#te102

It was a wonderful way to end a wonderful class. 

This week’s plenary about intersex people was very enlightening for me, as well as many other people who were in that room. I personally never knew that intersex people were as common as they are, and I never knew the horrors that happen to them as a result of ignorance on the doctors’ and parents’ part. I learned that assigning a gender for intersex people before they have the chance to choose what they want to be is very unfair to them. It is not only robbing them of the freedom of self-expression, but many times the doctors remove parts of them that would have otherwise created pleasure and make them harbors of pain, just so they can conform to a gender standard of a gender they did not choose. It is all so complicated and awful. They all said in the end of the documentary that they do not know a single intersex person who would have not wanted to keep their genitals the way it was before all the surgeries. If they are accepting of what they have, everyone else should be too. Especially their parents. Also, I thought the man wearing glasses was super funny and positive about the whole thing, which made everyone in the room feel more comfortable and not think of them as victimized, but rather as people who are there to teach us about themselves.

I loved this plenary because the speaker is someone who is relatable and honest. She talked about something that I’m pretty sure most of the people in that room at the time were suffering with, which is a lack of motivation and lack of trust in themselves. She mentions that while she was pursuing engineering, at one point after her first failures, she thought she could no longer do it, and was going to drop it and move onto something less time-consuming. Then based on good advice from a loved one, she decided to give it another go. And she’s been on that path ever since.  She pursed her dream to be an engineer and then eventually chose to leave her job for a while and raise her child. Everyone has different priorities in their lives, and being judged for preferring to take a hiatus and raise or not raise one’s kids (as their mother) should be one’s choice. And it does not make you any less empowered for doing so. So yes, I am terrified about the future. So is everyone else. And everyone feels that way at some point before they go on to do amazing things. I enjoyed this plenary very much because it was really a feel-good conversation I think we all needed to hear. 

(Note: I believe Ruby Rose goes by the pronouns “she/her” even though she is gender-neutral. If not please correct me)

I know what it’s like to have the patriarchy control and define every thing a woman does. In Egypt (where I am from), Egyptian citizenship accompanies the father. My friend is both Palestinian and Egyptian (her father is Palestinian and her mother is Egyptian), so she was not given the Egyptian citizenship even though her mother is Egyptian. They can visit Egypt all they want, but she will never be more than just a tourist in her own mother’s country. She will never completely belong to America, and she also can never completely belong to Egypt.