Oneness Ministry

Continuing with our look at What Gender is let us consider it more specifically.  Gender Identity is a person’s innate sense of being masculine or feminine, which cannot be determined until the person is at least 3 years old and often it is 5-6 years of age before anyone is able to know the true gender.  Since gender is an inner knowing of the individual no other person is able to determine the gender.  It is up to the child to express their gender when they learn to speak.  The Native Americans knew this and would not name their child until they were 4-6 years old in order to allow them to express their gender identity and find their place in the tribe.  A baby name or generic name was used up until this time and often the naming involved the entire family including the child and sometimes the tribe.  Once their name was given the person wore it like a badge of honor, because it reflected their very nature, their Great Spirit.

Context of usage is very important and I would like to clarify this right here.  What I have described here is Gender Identity, what the parents are told at birth is the physical sex, how the person dresses is the gender expression and how this person acts in society is the gender role they are playing.  So you must see the context of the word usage before you can understand which gender is being referred to.  As I pointed out before the word sex has many uses so be sure to determine the context in which it is being used.

A vision of society I would like you to embrace is the Native American idea of allowing the child to choose, and get away from using physical sex to describe a child – most children as I stated above have no gender till they are 3-6 years old.  As a parent, how do you know it is a boy or a girl?  Fortunately the children being born today are more aware than ever before and they are expressing their gender identity at a very early age.  Many parents understand this and respect their child, however others do not, so we each can help by raising the general knowledge of Gender and what that word means.  I would love to see a society that reflects the wisdom of our ancient peoples by honoring gender identity and not assigning gender roles, instead allowing the child to choose the role that fits them.

A few words about the differences of gender role and gender expression, while they are similar they are different in that gender expression is about outer appearance and gender role is activity.  So wearing make-up and female clothes is a female gender expression, while a female gender role would be cleaning house and babysitting.  I hesitate to include this here as our roles and expressions are getting to be so varied and free.  The old rules are breaking down, so we are seeing women in active military duty now while 20 years ago this was almost unheard of and men are cleaning house, washing dishes, and babysitting.  The best way to put this is man and women are integrating now as a society and our roles and gender expressions are so much more open.  New gender roles and expressions are emerging with each new soul born.

🙂  Sequoia Elisabeth

Unity in Gender Diversity     FREE eBooks! Click Here

What is gender and why do I care?  Most people in society go about their business and never give their gender a second thought; however, I have a light to shine on this subject so we can all have a deeper understanding of who we are and why this is important.  Every day we interact with any number of individuals and with repeat interactions we can say we know a person.  The level of interaction will vary in importance and significance to us.  This aspect of our being called ‘gender’ is actually an important function of how we react to others and how they treat us.

Of course gender is just one aspect of our nature, we have many others including but not limited to, personality, demeanor, attitude, physical sex, physical attractiveness, body habitus, sexual orientation, intelligence, common sense, and self-actualization.  When we meet someone new a few of the first things we notice are the persons size, gender, attractiveness, and how comfortable they are with themselves.  The package you present is a total summation of your nature and nurture.  So some aspects are a gift from birth and others are learned along the way.  The innate ones such as size, gender, sexual orientation, common sense, and physical attractiveness (for the most part) we must do our best to live with.  This means personality, demeanor, attitude, physical sex, body habitus, intelligence, and self-actualization are learned.  These are attributes of our nature that we have somewhat of control over.  Gender falls in the attributes that are innate meaning we are born with our gender and we cannot change this.

If we look a bit closer we see that there are different aspects of gender that are important to our understanding, such as gender identity, gender expression, gender role, and physical sex.  One of the challenges we have today is the popular confusion of gender and sex which are often used interchangeably.  If nothing else I would like you to come away from this blog with an understanding of the differences of these two words.  Sex is a word which has many usages and thus the confusion creeps in.  In Dictionary.com thirteen different definitions come up with this simple 3 letter word, so I will not get into every definition here.  When we are born the first thing the parents want to know is, “is the child a boy or a girl” and in this case we are talking about physical sex not gender identity or even gender role.  Our physical sex is determined by the physical body parts we are given at birth, but with today’s new surgical techniques this can be changed if need be.  Is a woman who has had a complete hysterectomy still a woman?  Is this person still female?  What factor is it that makes a person male or female?  What makes a person man or woman?  Where does gender fit in?

More next time as we explore gender identity and what it means to each of us.

🙂  Sequoia Elisabeth

Unity in Gender Diversity     FREE eBooks! Click Here