Friday, March 29, 2024

Unique in Our Own Way

 

COLUMN NAME: Delving Into Deeper Feelings

Columnist: Angelica Mae D. Gomez

Finding out “who you are” and discovering “what you are” are just two of the endless lifelong questions that most of us ask ourselves. Among other things, waves of new experiences, emotions, relationships and expectations can be overwhelming for anybody, but they shape up what we are and who we are going to be as we journey through life and all its complexities.

But if you add the subject of gender into the mix, it could get more confusing, not to mention complicated. For some people, their gender identity does not match their physical body. Their bodies may be male or female but on the inside, they feel that they are the opposite sex, attracted to the opposite sex or questioning.

However, we should have in mind that one’s gender identity is every person’s concept of how s/he views himself/herself as male, female, both, or neither. It also means that one’s gender identity can be the same or different from his/her sex assigned at birth.

It is also important to know that people have a lot to learn about gender identities and sexual orientations to be able to fully understand just how being human is complex and therefore needs thorough understanding.

For one thing, it is not easy being considered as what other people call the “other gender.” Opinions vary, of course. Some may be open and accepting and some are probably irked and indifferent about it.

Other times, people overgeneralize. They have their own beliefs and principles but the thing is, it is their own truth. They just can’t expect others to follow what they preach or to make other people their own kind which means, turning queer people into the “straight” people’s conception of being “normal.”

But then, a person, sometimes brought about by insensitivity and lack of awareness, cannot sympathize enough with the struggles that people in the LGBT+ community are facing. A few of these are being discriminated, disgraced, bullied, or ridiculed by society in the community, school or workplace. This is due to a lack of trying in their part to understand what it is really like to be in their shoes for a minute.

That is why it could be very hard indeed, being queer and all, to come out of the closet and tell their families and their friends knowing that they do not have the power or control over what might that “coming out” will bring them once their true identities will be discovered.

If there’s anything I know that I’ve learned in class or in church is that by nature, people are different. We are unique in our own way and with that we have different sets of values and principles we believe in to work for us.

To be able to live within a person’s own personal truth without giving others any justification is the kind of freedom I guess most of us strive to have. That is, the right to be respected in the same way as any person with the same courtesy and without passing any judgments to others’ personal beliefs and actions.

The problem is, some take things too literally from the books that they read. For some, they just follow the heck what others are telling them to believe without even evaluating the morals that they are absorbing at the end of the day.

As a result, it hampers their chance to open their minds to a broader and more liberated horizon because in some ways, they don’t really apply their leanings properly into the real world.

Fortunately, in times like this, it is encouraging to know that more and more people are paving their own way in changing people’s perception about genderorientation and sexuality.

As a realization, we don’t necessarily have to have the same lives to have the same rights. Being different is what makes us all the same. We’re every color of the rainbow.~

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