User:Tarak7/sandbox

Gender Creative Children and Resources

The term Gender Creative is a fairly new term that has been added to an often confusing group of words used to describe people in our society. Gender Creative is basically a term that can be used interchangeably with a term like “gender non-conforming” According to a website that started in Canada to help gender creative children and their families, having a gender creative child means that you have a child “who identifies and expresses their gender in ways that differ from what others may expect.” In the future, these children may or may not choose to identify themselves as transgender, gay, lesbian, or none of the above. For parents this can often be difficult to cope with at first due to the ideas that people in society tend to have about kids that they cannot identify as belonging to a certain gender. However, as this website I mentioned above explains, it is important to be supportive of your child and find support for yourself as well. This website is a great resource for people who may be experiencing this situation or just want to educate themselves on the term gender creative. The reason that you need to support your child so much at this time is because often, people can be cruel to kids that do not represent who they think they should be. There is an article from the national review, written by Nancy French that exemplifies this very statement. In her article, French discusses when she first encountered a child in which she could not identify gender. She later explains that this child’s parents belonged to a group in New York that wanted to rebel against gender, a group that let their child wear and play with what they wanted. This article took a negative turn however, when French declares that “I wasn’t exaggerating about what I saw on the playground in Ithaca. Though, believe me. I wish I had been.”  When reading the comments on this article, it is even more horrifying, people saying these parents need to be jailed, or that the children are going to end up extremely mentally damaged. This is the problem; we have parents degrading children for being themselves. However, it is not all negative when looking into helping people who are gender creative, gender non-conforming, or part of the LGBT. Sue Rankin and Genny Beemyn write about results from the first large scale study of transgender diversity and ways in which colleges and universities can “disrupt binary gender systems.” Something positive from this study was that these women found that in the United States, there is growing gender diversity. The article does state “The vast majority of college students, classroom faculty, student affairs educators, and administrators have a tremendous amount to learn about gender diversity.” That statement is fair to say for more than just colleges and universities. Everyone has a lot to learn about gender diversity and until we have a society that supports these young children and adults, we must continue to learn

Sources

1) http://gendercreativekids.ca/about/ 2) French, Nancy. "NYT on "Gender Creative" Children."The National Review Online.The National Review, 12 Aug 2012. Web. 31 Oct 2013. 3) Rankin, Sue, and Genny Beemyn. "Beyond A Binary: The Lives Of Gender-Nonconforming Youth." About Campus 17.4 (2012): 2-10. Academic Search Complete. Web. 7 Nov. 2013.

Tarak7 (talk) 00:55, 8 November 2013 (UTC)