As we reported earlier, our trainee from Sweden, Justin Santana Miranda, an expert on gender issues, conducted a lecture entitled “Gender – An imitation without original”, at the American House of Kyiv for the organization “Poruch” NGO “Poruch”.
According to Justin, the aim of this lecture was for participants to understand the basic concept of gender and in an interesting and engaging way discuss the different aspects of gender, how it is perceived in society, gender inequality, gender norms and more.
It also included for the participants to strengthen the practical awareness in gender and training them on the importance of incorporating a gender perspective in all parts of society and everyday life.
At the beginning the lecturer emphasized: “One thing that we need to remember, when talking about gender, that it is not referring to our biological sex that we are given at birth, but rather to the whole spectrum of gender identities that exist”.
According to the expert, while our gender may begin with the assignment of our sex, it doesn’t end there. A person’s gender is the complex interrelationship between three dimensions:
“BODY, IDENTITY and EXPRESSION.
– Body: This dimension refers to our physical body, our experience of our own body, how society genders bodies according to sex, and how others interact with us based on our body.
– Identity: This dimension signifies our deeply held, internal sense of self, as male, female, a blend of both, or neither. This means who we internally know ourselves to be. I might have the body of a woman, but identify as a man.
– Expression: This refers to how we present our gender in the world and how society, culture, community, and family perceive, interact with, and try to shape our gender. Gender expression is also related to gender roles and how society uses those roles to try to enforce conformity to current gender norms.
Each of these dimensions can vary greatly across a range of possibilities. A person’s comfort in their gender is related to the degree to which these three dimensions feel in harmony”.
One important distinction to make, that was discussed during the lecture, is the difference between gender and Sexual orientation. These are often incorrectly thought to be the same thing. However, gender and sexual orientation are two distinct aspects of our identity. Gender is personal – which means how we see ourselves.
Meanwhile sexual orientation is interpersonal. Which means who we are physically, emotionally and/or romantically attracted to.
Also during the lecture aspects such as gender inequality, privilage, LGBTQI+ rights and gender in practice were discussed and analysed with the help of exercises and short videos.
Links to the videos used in the presentation are added here:
– Video on the importance of our words and actions towards children:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O9BKRJDqNA
– Video on gender equality and privilege:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n9IOH0NvyY
Video with examples of how gender equality works in practice:
