Mandyland Rant: Gender (S3E9)

Mandyland

Me… ranting about gender, gender issues, gender reveal parties, gendered clothing, gender segregation, gender neutral, gender expansion, gendered opportunities, gendered washrooms… It didn’t start out as a rant. It was going to be an introduction to two other conversations about gender I’ve had specifically around gender-expansive parenting. But 17 minutes in, I realized it was a rant. Oops.

One thing I should add, that I didn’t add during the audio is that despite hating segregation, I do think segregation is important when combining the genders is holding one or more of the genders back. For example, I have benefited seriously from opportunities in sport that were gender-segregated and allowed women to rise up to an athletic potential they otherwise might not have. This is happened in hockey and ultimate frisbee for me. That being said, the ideal as I see it, is equating the genders together, like, for example in mixed-gender division. I spent a lot of time playing women’s ultimate but my heart was always in mixed-gender where cis-men and cis-women are theoretically on an equal playing field. That doesn’t always happen in practice but it’s the best attempt I have seen in sport. The next necessary step, mind you, is to successfully incorporate transgender people into sports in a way that allows all people to both develop to their full potential. Single-gendered divisions and mixed-gender divisions imply a binary, whereas the “open division” technically means open to anyone who wants to play at the level of that team. That is wonderful. In theory.