my room. Looking at them by myself, I was comfortable, but showing them to others, I was vulnerable and my chest split open to unveil this unfamiliar figure that I didn’t know or understand.

What I think it means to be someone of my gender is always doing what is expected of a girl. Always being polite and caring when necessary, but also standing up for yourself and never cowering down. As for what I think it means to be someone my age, which is 20 years old, I think it means finally starting your life. Obviously your life has already been started but once you're 18 you start to get a little bit more of a taste of what you're going to have to deal with as an adult and I think that getting up to 20 years takes it even further. By 20 years old you've most likely started college, working a new job, or maybe even both. Attending an ethnically and racially diverse school, being white or any other race or ethnicity was never a problem.

In my home life growing up, I didn’t learn much about sex or gender outside of the standard binary functions perpetuated by my cultural/ethnic background. It wasn’t until I took sexual education classes in school that I learned what sex was in terms of a more negative view of it (i.e. sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, etc.). And really learning about gender, as in gender as a spectrum of identity rather than predetermined by biological characteristics, was another matter entirely. I didn’t learn about gender from either my family nor my school, it was through social media that I was taught the spectrum of gender and sexual identities. About five years ago when I first moved to Washington from Denver, I was starting my senior year of high school while also attending college courses through Running Start; because of this I didn’t really have any friends for the first few years I lived in the pacific northwest.

I was born and raised in Punjab, India. United States and India have very different view one’s sex. When I was 9 years old I realized that the females were the ones who were always in the kitchen. Female were seen as stay at home mom. After marriage females stayed home and took care of the kids. Females didn’t have the opportunities that the men did. Parent didn’t allow their daughters to get educated. Mothers taught their daughters how to do the normal house work. On the other side Males were seen as an income. They were required to work and bring home money for the whole family. One of my friend I played with grow up with just little education. She went to school until 3rd grade then her parents don’t allow to her to go. Priya and her mother

I saw it on this feminist page and it was something like don’t be that girl that pressures guys because erections aren’t consent and it’s rape… I don’t even know why that made me think of you but I think the whole message came more from my head than anything. I just haven’t been doing too well lately, it’s more accurate to say I’m not in a good place at all actually. I have a great social life and the lowest grade I have in my five classes is an 80% so I don’t understand why I hurt so much, but I’ve been finding it harder and harder to keep going. What always held me back before was my family but home is so bad right now that I might just be doing them a favor. So right now it’s knowing my cat depends on me and the fear of the afterlife that

“Congratulations it is a girl”. These are the final words that I told a girl, the last ones she would hear before I took her life. I wanted her to die like this sad, lonely, and in fear. No one would understand why I felt this way. My only friend were the voices that were in my head yelling and ringing like sirens, never stopping making me want to hurt people and do bad things. I wanted to control it, everyday before I go I want to stop myself, but I just can't.

The first time I was ever called a Feminist was in my freshman year of high school. It was a hot day in early June. Every student was itching to be set free on their summer vacation. Before the bell rang, The afternoon announcements rang out over the intercom with the usual monotonous stuff like the clubs that were meeting after school that day, and last call to hand in uniforms for the sports season that had just ended. Then came the standard dress code announcement. "Ladies and gentleman, we know the weather is heating up, but please still adhere to the schools dress code. This means that shorts must be fingertip length, and there are to be no open toed shoes or flip flops." After going to public school all my life, I had heard all of these

Are you a feminist? "Yes," some rarely meet. Others refuse to be part of this movement with labels such as "hatred of men" and "burning bra." But what does the word mean? I am a feminist. I am for gender equality; the choice of freedom, equal pay and the right for women to have the same rights and opportunities as men. What does it mean? It's simple; women want to be treated as equal to men and not have a disadvantage when it comes to a chance for something simply because they are

The feminist movement has had a resurgence of enthusiasm in the past couple of years, and many people are itching to either hop onto that train, or attempt to stop it at any and all costs. I would consider myself to be a generally well-informed passenger. However, I am a firm believer that knowledge is power, and I think any opportunity to become more educated on a topic is an opportunity to further empower oneself. As a young woman growing up in this new age of intersectional feminism, I am always looking for more ways to become more informed.