Are you a boy or a girl? - You don't define me | Beck Strohmer | TEDxEAL

so you guys are a TED audience right you probably think you're pretty clever a little bit more reflective than the next person I'm here to tell you that you're wrong sorry and maybe just in this one topic so let's talk a little bit about gender you're probably assigning gender places it doesn't belong at all so let me give you a scenario imagine a guy wearing a dress and some tights now you have the picture it's probably someone like this miss OTB right famous drag queen from Denmark and by all accounts in terms of how we define the gender binary and gender stereotypes in the society she's wearing feminine clothing presenting the in a feminine way but let me say what about this guy wearing dress tights pretty fancy clothing by all accounts at that time very masculine guy no one would ever come to the Henry the eighth and say hey dude you're wearing a dress um you might get beheaded he's banging a lot of ladies he's doing a lot of like masculine stuff so my point here is that gender is assigned to different things based on where we live and when we live and not necessarily that it has anything to do with who we are so you there's another example that I like to give in terms of you know where we're assigning gender in terms of cultural constructions and that's in names and in Denmark they even have a registry of names I don't know if you know this but they have a masculine side and a feminine side of this but and then they have unisex names as well but if you're a female assigned at Birth you cannot be given a name from the masculine side of this registry I know big brother you know in Denmark in yeah but I want to give you an example here of this woman called Kim Kardashian she is by all accounts on the gender binary in a very feminine way so she's wearing feminine clothing has a feminine name right but what about this guy then he's called Kim Vanya he is a famous Danish television star and presenting in a very masculine way and anyone would say that you know he's a he's a manly guy he plays masculine characters if he's being interviewed he is presenting in a very masculine way right so basically I'm just trying to drive in the point that depending on where you live it can change that a name has a different gender assignment and very strongly on one side or the other so you might say Becky you know what we get it like move on from cultural constructions we're smart so I'll give you that and what about personalities so we create stereotypes based on that a certain group of people portrays a specific group of character traits so I've listed some here of what we normally say goes on the feminine and the masculine side of the binary and what I would say is that at any specific time I can identify with any one of these personality traits or but just based on who I'm speaking to what happened to me that day where I am in the world which language I'm speaking it just it it changes all of the time and it is in varying degrees and I've never met anyone whether they define on the masculine or feminine side of the binary that doesn't share my emotions and share my character traits along with me just two different varying degrees and I mean if you don't have any emotions you're probably a psychopath so then this talk doesn't really apply to you you're free to leave em what I will say about character traits and why we have these stereotypes is that they're actually learned behaviors so imagine that you are female assigned at Birth and then so you're this little girl and then you're doing it you're playing you're playing running around with your friends and then your parents say hey like don't don't don't play so rough look that's not how a little girl plays a little girl should sit down a little girl should be nice a little girl shouldn't be dirty and you take these on after being so told so many times you just take it on and you take in this information and then you grow up to be a woman that has these what I would call passive traits and people point at you and they say hey look woman she's betraying those traits that you know and that are in the stereotype I'm right and actually it's just a learned behavior it's a self-fulfilling prophecy so some of us follow these others of us like me fought against it so there's me an address is located and me in a t-shirt granted a baggy t-shirt might look like a dress but it was the 90s people you know that was the fashion so when I was a little kid I was rejecting my femininity so much because I really didn't identify with that at all that I would actually have fights with my parents about like putting on clothes to going going to formal gatherings so they it got to the point where I think they planned the time like before like we need to go to the formal gathering like okay try to shove her on the dress at like 4:00 we got to be there by 6:00 you know like just get ready for the fight and my parents use it to their advantage as well where they you know most little kids they might be bribed with sweets I was bribed with pants my parents were like okay if you're really good this week you don't you can you can wear pants to the next forum while gathering score so it wasn't until I was about 32 that I started actually reflecting on my own gender identity so before that I always coupled my gender identity together with my sexual orientation that my masculinity it was coming was a manifestation of being a lesbian but actually gender identity and sexual orientation having nothing to do with each other one is how you identify personally one is who you want to [ __ ] those are two different things so I thought a lot to myself well how am I going to present in society I decided to give book Top surgery and I realized that to masculinize my chest and I and I and I kind of looked around and I said you know what not every lesbian is booking themselves into the hospital to get Top surgery so maybe there's something