Accepting The New ‘Norm’

I look up at the whiteboard to hear my 10th-grade Psychology teacher explaining the ideas of Freud when I hear someone whisper my name across the room. Puzzled, I look around to see who was talking about me. I land my eyes on a couple of guys talking and laughing. This was something I didn’t really care about as we were in class, only until I heard one of the boys making fun of me for showing my emotions about something that happened yesterday. Something a man “can’t’’ do. I realized after hearing this that it was referring to when I broke my middle finger in gym class the day prior. I left the class due to the pain to go get it checked out by a doctor instead of “manning up” and staying throughout the day. Which apparently was an incentive for these guys to make fun of me, at least in their minds.  

I choose to continuously ignore their comments and I decide to talk to my friends instead. That is until I hear one guy talking about how I am a P*s*y for reacting the way I did. This made me infuriated. I decide to look towards them and flip them off. Not the best method to tell them to be mature but it was an unconscious action that just happened to occur. But after I flipped them off I realized something that made me feel calmer and more accepting. It was that I was okay with my gender and defying gender ‘norms’ when they were not. This flip switched and I felt almost proud for what I did after injuring my finger. Now, to them, it may be something viewed as ‘not manly’ or being a ‘sissy’ but I didn’t care. It showed me that I was fully accepting of who I am and how I act even though some people aren’t. This incident, even though it was something small had huge impacts on how I view myself and other gender ‘norms’ surrounding me. After that day I am now more knowledgeable and accepting of what people do even if they belong to a specific gender or if they don’t at all.