Covid and Gender

When I think of gender, I at first think of the stereotypical “there are only two genders” bias. I think of the two “socially acceptable” genders, male and female. While my mind switches to these two genders first, I am also quite aware that gender in itself is a social construct in which has been stretched into a heteronormative state in which society makes it nearly impossible for people to accept what is reality. Scientists have proven that people often feel outside the realm of what is strictly male and female, and continue to identify themselves as what they believe fits with what they feel. Sex is what one is born with, while gender is what we identify as. Many people tend to make fun of these identities, saying not so funny “jokes”, such as “identifying as an attack helicopter” and constantly berating the people by telling them their identity is a joke and that they’ll always be the gender they were assigned at birth. Gender is a coin of both prosperity and ridicule, in which a person unfortunately has to deal with the other side in order to gain the happiness they want to achieve in life. As a cis woman with many trans and non binary friends, I personally cannot understand the struggles others go through, although since I am the person my friends tend to vent to about their unaccpeting family, what people also seem to fail to realize, is that having people close to them be unaccpeting seriously damages their mental health.