By Iris Zermeño
Gender conformity and nonconformity,
female and male, no we don’t all circumscribe into the binary
and with any deviation from the norm
comes this policing of the self to avoid disapproval, punishment, and ridicule.
We judge, improve and work on ourselves until we are closer to the prototype.
Some choose to blur the lines,
because do people really need to know what you are?
Do they need to know what it took to get you this far?
No, it’s not a phase, and I am what I know myself to be according to gender performativity,
It is what you do, not what you are,
yet in this American culture, society can eat and poke like vultures.
Boys don’t wear pink, boys don’t play with dolls, and boys, don’t you dare cry.
Men assert power, emit aggression and are always in control,
but driving out compassion and caring qualities can take its toll.
The notion of violent masculinity is teaching boys what it means to be a man.
There is this seemingly incurable disease; the normalization of violence in society,
masculine entitlement and misogyny.
Women are subordinate and are oppressed to no expense to men,
the hegemony that exists only validates this then.
We all want things to change, and we all want to know when.
But seeing the current status of our culture,
The answer to that question is rather left unsaid.
I am currently a fourth year student at California State University San Marcos, majoring in Liberal Studies and pursuing a teaching career in level K-5. One of the reasons behind my wanting to take WGSS 101: Introduction to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies is because I wanted to learn the motives and incentives individuals that push and draw people to discrimination. “Our Circumscription” depicts the issues that induce these socially formulated categories of difference. It further delves into heteronormativity and this idea of how anyone and anything else that deviates from the norm needs to be “fixed.” This poem questions identity and its validation, questions oppressions and privileges in the hegemony, highlights the normalization of violence in society, and ultimately leaves the audience with no solution to issues within American culture. In the end, it is society that circumscribes itself in a world with rules they create followed by expectations of conformity and fear of change. Becoming a teacher isn’t my main goal, although it is part of it. My priority is to inform and teach children about society’s issues, providing them tools for labeling oppressions and standing up to the hegemony that enforces a hierarchy based on categories of difference. Although it may be difficult to induce change, teaching is my way of attempting to create change within society.
Photo credit: Zackary Drucker for the Gender Spectrum Collection from VICE.
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