Argumentative Essay On Gender Identity

Words: 1427
Pages: 6

As a child, exploration of sexuality and gender identity has been shown to develop and change from a young age. Family and friends, along with social environments and media, are all factors when considering the many ways children may gain an outlook on themselves and the world. However, many of these outlets will also view and treat these apparent ‘abnormalities’ as disorders and diseases – today society has become more accepting, but many people still have to deal and cope with what has been dubbed as Gender Identity Disorder (GID). While children with GID are sometimes given opportunities to find gender accepting communities, most often these children grow up defeated by societal expectations and dysphoria. Gender Identity Disorder should …show more content…
As Hozid points out, “…even trying to study and gender in other cultures is problematic because Western notions of such categories and ideas do not exist in the same way as Non-Western cultures” (Hozid 1). The assumption that most other cultures identify gender the same way as that of the United States is oftentimes dangerous. For example, the Navajo ordinarily hosted five gender categories and three sexes- their beliefs, although very different from what are considered normal Western standards, should still be considered when arguing that GID be a mental illness (Hozid 1). Researcher Dr. Rebecca Allen has made arguments that, if anything, the desire to alter one’s body to match the gender they identify with should be listed as a medical condition, not a mental one, as they desire to change the body, rather than alter the mind (Hozid 1). These allegations are reputable arguments against the classification of GID as a mental illness – the only reason that so many people fight to have GI considered a disorder is because these people go against the societal binary. In Western society every person, with the exception of intersex, is assigned a gender at birth, (Hozid 1) and therefore if they do not identify themselves with their assigned sex or gender, they are oftentimes viewed as if they are disrupting societal normalcies. There are many other non-Western societies that included a variety of sex and gender in their traditions – some of them choose not to assign a specific gender at birth so that each individual can decide who they are and make the appropriate choices for their well-being, rather than suffer by violating social