Barbie or G.I Joe?

        Today there are a million and one labels for things. It seems everyone is so focused on inclusion that, ironically, they have created even more boxes with which to sort people into. My thoughts this week have been centered on the damage that using labels to define something so fundamentally complex as a human can cause.

        I'd like to start with this idea labeling in regards to gender and gender roles. Now please take a deep breath and let me say IT IS OKAY TO DISCUSS GENDER. Gender identity plays a fundamental role in society, and we are doing ourselves a disservice by making it taboo. I understand that not everyone agrees with what I define as gender. 

    That is fine.

    However, it doesn't do anyone any good to dance around definitions in an effort to be politically correct. It is confusing and unhelpful. 

    For my purposes, I will be defining gender as someone's biological sex. Male and female. There are undeniable biological differences between the two genders, all of which work together to create an ideal partnership. 

    In a study conducted with children under two, scientists found that young girls have an inborn, unconditioned draw towards toys and games that are people focused (barbies, princesses) and encourage nurturing rolls (baby dolls). In contrast, young boys tended to favor toys that encouraged construction and competition. This fits well with another study that found that school-going girls succeeded far more when teaching methods were cooperative and relationship oriented, whereas boys of the same age thrived in competitive school environments. 

    Men and women are not the same. They aren't meant to be. I think it's a beautiful thing that there are innate and differing gender-specific tendencies between males and females. 

    However, it is interesting to note that in the last few decades there has been more of a cultural tendency to not only polarize males and females, but to assign a new label to everyone who falls "in between".

    For example, it is widely understood that most gender-specific observations fall along a bell curve.

    A bell curve looks like this: 

    The general idea of a bell curve is that very few people actually fall at either extreme of the graph, with the majority of humans landing between those two extremes. When applied to gender, the two extremes can be labeled Barbie and G.I Joe, or grossly exaggerated femininity and masculinity. 

    There has always been a draw to polarize boys and girls, enforcing the idea that you are either Barbie or not a girl at all, and vis versa with G.I Joe. This discussion is nothing new, and I for one am tired of hearing the loud, worn-out feminist voices advocating for women to swing towards G.I Joe. 

    The point I have been thinking about is not about how we can fight the polarization of girls and guys...instead it has hit me how dangerous it is to sort everyone who doesn't fit into those extremes into new, more sinister boxes.

    Humans are a wonderfully diverse species. Being relationship oriented, sensitive, and nurturing are stereo-typically feminine traits, but along the bell curve of humanity are plenty of guys who share the same qualities. This does not mean they are not men. 

    The same is true for women. I'm sure all of us can think of a wonderful woman we know who exhibits stereo-typically masculine traits of leadership, roughness, or physicality. 

    Can you imagine then the ridiculousness of suggesting that a man who is more sensitive, nurturing, or sensory is actually a woman? Or telling a young boy who finds himself struggling to fit in with boys his age that, rather than being along a completely normal bell curve, he is in fact gay? 

    Some of these labels, ironically created with the intent of removing labels, are actually serving to further divide and categorize the human population. 

    I've mentioned this before on this blog, but throughout all my growing-up years, I was very small. When I was at the age when most girls start to feel the first butterflies flutter up around boys at school, I found to my discouragement that none of the boys I liked even noticed me! As a result, I kind of stopped looking for opportunities to be around members of the opposite sex, and really didn't share the romantic interests of my peers. 

    I'll never forget when, in 9th grade after expressing my disinterest in dating or physical intimacy, my friend said, "I think you're asexual. Or maybe you're into girls." It had never even crossed my mind that me not having a crush in 9th grade would have sorted me into that box! My friend had defined my whole sexual identity based on one social "abnormality". 

    For the record, it's totally fine to go through 9th grade without having a crush on someone. Kids are kind of gross at that age. 

    A family member who experiences same sex attraction has shared with me his frustration with these social labels. He has said that, though he experiences same sex attraction, he does not identify himself as gay. As soon as you label yourself that way, he has said, everything you do gets sexualized, and everyone encourages you to fit into the "gay mold". 

    Quite often, he says, that means you act on feeling of same sex attraction without regard and you do not attend church or desire to keep God at the center of your life. As someone who does not want to act on that attraction or leave his faith in God, he has found himself largely alienated from others in the LGBT community.  Others suggest and even encourage him to consider the possibility of transitioning genders, simply because he does not comply with typically masculine ideals. 

    Creating more ways to label people who aren't Barbie or G.I Joe is not liberating. It creates a culture in which people, especially young people, are not free to really express themselves without having their sexual identity spelled out for them. 

    What a confusing time to think about raising a family! As I've had these ideas rolling around my head this week, three points have stood out to me that may help in encouraging healthy gender identity.

1. Stop sexualizing other people. Stop making every relationship between two people inherently sexual in nature. Girls can hold hands without being in love with each other. Boys can be close friends without there being anything more to it. The less we put a lusty filter over every relationship, the more people will be able to relate to each other in normal and natural ways.
2. Develop healthy boundaries and friendships. Interacting with other humans helps us discover our own talents, weaknesses, interests, and disinterests. 
3. Change how you talk to yourself. Just as you don't want others boxing you into an identity, resist the tendency to wrap up every complex aspect of yourself into a pretty little package, complete with a single-word tag. We become what we believe we are, so make sure you're not selling yourself short.

    These are just a few of my ideas from this week. Please comment your own below!