More and more people everyday are coming out as different genders. Some people see this as a 'trend', but what is really happening is that there is growing support for those who do not identify in our society's gender binary. When people think of gender, they normally think male and female. But really, gender, just like sexuality, is a spectrum; There are not only two options. Someone could identify as gender neutral or non-binary, meaning they don't identify with male or female. Or they could identify as agender, meaning they don't identify with any gender at all. No, these people are not wrong or confused, in fact, they are much happier once they are accepted for who they are. I have lots of non-binary pals and everyone single one of them is an amazing person. What upsets me though is that they don't areas that they escape from our society's insane need to gender everything.
For example, my college recently had our 'housing lottery' and my two friends and I wanted to room together. One is trans male and the other is agender, no big deal. But we wanted to go somewhere that wasn't gender specific, and, unfortunately, a lot of the triples were in an all-girl dorm. We tried hard to get into a non-gendered triple, but someone else took the last one. So we had to choose: stay together and have my friends forced to live in a gendered dorm where they would be continually misgendered, or be separated. My friends said, "Fine. We'll go to the girl's dorm.". But that doesn't make this okay. My trans friend is trying to be accepted by the rest of the world as male, but because of his birth certificate he only has female housing options available for him. My other other friend is agender and uses the pronouns ter/ter instead of she/her. What about ter? Ter is not female and should not have to live in a space that terr does not identify with.
All of this could have been fixed by one simple adjustment on the college's part: gender neutral housing and rooming options.
This isn't impossible. In fact, here is a site listing schools that have gender neutral housing options: https://www.campuspride.org/tpc/gender-inclusive-h... .
What this represents is a larger problem in our society. We divide everything into pink and blue thinking that this makes this easier for everyone, but it doesn't. It only makes it easier for that the system supports. Yes, there have been small wins for both trans and non-binary gender people, some places now have gender neutral bathrooms in addition to male and female. But when you think of how many areas there are in America, or even across the world where these people can't be accepted. I hope it makes you just as angry as it makes me. Because it's not right.
We'll never be the land of freedom and equality until we learn to accept every person, no matter their gender.
Step one? Gender neutral spaces.
