The Fluidity of Gender and Sexuality | Tuse Mahenya | TEDxUWCSA
sexuality organ flex would not be an understatement yet throughout time we've taken such complicated concepts and have managed to reduce them to these simplistic binaries such as male and female so to understand the fluidity of gender and sexuality we need to revisit the basics now for most of us the terms gender and sex are used interchangeably and thus incorrect me this is not to say that it's not easy to confuse the two however it is important to remember that these two terms have next to nothing in common gender I mean sex also known as biological gender includes physical attributes like external genitalia internal reproductive structures sex chromosomes hormones that kind of stuff and I'm birth it's used to identify you and me as either male or female gender however is far more complicated than that it's this interconnection it's this interrelationship between your sex your gender identity which is this inner most understand that you as a person have with yourself it's how you perceive yourself and how he went and how you intend of use to receive you and lastly there's your gender expression which is the way you externally communicate this gender identity to the people around you in your voice when your clothes or your haircut or you know any other form of presentation not the longest time societies around this have you generate such a strict binary system consisting of two opposite sides male-female we are born assigned to gender - my legs are sent out into the world to adhere to the roles and expectations of the said gender Novus Nest and tell us along we're surrounded by these roles and expectations through our lives in the way they were raised in our schools and our culture's and our religions these roles are embedded into our understanding of ourselves so in these ways gender is a social construct it is monitored and reinforced as scene from toys to clothes cult to toys to clothes behaviors careers these beliefs aren't embedded into our mistiming for ourselves however for those however for those of us who can confront to this societal rules and expectations for reasons beyond society's comprehension when a persistent identity clashes with these binary systems they simply brought in the right a system set by our societies and then what then the diversity of genders created by the way each of us in this room think about ourselves and who we are is different dancer can't be the same and what shouldn't this variation right here stops gender from inviting it becomes so complex so difficult to understand but so beautiful now the case is the same with the sexuality binary system since same defaults that determine our gender at birth are almost immediately used to determine our sexual orientation which is very 94 the sexual attraction person how happy people distinct genders you working with different genders you or both or neither so let me present to you the dynamics of the sexuality binding system because it presents these so these societal expectations so in a person's gender identity classes of these societal expectations they brought of them and for similar reasons to think the cases of major sexuality binding system so but before we before we start cutting ourselves in the back from moving forward with all that lies on the spectrum of gender and sexuality other less noticeable issues need to be addressed issues which I think best demonstrate this lack of food is you would live the gender and sexuality so by now most of us are familiar with at least two letters the ever-lengthening afternoon that is the L g bt q i a plus community so let me present to you that i not makes that existed in this community the results in the internal stigmatization of an already stigmatized with people now from this from these two separate binary systems the terms heteronormativity insist negativity are created and simply put heteronormative 'ti is the belief that we're all born heterosexual or straight and as we saw the tire tracks into members of the opposite sex male to female female to male and then there's this normativity which is the belief that we are all cisgender meaning that our gender identity matches our sex but with the existence of different sexualities a spectrum is created between homosexuality and heterosexuality and as a result these two separate concepts heterosexuality and homosexuality become the norms they are at the edges of the spectrum and as a result they treat people within that spectrum people whose sexuality is different from both with varying degrees of acceptance interesting speaking I've had both a heterosexual essential people not understand my my sexuality because slightly more complex sexual identity and if you think about it that way the effects of the sexuality binary both ways and as a result we tend to see here both heterosexual and homosexual people marginalizing people whose identity this variation I mean this mistreatment in my opinion exists for the same reason that homosexuality does men who voted us since because gender fluidity and sexual fluidity have not yet been fully be considered now this little girl had no idea what homosexuality was until she was 13 or 14 but she didn't know that the first 17 years the first seven years her straight boy obsessed life were just as bad as the next ten and this is why we need to certain viewing gender and sexuality is complex because it's not some of you can choose for others or ourselves it varies between people for most human reasons like one person's gender identity can add to their sex as easily as another person's can change from one day to the next and granted this can get a little confusing but it shouldn't be cause for worry ok us it just happens it's that complex so what did it make all our lives a little bit easier if we could all have a say in the way we felt about who we are and how we would send selves for the world around us it's that easy with Lisa to be [Applause]