Even in 2023, there are seemingly constant debates around what qualifies something as being feminine or masculine. Let’s take a moment and see what these two terms mean for you.
First, let’s just establish what these two terms mean in simple English definitions as opposed to these two terms as concepts or themes.
Masculine
Having characteristics or a set of attributes or behaviours that are generally associated with boys or men.
Feminine
Having characteristics or a set of attributes or behaviours that are generally associated with girls or women.
Now what?
Through many modern movements, we have learned that women and men can both share attributes of masculinity and femininity without requiring either of these attributes to influence their gender.
In your journal, let’s explore these two attributes and see how you apply them to yourself. Remember that these journal entries are only for yourself and your individual journey.
Prompt:
What parts of yourself feel masculine to you?
What parts of yourself feel feminine to you?
Do these pieces influence how you see yourself?
In 2021, Lia made waves in the USA after she competed in the Zippy Invitational, finishing first place in the 500 free. Unfortunately, it wasn’t her accomplishments that made the news nearly as much as the backlash she received for competing in the women’s category. This article is meant to look at the situation as a whole without any interpretation nor any judgment.
Her birthday is not known, but Lia was born between 1998 and 2000. She is the youngest of two children in her home, raised in Austin, Texas, USA. She started swimming in kindergarten and began competing in high school where she went on to place 6th place in the state high school swimming championships in 2017. She started her educational career at Penn, where she initially was enrolled while identifying as her gender assigned at birth: Male. She spent three seasons competing as a man against other men, including the 2018-2019 season where she placed second place in a few men’s freestyle categories in the Ivy league championship races.
She told Sports Illustrated that she began questioning her identity by the end of her high school career. In the same interview, Lia confided that she began her medical transition into womanhood in May of 2019 and her social transition was complete by January of 2020.
She took a year off of school so that she wouldn’t miss her last year of eligibility by graduating during a time when she was in between gender categories, being a senior. Returning in the late 2021 season, Lia began training with her female counterparts. At the time that she joined the women’s swimming team in a professional capacity, Lia had been on hormones for a little over two years and it had already impacted her performance in the water at that point.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has a bylaw stipulating that a male-to-female transgender athlete can compete in their identified gender category if they have completed one full year on testosterone suppression therapy. No rules were broken by Lia when she competed on behalf of the University of Pennsylvania Swimming and Diving Team in the Zippy Invitational swimming competition. Her 2021 team, The Quakers, was also made up of Keara McGowan, Margot Kaczorowski, and Hannah Kannan. They were coached by Mike Schnur.
June 1st, 2016 marked the date that Parliament Hill raised a pride flag for the first time. This began the very first pride month in Canada. One single year later, the transgender pride flag was also raised.
This year’s Pride Month marked 6 years since the first Transgender Flag was raised on Parliament Hill.
Journaling is a great way to get to know yourself intimately. If you do not know yourself well, you can’t develop your identity in a way that honors your true self. This is the first week of journal prompts on genderMe.ca, so let’s start simple and work our way into some more complex prompts as the weeks go on.
Your journal can be on many different types of media; it can be an anonymous journal online. It can be a plain notepad. It can be a bullet journal, mixed along with daily task lists and other seemingly unrelated things. It can be an email you send to yourself. Or even a sketchbook where you can draw and write at the same time. Whatever your journal looks like, it should be whatever is best for you in your current journey.
No one is allowed to read your journal without your permission. You do not need to let anyone read your journal. It is private. It is sacred. It is yours.
Journal Prompt, Week One
How am I feeling right now? What do I feel physically? What worries me the most right now?
It is a good idea to start or end each journal entry with something you are proud of yourself for. It could be something as seemingly small as reading this post. It could be starting a journal or even being vulnerable with yourself. We don’t all learn emotional vulnerability during our childhood, but it is a skill we can learn.
Give yourself permission to be yourself and to be vulnerable.
Welcome to the brand new website, GenderMe.ca, whose focus is to breakdown societal barriers and help inform Canadians of the many ways we can come to know and understand one another. Education and coming to a mutual understanding is the first step in helping to break down stigma and reduce barriers.
Laws, acts, bills, community resources, government supports, research, concepts and mutual understandings… What are we doing here?
This website is focused on understanding laws, acts, or bills that might be passed related to the transgender community and participants. It is also focused on helping to finesse out the definitions of some words as well as some concepts that seem to cause a barrier to a natural discussion of intimate subject matters.
We are dedicated to providing resources to LGTBQ+ individuals, parents, allies, friends, and anyone else who is hoping to better support and understand their loved ones, or those who they want to support.
My goal is to provide well researched and thought out articles that can help us all in our daily discussions when we need something to reference while having those heated discussions.