happening there maybe my gender identity is is forming in a different way so then I was thinking a lot for you know a year or so about how do I want to look how do I want to present myself and how do I want people to perceive me was it gonna be like a centaur like top male a bottom female like I mean how how people gonna like accept that and after thinking about it one time I was like you know what [ __ ] other people I'm gonna define myself and it's fine to be in the middle you don't need to be in the binary it's a secret but I'm letting you guys know so look at those things right who wouldn't want to get rid of them so that's me pre and post-op right and I'm looking much happier right and just because other people or just because I don't want to identify in the box doesn't mean that other people don't want me to be in a box so a lot of times I'll be at a bar and I'd be sitting there having drinks with my friends and then I'll just see someone like sneaking up in the corner oh no it's coming again they come over are you a boy or a girl I like sorry is my gender affecting your evening over there like I didn't realize I'll try to tone it down so I don't say that to them obviously I'm very polite I try to use it as a teaching moment everyone you know what do you think about the binary what are your expectations about people things like that if I don't feel like giving the whole speech then I'll just say you know what what do you think I am and they'll say bit and I'll say you are very correct be on your way and the reality is I don't care I don't care which gender they think I am because they don't define me I define me so why should I care so just because I just said this I'm gonna turn it on its head and say I actually do succumb to other people's expectations sometimes because not everybody is perfect I might look it but I have some flaws so I remember one time being at a business meeting in Germany and they're very formal in Germany so I got a nametag I said house that kind of Stromer know and when I asked where the bathroom was they pointed me towards the men's toilet so I had a very clear picture in my head about what they defined me as and it was only after I was driving home from that business meeting that I realized I actually took on those traits these masculine traits that they wanted me to have I was puffing my chest out and I was interjecting my opinions and I was cutting people off it's very masculine and what I realized after that is that I don't want to be like that what an [ __ ] right so I don't think that you need to be perfect all the time I think it's just taking that time to reflect that makes you the better person so now that I've had a chance to land firmly in the middle I am accepting my femininity there's me and drag um and realizing that my femininity completes me just as much as my masculinity does and just because I take on some feminine traits sometimes it doesn't negate any of the masculine traits that I have as well so it's creating that own box for myself that has empowered me but I get it that it's really hard to move away from this binary we've been taught it since we were so tiny I mean we've been given basically a order kit right from weed here a kid these are the colors that you like these are the toys that you like this is the job you will have it's really easy to take that on and be like great perfect I'm just going to do that so I get that it's really hard but I think we need to take the time just to have that second thought and say is this you know is this actually my identity or is this something that has been defined for me through society and I also realize that it's been an important point for us in evolutionary terms that we identify things very quickly we had to you know if we're out running around in the forest and we you know see a line of to run like you're going to be eaten right so you do have to make snap decisions but now that we live in such a safe society we have this privilege we have this ability to not use a reptile brain it's actually take a second thought we we can we can use this privilege to then be more responsible humans and I think that's what we should do a lot of people have trouble separating this or having this idea with the binary and when I talk to them they can get really defensive really fast they're you know I might say well the binary is more like a spectrum they're like oh I'm a man I know that you know so they're very there's very set in their ways and I realize that this is can come as a shock and when it's something that has been so steadfast in the way that you identify and the way that people have identified you it's really hard to start a part with that and sort of think about that and the best metaphor that I can come up with is feeling your first earthquake because it's like the ground is shifting beneath you this is something you thought was so strong and so ubiquitous something that would never change so it can really hit people to their core and that's why I do understand that it can be a tough concept to grapple with but what I will say is that I don't expect you to be superhuman I just want you to be above average and I think after this talk you've moved up a little bit on that normal curve so you can thank me later but if you really start thinking about the gender and what and what belongs in different gender boxes or in the gender binary it starts to try to parse that out you will realize the gender quickly turns on the binary black and white to gray so thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 88,697

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Denmark, Humanities, Gender, LGBT

Id: AEOc5a5qvmM

Length: 14min 11sec (851 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 01 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Rocky_rocks_socks]

Thank you so much for this. I've been hunting for gender queers in their thirties and I can't wait to google the heck out of this person!