Anonymous said

I’m doing some research for a small book about gender, sex and sexuality. What information do you think we need to give the youth (and not so youth) for them to have a better understanding of these concepts? And you, as a younger self, what would you have wanted to hear to be more educated and sure about these things? What's something you still don't get/need more information of?

ahh thank you for considering me to be a part of your research :’) the thing that i often come across with and have personal experience with is when parents or people of an older generation indoctrinate young people into having these homophobic/transphobic etc views. so while i agree that we need to focus on the youth, i also think that we need to bring awareness towards the older people whilst they still hold influence. ive obtained valuable information from books (i read this fictional novel around a year ago about an intersex girl and it really educated me in that subject matter) so i think if more youth were exposed to fictional books that explore gender and sexuality (rather than non-fiction) it would hold their attention during the entirety of it and they would absorb the information more. social media is also a really large influence and it definitely needs to be utilised, and there should be more online support groups across the different social media platforms. and the recent increase of representation on tv shows is really amazing (and one of the only good things about 2016 tbh) so that’s another thats another platform to educate others. im not sure how to approach the older generation as they tend to be traditionalists but books/newspapers/magazines/tv could also be applied to them along with scientific data or something to inform them that not being straight and cis is not going against human nature. i guess i would have loved to hear that being different than what was percieved as the social norm was not “going against logic” and that i wasn’t “mentally fucked up” (unfortunately these words were spoken by one of my friends but not directly at me). for those who are questioning everything about their identity they need as much support and representation as possible to show that its okay not being what we were told to be. parents need to know that if you love your child, you should support that child no matter what, and that they should focus on that love, rather than focusing on them not adhering to their views. we still don’t get much information about being transgender/intersex etc and people still see it as not being “normal” so we need to bring more awareness into that. im not sure if i fully answered your questions but i hope that this is still helpful in your research 💗

Posted 4 years ago on 13th December view 1 note
  1. brientarth posted this
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