I am by no means an artist, but I sometimes have a difficult time explaining what gender is. So, I’ll draw something like this out (for those of you with readers, not to worry, I’ll explain). I’ll draw a sort of before and after, except it’s status quo teaching versus the truth.
The first part will show something like a straight line. It’s a scale. You can only occupy one part of the line at a time, and oh, your little nob doesn’t move.
The second part shows a bunch of little amoeba type things. These blobs are genders. I draw squiggly lines around them to show that they can move. What it is to be a man, for example, changes throughout time and space on a macro level. On a micro level, gender definitions change from individual to individual. Then, I draw other amoebas. When I have a lot of room, I’ll draw at least ten different amoebas. I make sure to have some coming off the sides to signify that gender doesn’t end there. Gender is endless.
In this example, I drew red stars saying something along the lines of “you are here,” “or here,” “you’re in two places at once,” and so on.
I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback when explaining gender this way. I also want to mention that in the first part, gender is basically “penis”-having and “vagina”-having. In the second part, body parts are not mentioned once. Why? Because they have nothing to do with gender in the first place.
(via iragray)
