Tag Archives: gender identity

Advisors, Authors R-Z, Gender

Survival Matters: Cross-dressing – by Julia Wai-Yin So

Cross-dressing has a Different Meaning at a Different Place in a Different Time

In recent years, with more and more social acceptance of multiple variations of gender identity, cross-dressing has become an empowering tool for transgendered individuals who are out, proud, and loud to assert their gender identity. Notwithstanding, we have to be cognizant of the fact that cross-dressing validates the practice of the binary system of gender. We also have to remind ourselves that the binary system of gender is a social construct and that it is built on a medical model using the binary system of sex. More importantly, cross-dressing carries a different meaning at a different place in a different time. Here, I will describe three specific examples of females cross-dress as males.

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Advisors, Authors A-H, Gender

Diversity and Speech Part 44: Generations of Gender Talk – by Carlos Cortés

Keeping up with the ongoing changes in diversity language has become a matter of lifelong learning.  For a near-nonagenarian  (I turn 90 on April 6), this means continuous learning as well as relentless unlearning.  That is, trying to unlearn old uses of language that decades of repetition have deeply wired into my brain.

Take gender.  Growing up in 1940’s Kansas City, Missouri, I learned that men were men and women were women.  I inhabited a world of man talk and woman talk, men’s jobs and women’s jobs, men’s clothes and women’s clothes.  It wasn’t much different in college during the 1950’s.   We were men and women, not cisgender or transgender men and women. 

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Advisors, Gender

Diversity and Speech #36: Gender and Generations, An Evolving Conversation – by Carlos E. Cortés, Angela Antenore

A Co-Authored Interview

Carlos: Angela, we’ve been friends and diversity colleagues for thirty-five years.  It will be interesting to reflect on how the conversation about gender has changed over those decades.

Angela: Yes, but today we’ll only be able to look at a tiny slice of that huge topic. Let’s begin with language.  When we first started working together, we used the term gender to distinguish women from men.  Now we recognize greater complexities and fluidity, with terms like gender identity and non-binary.  

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