Reflective Tag:
Prior to starting BI 218X my knowledge of Sex and Gender was very limited, and it still is limited. However, I am beginning to respect the differences in opinion that everyone has. I now see that people from different backgrounds and of differing cultures have a wild imagination as to what Sex and Gender actually is. Or perhaps I have a wildly narrow view of what these two are. Whatever the case, here is what I believe along with the knowledge I am beginning to attain from BI 218X.

Artifact 1
From my 21 years of life I have come to understand that Sex means one thing, it is the act of making love to a significant other. My background of Southeastern North Carolina has always referred to sex as meaning this, and my parents/friends taught me that it only had this one meaning. Gender on the other hand has always been the distinction between a boy and girl…do you have Gonads and a Penis or do you have a Vagina. However, in the past 2 ½ years I have begun to gain a broader understanding of what the words Sex and Gender actually mean. My brother is a religious studies major/anthropology minor student at East Carolina University. We are the same age and during our freshman year while on spring break he told me that since beginning college he was no longer heterosexual, he was now homosexual. The news was and still is a shock to me; however, he has many of the same beliefs that this class is arguing for.
The parallels between this class and my brother’s beliefs show that Sex is the Biological distinction as to whether a person is male or female(Gonads/Penis or Vagina) and Gender is whether that person is masculine or feminine. He has argued with me for the past couple of years that just because someone is born a man or woman does not mean that he/she believes that what they were meant to me. This aligns with the argument that Gender is based off of Psychological, Social, and Behavioral aspects rather than what I believe it is. This argument does make sense to me and I can see where people feel that they were intended to be something else and therefore do whatever they can to achieve that goal. My beliefs on the other hand tell me otherwise. If a person chooses to identify as something they are not, as given by God, then I can not identify them as such. I believe in God and that everyone was created as they are for a reason, there definitely are less “Manly Men” in the world and they are needed. Not every man should be the “bread winner” as society tells us to be, and not every woman should be the “stay at home mom”, but the majority of society does not approve of someone changing what they were created to be. Society is demanding and unrelenting toward the groups of people that do not fit the norm, such as those who do not identify with a gender that is masculine or feminine.
Throughout this course I shall be open to understand all the differences in opinion, such as these new definitions of Gender and sex. Hopefully the past couple years of shutting out my brother and his experiences will give me a greater respect for what the human body is capable of and how my opinions should not override what he/others believe or want for their lives.