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)

Sources

Hi there!

I am slowly but surely finding sources for my topic of "Gender Creative" I have found it difficult to find peer-reviewed sources that deal with gender creative because the term is quite new. However, I have found many sources that use the tern gender non-conformity, which can easily be tied in to gender creative. Below I will post my annotated bibliography as is right now. If you guys have any suggestions or sources that would help me please let me know!

Bibliography

Scholarly Sources 1) "RAISING MY RAINBOW Adventures In Raising A Fabulous, Gender Creative Son." Kirkus Reviews 81.13 (2013): 168. Academic Search Complete. Web. 29 Oct. 2013. “Raising My Rainbow Adventures In Raising a Fabulous, Gender Creative Son” is the story a mother is telling of her experience raising a son who has been deemed “gender creative” While their son C.J. plays with barbies and loves the colors purple and pink, he has not necessarily said that he wants to be a girl. C.J. just knows he like toys that are typically played with by girls and that he likes girl clothes. His family has come to terms with the idea that they have a “gender non-conforming” child. C.J.’s mother describes that both of her sons, as well as the family deal with bullying. This is a great source for my topic since it deals with a situation that is so recent and the fact that C.J. was so young when he voiced that he like girl things. I think that this source is important because the mother also discusses the emotions her and her husband when through as they noticed that their child was gender non-conforming. 2) Wiseman, Mel, and Sarah Davidson. "Problems With Binary Gender Discourse: Using Context To Promote Flexibility And Connection In Gender Identity." Clinical Child Psychology & Psychiatry 17.4 (2012): 528-537. Academic Search Complete. Web. 29 Oct. 2013 This article will be very useful for me because it is recent and it discusses dealing with gender non-conformity in adolescence, which is what I will be focusing on. This article goes through the different ways in which people should deal with the problem of binary gender and different ways to approach the situation that are helpful rather than hurtful. I think in the past people, even people in the medical field did not always know how to handle children who were gender non-conforming, or gender creative but now that science is progressing and more people are coming out saying how they really feel, things are progressing in the science world, as well as a society as a whole.

3) Meyer, Elizabeth J. "Gendered Harassment In Secondary Schools: Understanding Teachers' (Non) Interventions." Gender & Education 20.6 (2008): 555-570. Academic Search Complete. Web. 29 Oct. 2013. This is an article that deals with how teachers deal with harassment with gender non-conforming children. It is obvious that people that do not go along with the typical gender stereotypes get bullied and harassed. This is a huge part of the reason that children and even adults do not voice how they really feel about the gender that they would like to be considered. This article delves into the issues that go on within a school and how teacher do… or do not deal with the harassment they see towards these gender non-conforming kids. This is important because if teachers explain what help they need in order to make a better environment, it might get our society one step closer to making that environment possible.

4) Lee, Elizabeth A. Ewing, and Wendy Troop-Gordon. "Peer Socialization Of Masculinity And Femininity: Differential Effects Of Overt And Relational Forms Of Peer Victimization."British Journal Of Developmental Psychology 29.2 (2011): 197-213. Academic Search Complete. Web. 31 Oct. 2013

I find that this source will be very helpful to me because it is a study that looks into kids and how we can move them away from such strict ideas of masculine and feminine gender roles. This study looked at 199 children, both boys and girls in their fifth grade year. The study found that when girls were victimized by their peers they withdrew from both masculine and feminine behaviors. For boys, if they were involved in physical, verbal, or victimization in general, their masculine behaviors heightened. For the boys who were “socially excluded” they tended to engage more in feminine behaviors. This can help because it shows the cases in which social experience influence how gender and the idea of masculine and feminine play out.

5) Ignatavicius, Stephanie. "Stress In Female-Identified Transgender Youth: A Review Of The Literature On Effects And Interventions." Journal Of LGBT Youth 10.4 (2013): 267-286. Academic Search Complete. Web. 31 Oct. 2013.

While it has been very difficult finding scholarly sources on the term “Gender Creative” since it is a very recent term, I think that it is important to also look at the other terms that gender creative is associated with. One of which being transgendered. This article, while not being about being Gender creative, has important struggles that kids that identify with gender creative and transgender have in common. Often the confusion, bullying and struggles are the same so we can learn from the experiences mentioned in this source.

Other Sources 1) French, Nancy. "NYT on "Gender Creative" Children."The National Review Online. The National Review, 12 Aug 2012. Web. 31 Oct 2013. <http://www.nationalreview.com/home-front/313951/inyti-gender- creative-children/nancy-french>. I am including this article because I was quite disgusted by the author and the people that were leaving comments under the article. Author, Nancy French, was talking about the parents of children who have been allowed to decide what toys they wanted to play with and what clothes they wanted to wear. She talked down upon these parents for the way in which they are raising their kids. While I don’t agree with the idea that one parent had when saying that their kid can decide their gender by the age of eight…. I think it could take longer than that. However, the comment on their article saying the parents of children allowed to do this should be imprisoned is absolutely ridiculous to me! I mean can we really be anymore over dramatic here? Why is it such a big deal if a boy clips his hair back with a butterfly clip as mentioned in this article?

6) http://gendercreativekids.ca/ I do not know how to site a WHOLE website in a bibliography but this whole website is a great source. This is a site from Canada that focuses on helping families, adults and, children who have or do consider themselves gender creative. This site offers support groups, inspiring stories, has events, and allows people to connect with other people in similar situations. I think this is a great source because unlike my source above, this site is encouraging and something positive in a world that often looks at people who do not identify with one specific gender as strange. 7) http://raisingmyrainbow.com/ Raisingmyrainbow.com is the first blog of its kind. The author and mother Lori Duron is the mother of a gender creative son, C.J. I actually have a scholarly source that discusses Lori’s book, but this is a great source because it chronicles Lori and C.J’s daily life and daily struggles. Lori talks about the different problems that C.J. and her family goes through with school and everyday life.

8) Meyer, Elizabeth. "Gender and Schooling." Psychology Today. Psychology Today, 07 Oct 2011. Web. 31 Oct 2013. <http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/gender-and- schooling/201110/gender-creative-transgender-kids-in-schools-whats-the- big-deal>. I think that this blog from Elizabeth Meyer is great because she discusses the fact that often, parents complain about having to explain to their children about children who are gender creative and how it “confuses” their children. I do not see how parents can complain about this and how it confuses their children. I think she parents should stop complaining and realize that they need to raise their children to be respectful and not judgmental of people that are different to them. Think about how these kids feel having to go through school with kids who bully them day in and day out.

Thanks, Tara--Tarak7 (talk) 16:23, 31 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.