UPWORTHY

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Apr 17, 2013 11:40 am

What Does It Mean To NOT Be A Girl? Everything, Apparently.

The proper response to, “You’re such a girl!” is now, “Thank you!” no matter your gender or how old you are.

[Original quote by Eve Ensler. Graphic by A Mighty Girl. Found on Everyday Feminism.]

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Apr 05, 2013 2:05 pm

The clothes you wear don’t determine your gender

The clothes you wear don’t determine your gender

The clothes you wear don’t determine your gender

The clothes you wear don’t determine your gender

The clothes you wear don’t determine your gender

The clothes you wear don’t determine your gender

The clothes you wear also don’t determine your sexual orientation

The only thing that clothes determine is whether or not you are naked.

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Mar 08, 2013 5:55 pm

Always relevant.

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Jan 23, 2013 8:11 pm

Attention Men: Scientifically Speaking, You Used To Be Girls

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Jan 23, 2013 11:16 am

Do You Notice Anything Different About This Toy Catalog? Because Kids Do. Toys “R” Us officially moved up a few notches in the eyes of progressives by challenging the gender stereotypes that have lined its pages for years. The Swedish version of the toy store did at least. I definitely like the idea of letting kids choose what they want to identify with instead of having it spelled out for them. I really hope this catches on. See more pages here.

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Jan 19, 2013 6:54 pm

Yo, I’mma Let You Finish, But Kanye West Has The Best Quote About Pink Of All Time: He’s going to be a great dad.

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Jan 18, 2013 9:27 pm

These Men Aren't Walking In Women's Shoes, But They Are Wearing Their Skirts

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Jan 06, 2013 6:55 pm

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Oct 02, 2012 9:37 pm

My Son Draws Himself As A Girl

transqueery:

Today my son drew himself as a boy for the first time in his life. He’s five and a half years old. For that many years, when he has drawn himself, he has drawn himself as a girl.

In the mediums of crayon, colored pencil and marker, our son is a beautiful girl with long red hair, a big puffy ball gown the color of cotton candy and a tiara with a gigantic heart-shaped stone front and center. Sometimes he’s a sassy girl in a jean skirt, black leather jacket and knee-high boots. Sometimes he’s a girl going to school in a hot-pink t-shirt dress and purple high top sneakers with turquoise socks peaking out.

It took his dad and me a while to get used to seeing our son’s self-portraits. For a long time there was the urge to correct him, to remind him that he is a boy and his renderings weren’t accurate. We fought that urge until it wasn’t there anymore. Feelings of uneasiness popped up in us here and there when it was time for arts and crafts, especially when there were other people around. I’ve had to remind myself that you never tell an artist that his or her art is bad or wrong — art can’t be those two things (especially when you are five).

Being acutely aware that children who continually, over an extended period of time draw themselves as the opposite sex are more likely to be transgender, we have always wondered if and when the day would come when our boy would draw himself as a boy looking like a boy. We imagined that if it ever happened we would feel a sense of relief and happiness. Then, it happened and we were nothing but sad.

C.J. has just started kindergarten and at his school every kindergartner is matched up with a “Kinderbuddy,” an older student at the school who will see C.J. on a regular basis throughout the year to read to him, play with him and mentor him. Hopefully they will have a mutually beneficial and special relationship.

Because the school tries to match up Kinderbuddies based on sex/gender, C.J.’s Kinderbuddy is a boy. Because C.J.’s sex and gender aren’t in total alignment, that process for matching up Kinderbuddies isn’t exactly ideal.

On their first day of meeting, the Kinderbuddies had to sit together and draw a picture of themselves together. That’s when it happened; C.J. drew himself as a boy next to his boy Kinderbuddy.

“Mommy, I got a Kinderbuddy today. And, he’s so cool! He’s a teenager!” C.J. said after school. By “teenager” he meant “sixth grader.”

He showed us the picture that they had drawn together. We didn’t recognize our son. We looked at each other in shock.

“Hey, Buddy…how come you drew yourself as a boy?” C.J.’s Dad asked casually.

