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Disrupting the Binary: the Future of Gender

Disrupting the Binary: the Future of Gender

Sitting in the back seat of my mother’s Mazda, I gently kicked my heels against my seat as she pulled into a nearby McDonald’s. She approached the drive-thru and rolled down her window, and my face lit up with anticipation. She knew what I wanted because I got the same thing every time: cheeseburger Happy Meal with a Hi-C punch. I watched her lips as she announced my order; this was the most important part. The drive-thru worker crackled through the blinking screen:

“For the toy, a boy or a girl?”

In my head I screamed, Girl girl girl!, for the prize was a mini Cabbage Patch Kid or some kind of cheap doll that I absolutely had to have in my possession. My mom answered appropriately, “Girl toy, please.”

As we drove home, I waited patiently to open that cardboard box like a wild cougar. When that time came, my eager appreciation transformed into white-hot anger. I held up a Hot Wheels toy, the antithesis of my desires. Granted, I still had my fries, but I couldn’t help but feel a sense of sadness as I dunked them into large piles of ketchup. The socialization of gender was so strong within me, that I felt repulsed by receiving something associated with boys. How is it, at such a young age, a child conforms to gender roles that they cannot possibly understand the enormity of?

As time and people progress, it seems there’s more awareness and improvement to understand the effects of gender when raising children. Companies such as Target are taking an active stance in profiling gender. On August 7, 2015, the company stated that, “Right now, our teams are working across the store to identify areas where we can phase out gender-based signage to help strike a better balance. For example, in the kids’ Bedding area, signs will no longer feature suggestions for boys or girls, just kids. In the Toys aisles, we’ll also remove reference to gender, including the use of pink, blue, yellow, or green paper on the back walls of our shelves.”

These changes can hugely impact the development of the next generation of children, and the societal pressure that conforming into gender binaries presents. This opens up vast amount of opportunity for LGBT children, who are not only facing the gender-based constructions of society, but understanding their own sense of personal identity. Imagine a world where kids no longer feel pressure to play with a Barbie or a fake tool kit, but can explore the world through unbiased eyes.

With eyes focused on children of the next generation, special attention is paid toward the inclusion of LGBT children into society. My Family Builders is a toy company celebrating the diversity of the modern family. Children can arrange likenesses of their family members through various clothing and skin-color blocks and, opposed to the nuclear family model, children can mix and match blocks to represent the uniqueness of their home. In addition to toys, LGBT children’s books are rising in abundance. Some are more overt, such as, Amy Asks A Question: Grandma What’s a Lesbian? And others, such as King and King and Heather Has Two Mommies use a more symbolic approach to teaching children the diversity of gender and sexuality.

Ultimately, it’s up to a parent to consciously or unconsciously define what gender means to their child. The battle to disrupt social norms is a long one, and one that requires altering perceptions of past generations as a new wave of awareness is spread. Undoubtedly, gender is so ingrained in us that it becomes impossible not to pass down at least a few traits onto children. But, examining the effect that gender has on the LGBT community and all others conditioned to conform leads to the disruption of socialized gender, and could one day lead to a world where gender is just another facet of life, not a behavioral agreement from birth.

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