Gender Roles

(From Urban Dictinoary)
Bigender:
1. "A bi-gender person is someone who experiences mental swings between genders. Their charactaristics or mannerisms change from male to female depending on the situation."
2. "The tendency to move between masculine and feminine gender-typed behaviour depending on context, expressing a distinctly male persona and a distinctly female persona.
While an androgynous person retains the same gender-typed behaviour across situations, the bigendered person purposely changes their gender-role behaviour for the situation. It is particularly noteworthy that this concept emerged from within the transgender community rather than being adopted by the transgender community after it was created by another sub-culture (e.g. transsexual was defined first by the mental health community)."

Sounds about right. I quote these 'definitions' for a purpose. As a race, we have divided ourselves into two genders - male and female - and each of these has a specific role it plays in society. Most situations tend to call on one of the roles, giving one gender or the other a possible "advantage". (I use that term rather sarcastically in that advantages are only what one makes of them.) As a member of the Bi-Gender community, I too swing a little on the spectrum depending on the situation. When I'm angry, my male side tends to come out, whereas my female side will come out when I am in creativity mode. Those are just a couple examples.

I wouldn't even know where to start when it came to trying to give a lot of examples to each side, simply because it really depends on the person in the situation. I respond differently than my girlfriend or my roommate. Maybe my girlfriend's anger manifests as her girl side - because we all have at least a tiny bit of the opposite gender in us. It all depends on the person.

Along with the emotional roles are the physical roles. For instance, teaching was, until fairly recently, a female dominated profession, whereas commercial truck driving was a male dominated profession. Now, though, we're seeing a blurring of these roles - male teachers, female CDL drivers. Having gone through public school for fourteen years and then a year of college, I have seen at least the teaching myself. I had several male teachers in many grades - for instance, my fifth grade teacher was male (even more rare than the sixth grade and up). Haven't seen as much evidence of female CDL drivers, but seeing as how much I used to drive, and how many times I've been at truck stops, I have seen a few women there (that casual observation turned up were actually drivers).

Another couple examples that are pretty close to my own heart : technology and music. Technology is easy, music not so much. The tech field is a fairly male dominated one, as evidenced by my former company - up until the last couple months I was there, it was a male only operation (not through discrimination, just in general). Even when a woman did join, she was the admin - she did know her tech pretty well though, I was impressed. Back when I worked in the school district, it was actually more of an across the board - I worked in Educational Technology, and it was about half and half. Aside : That group was pretty awesome. Music is a bit more muddled. I have played in both the (school) band and orchestra, and in both, it was a pretty mixed group, with a few exceptions. For instance, as a Tuba player, while I was playing, we didn't have any female players. And as an upright Bass player for three years, it was up until my last year that I was either the only one, or one of two males. I have heard on occasion of a female tuba player, and my most recent ex-girlfriend was a Bass player (and a damned good one too). In the Violin section, there were only a couple males, while the Viola and Cello sections were pretty well mixed.

One more example and I'll have beat this horse to death and then some : Leadership. For a good portion of history, our leaders have been male, while the females have done house work or other labor such as that. (There is nothing wrong with it unless somebody is forcing it that way.) Up until recently, it was not even viable for a woman to run for President, or many other positions of power - Senate, House of Reps. On a much smaller level, back in High School, I was in the Student Technology Leadership Program. For the four years I was there, our leadership was either fully male or mostly male. It took until I was out of there that a female leadership finally came along (except one position).

Having beat it... I hope I've made at least somewhat of a point. One of the primary parts of being Bi-Gender is that - the splitting of gender roles. I fluctuate depending on what the situation is between male and female. It's taken a couple thousand years (and then some) to finally get to the point where our societies are shifting towards this mixing of roles. Here's to hoping they continue to intermix, because that will be one giant leap for us.

Here's to hope.

Until next time.

Peace.