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jd34n.sexgenderid
jd34n.sexgenderid

day 1

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jd34n.sexgenderid


day 1
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jd34n nj, January 03
I find your piece really interesting. I always felt like the Courtney in my class, but I never saw it from the eyes of someone watching the situation. You really highlighted how the boy/girl stereotypes are really held so strongly throughout elementary, middle, and high school. Even college is like that at times, but I find it's not as pronounced. It's an intriguing observation about our schools and, by extension, our society. Awesome piece, Jordan!
mpulley (Mel) Burlington, VT, VT, January 03
Please copy your texts and place them in the comment boxes rather than uploading word docs-- this way we can refer to the piece while reading the responses.

This is Jordan's piece:
• First Day, Kindergarten…colored boy/girl name tags
• Mother is an elementary teacher, with a transgender student.
• Elementary recess, boys play football-girls do gymnastics


The first time that I can remember gender being a strict difference in identity was my first day of school. All of the kids in my class came in to our classroom and instructed to find our name tags, which to be found at our assigned seats. The name tags were blue for all the boys, and pink for all the girls in the class. Also the seating arrangement was alternated boy/girl/boy/girl/etc. I noticed that there was one boy in my class who was having a very hard time finding his name tag. The teacher also took notice to this lost child and went to aid him. She did help the boy find his seat, but this only led to more problems for the boy, whose name happened to be Courtney. He saw that his name tag was pink and he had been put in a girl’s seat. Courtney, probably already emotional from his first day of school, lost it and started crying. It took the teacher and an aid a good half hour to settle him down and the fix the mistake.
At the time I really didn’t understand why Courtney was so upset, also this was probably the first person that I had met named Courtney, boy or girl. Looking back this was a very upsetting event in this boy’s life to be identified as a girl.


I found a very interesting website which you can research name popularity for boys and girls which I had some fun investigating. What’s in a name?

www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/
janicep Ferrisburg, VT, January 03
Great topic, Jordan. Was there never any confusion with your name?
There are several people in this course whose names seem gender-neutral to me.
janicep Ferrisburg, VT, January 03
I never personally had any sort identity confusion with my name, I personally enjoyed having a name that is less common. Through out elementary school there was a girl in my class named Jordan as well...so i was identified as the boy-Jordan, and she the girl-Jordan.
jd34n nj, January 03
Your experience is a great telling of how even at a young age, our identity is being given to us. I remember my first days of middle school when we started a Home Economics class, some of the boys were dismissed to take an extra gym class. I think our public education system has a lot to learn, but that's another topic for another day. Gender bias has been a part of our culture, just like many others, and although I do feel strongly that women and men are just plain different and enjoy and excel at different things, I don't find it effective at all to imply the separation. I enjoyed reading your story.
CassidyG (Cassidy) Attleboro, MA, MA, January 03

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