Best of the Week: Gender and Sex

I have to say that personally I believe you have a good discussion when it is on the verge of collapsing into a debate. We definitely had that this week when we were talking about gender and sex. I  learned a lot from our class experience including the fact that sex and gender are not synonymous of one another. One defines who you are biologically and the other can define who you are mentally. Yet ultimately the two words are still used to try and capture a person's identity.

A person's identity is in my opinion one of his or her most valuable possessions. I used to think your physical state and mental state would always correlate perfectly. Meaning that if you were a boy you would think like a boy and if you were a girl you would think like a girl. Just to get one thing out of the way I always knew there were gay, lesbian, and bisexual youths but I contributed that to what your sexual preference is; not to how you think. Now, other than that our class discussion brought up some interesting points on how you can be a boy with a girl-brain or a girl with a boy-brain. Or even better you can be a person who can access both types of brains. In my opinion that is pretty darn cool because it enables you to become a more critical and diverse thinker. 

Being a high schooler I know that too often people shelter who they are and hide their real "identity". For instance, Mr. Allen's talk to us about the native american author/speaker got my thinking about how I like a lot of "gay" things. I do not mean to use the term so crudely but in fact I do like a lot of girly things such as poetry. Yet just because I think with my girl-brain that does not mean that I am any less of a guy than someone else. Now as I go back to my original thought I wonder what terms define a person's identity. 

Up until after our discussion I always identified myself as a boy but now I feel that it is not that simple. If it is true that I have traits of a girl and think like a girl shouldn't my identity reflect part of that? Or is my identity merely me sex? To help myself I looked up identity and got, " the condition or character as to who a person or what a thing is". Honestly this did not help me very much. However, in the end based off our discussion in class as well as my own personal pondering I have reached a conclusion. A person's identity should be, in my opinion, a culmination of both their sex and gender, as both of these play an immensely important role. 

Captured Thought: True Patriotism

The USA is the greatest nation in the world. This mentality is the one carried by many in our country. The United States likely have the most patriotic citizens but only recently have I thought about what it means to be a true patriot. This thought was sparked by our discussions in class about how the United States healthcare system could emulate and learn from other models.

Before Healing of America and before our discussions in class I was rather ignorant to our healthcare concerns. All I knew was that we had a flawed system and that it was widely discussed in politics. Surprisingly, I never even thought about the healthcare models of other countries. I naturally assumed that as screwed up as our healthcare system was that other countries were much worse off than us. I am actually quite ashamed to admit this because as an Academite I like to believe that I am a global citizen but in truth my raging red-white-and blue nationality blinded me from what other countries had to offer us. My "Ah ha!" moment occurred when we were assigned to smaller groups to discuss a specific country's healthcare model. In my group we did Germany and I remember thinking about how T.R. Reid's goal is ultimately to aid the United States by bringing knowledge back about what policies and ideas other countries successfully implemented and what he thought would and would not work.

This was the moment I decided that T.R. Reid was a true patriot. In my eyes I see patriotism as wanting to better your country and accepting that it is not perfect. I think a lot of people today do the latter today but in a completely unproductive way. People complain everyday about flaws in the United State's policies but too often these people are overall uneducated or never actually try to make a change. Another type of people we have in the United States are those who are so stuck in the mindset that the United States is always right and that other countries are so inferior that they could never have anything to offer us. In a way I believe that I too was stuck in this mindset for a long time. It was not until I began moving away from it that I realized that being a true patriot took several steps. First being to accept that no country is perfect. The second is to see that there is always room for improvement. The third step is to think of you personally can help improve your country. Finally the fourth step and personally my favorite is to go out and do it. Based on these steps I think T.R. Reid is a true patriot and I hope that one day my actions will be able to impact my country or even the world.