Blog Post 2

 For this blog post I’m going to write about another personal experience.

I was having a discussion today with my friends about what our parents think about gender and sexuality, and came across some interesting anecdotes and differences in beliefs or levels of awareness between different families. 

One of my friends told me that their mom didn’t understand what being bisexual meant and didn’t think that bisexual people were real/valid until she had a conversation with one of her colleague’s daughters (if I recall correctly). It was interesting to compare to my own mother, who is a psychology professor and often studies gender in employment relations. I will say I think she has more awareness about the diversity of gender and sexuality than most of my friends’ parents, especially after having that conversation with my friends. 

Going back to what I was saying earlier, I found it very compelling to hear about the problems that my friend’s mom had to overcome. She is an artist and an art teacher, and it seems like a lot of the time, she teaches about drawing anatomy. She has worked with transgender and nonbinary models, and through those experiences learned how to teach anatomy without using terms that tie gender and sex together. She also was able to practice using correct pronouns and was able to educate herself while making sure her class was also educated and given background information to ensure a safe and welcoming environment for everyone.

There is a prominent generational difference between my friends and I and our parents. We all collectively agreed none of our parents have perfect awareness and knowledge about gender or sexuality, especially because so many people in our generation get their information or learn about gender and sexuality in society from social media, which our parents don’t use often or are less familiar with. I think it's worth looking further into it because from my perspective, it seems like this is true with a vast majority of my friends. It could just be a coincidence, but I highly doubt that, considering there are also many people on the internet who I have seen say the same thing. So there definitely is a gap and I think our generations’ parents have varying degrees of understanding and acceptance based on varying exposure or education. See, if my friend’s mom, for example, had never taught with a trans or nonbinary model, she most likely wouldn’t have learned about and understood different gender identities and differentiating gender and sex. Same, with my own mom. If she wasn’t a professor in the labor and employment relations department, she might not have come across topics about gender and sexuality in her work and therefore could have been less educated.