User talk:Tarak7

For My wikipedia project I will be researching the topic of Gender Creativity. Focusing mainly on Gender Creaticity in children.

I have found one source that focuses on therapy and helping someone find their "true gender" This article was written by Diane Ehrensaft and will help further my research in grasping what a child who defines themself as "gender creative" believes and how they feel about it.

Ehrensaft, Diane. "From Gender Identity Disorder To Gender Identity Creativity: True Gender Self Child Therapy." Journal Of Homosexuality 59.3 (2012): 337-356. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Oct. 2013.

Tarak7 (talk) 23:43, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

content edit
The topic of Halloween. I think that because of the upcoming holiday and the fact that we had a reading this week about Halloween costumes that an edit should be made on the Halloween page that the discusses the sexualization and genderization that has becoming more and more present through-out the Halloween costume world.

There are numerous problems that are occurring with Halloween costumes these days ranging from the fact that most are highly inappropriate for the age groups that they are geared towards, they are very genderized, not to mention the character they are supposed to me recreating is often misrepresented. Adie Nelson writes in, The Pink Dragon Is Female "the importance of participation in the paid-work world and financial success for men and of physical attractiveness and marriage for women is reinforced through costume names that reference masculine costumes by occupational roles or titles but describe feminine costumes via appearance and/or relationships..." Nelson continues the discussion about Halloween costumes by comparing female and male villains. For males their villainous costumes are often right on point, where as female villain costumes tend to be over sexualized and almost erotic. Halloween costumes these days are over sexualized and very gendered, even for the small children that should be having the most fun with this holiday.

Nelson, Adie. "The Pink Dragon Is Female." Psychology Of Women Quarterly 24.2 (2000): 137. Academic Search Complete. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

--Tarak7 (talk) 00:09, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Gender creativity in children
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) 19:48, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

The topic of gender conformity is very fitting for the current society that we live in. Children are being taught that whatever their interest are, it is acceptable. While not a bad aspect, it allows children to be who they are and not be forced to identify their choice. If they are gay or lesbian it is noted by their actions and not verbally shared. In a perfect world this would be ideal for people and their form of expression would be less invasive. My only suggestion would be finding a study that measures children in both avenues and see how they are today. This might be difficult to find because it is a recent, emerging topic. Katie.mackiewicz (talk) 21:45, 17 November 2013 (UTC)Katie.mackiewicz

Peer Edit Response
Your content looks great & the topic you chose was very interesting. I think it would be a bit more informative if you were to maybe add an example or two of ways in which the parents can support their kids. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nicolevnguyen (talk • contribs) 23:30, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Peer Response Edit for Tarak7 from Rdunn23
This is an interesting topic; I've never heard of it before so it is intriguing. Maybe state the website name from Canada in the actual content. I agree with the above edit I think that and maybe list some resources of places that help and support this. Also maybe elaborating on the group from New York; I don't know how much more there is to say but it caught my attention and I wanted to know more about the group.