“Oh, that’s because I didn’t want my Kinderbuddy to know that I like girl stuff,” C.J. said matter-of-factly.

Our hearts sank. We had always thought that things would feel more right, more normal, on the day that C.J. finally drew himself as a boy, but things didn’t. Things felt sad because our son had to do it out of self-preservation. He did it to adapt and conform. He did it to hide his true self. It felt like he had lost some of his innocence.

Diane Ehrensaft, an expert on raising gender nonconforming children, once wrote:

“Gender creative children are blessed with the ability to hold on to the concept — that we all had one time in our lives — that we were free to be anything we wanted – boy, girl, maybe both.”

With that drawing, it felt like our son was losing his grip on the concept that he is free to be anything he wants to be. Was he losing his grip? Or, was he tightening his grip on the concept and exercising control over when it could be on display and when it couldn’t?

C.J. didn’t want to hang his Kinderbuddy drawing on the fridge or his bedroom door for all to see like he usually wants to do with his art. He wanted to throw it away.

“Why?” I asked.

“Cause that’s not really me,” he said as he sat in the sun at our dining room table, drawing himself with a side ponytail, purple shirt with a pink heart on it and an orange skirt.

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Sep 26, 2012 5:00 pm

thesexuneducated:

thedailywhat:

Redditors Get A Lesson In Tolerance of the Day: Redditor european_douchebag recently posted this pic of a Sikh woman with the caption: “i’m not sure what to conclude from this.”

Redditors promptly piled on to criticize her facial hair, which she is bound by her religion not to cut or alter in any way.

Then the woman caught wind of the post and responded:

Hey, guys. This is Balpreet Kaur, the girl from the picture. … I’m not embarrased or even humiliated by the attention [negative and positve] that this picture is getting because, it’s who I am.

Yes, I’m a baptized Sikh woman with facial hair. Yes, I realize that my gender is often confused and I look different than most women.

However, baptized Sikhs believe in the sacredness of this body - it is a gift that has been given to us by the Divine Being [which is genderless, actually] and, must keep it intact as a submission to the divine will. Just as a child doesn’t reject the gift of his/her parents, Sikhs do not reject the body that has been given to us. …

My attitude and thoughts and actions have more value in them than my body because I recognize that this body is just going to become ash in the end, so why fuss about it?

When I die, no one is going to remember what I looked like, heck, my kids will forget my voice, and slowly, all physical memory will fade away. However, my impact and legacy will remain: and, by not focusing on the physical beauty, I have time to cultivate those inner virtues and hopefully, focus my life on creating change and progress for this world in any way I can. …

I appreciate all of the comments here, both positive and less positive because I’ve gotten a better understanding of myself and others from this.”

Then, miracle of miracles, european_douchebag apologized:

I know that this post ISN’T a funny post but I felt the need to apologize to the Sikhs, Balpreet, and anyone else I offended when I posted that picture. Put simply it was stupid. Making fun of people is funny to some but incredibly degrading to the people you’re making fun of. It was an incredibly rude, judgmental, and ignorant thing to post. …

I’ve read more about the Sikh faith and it was actually really interesting. It makes a whole lot of sense to work on having a legacy and not worrying about what you look like. I made that post for stupid internet points and I was ignorant.

So reddit I’m sorry for being an a**hole and for giving you negative publicity. Balpreet, I’m sorry for being a closed minded individual. You are a much better person than I am Sikhs, I’m sorry for insulting your culture and way of life. Balpreet’s faith in what she believes is astounding.

Just… wow.

For more on DFAB’s with facial hair, see this wonderful documentary Juggling Gender, which points to what Balpreet is implicitly calling to: gender goes far beyond our minimal, binary biological deterministic perspectives of what “one should look like”. Enjoy!

UPWORTHY

Attention Men: Scientifically Speaking, You Used To Be Girls

These Men Aren't Walking In Women's Shoes, But They Are Wearing Their Skirts

My Son Draws Himself As A Girl

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