[culturehandy]

I pitched this in the Community Forum and it was well recieved.

This thread is all about the politics and cross cultural and societal views on gender.

I started thinking increasingly about gender when the media frenzy about Caster Semenya emerged. It is my opinion that the only reason people questioned Ms. Semenya's gender is because she appeared to be "masculine". That is, she looked masculine according to the ideas of society at large. Had she had softer, more "feminine" features, questions of her gender would not have come up.

So, what is gender? We know that there is sex, your biological sex, but gender is a social construct.

[culturehandy]

Being Canadian and all, I didn't see the founding father crap, Canadian history was learning about the first nations populations and small pox, and Quebec vs English Canadian and zzzz....

Plus, my parents were still up front, did I feel it was unfair, sure. but, there was also a series of adds in Canada (that still run) that highlight the accomplishments of all Canadians.

I still see the accomplishments of people as just that, accomplishments. Do I see the glass ceiling that exists, absolutely, but even despite all of this, I still didn't feel bound. Even when I was in grade school, our teachers taught us that any of us could do anything we wanted, again, regardless of gender.

Women weren't missing from our textbooks, we were taught about Laura Secord, Marie Curie, Suffragets, etc. History is dominated by men, sure, but I didn't think too much about that, i was too busy thinking about how dreadfully boring canadian history was (and it is boring) it wasn't until they got into scandal that it got interesting.

my current feminist fight is for things that are currently affecting women, and it was like that when I was growing up as well. I wasn't concerned about what happened in the past, some x amount of years ago. the fight I fight is for women of today. I recognize the past and using at a point of knowledge, but also acknowledge that I can't change the past. I do have the power, however, to change tomorrow.