MEET THE PEOPLE - EP.3

pay it no mind

MEET THE PEOPLE - EP.2

MEET THE PEOPLE - EP. 1

interview with gisele

In this interview with Gisele, we attempted to discover and understand the public's experiences with gender discrimination. As Gisele was female, we unfortunately thought that it was more likely she would have been confronted to gender discrimination in some kind of way, especially with a career in the music industry such as Opera. She claimed that working in a patriarchal industry such as this one, male managers would expect their female talent to be as feminine as possible. Perhaps it could be seen that these particular male managers would exploit or exaggerate the talent's 'feminine' features in order to sell tickets. However, it could be argued that with Opera's extensive history the traditional views on both male and female characters are well established in the genre as part of the codes and conventions of Opera. A good example of this would be the dresses that the women would wear in order to flaunt their bodacious figures in hopes to fulfil the audience's voyeurism as the audience's expected this of them. In general dresses are seen as 'feminine' no matter how short, long or tight they are. Although Opera is heavily based on the music and vocals of a person, talking to Gisele made us understand that the representation of the character and themselves as performers are just as important for the business.

Our interviewer, Oya asked a series of unscripted questions as she personally wanted to have more of a conversation with Gisele as the topic of 'gender' can be seen as sensitive for some people. The questions ultimately provided us with an insight to Gisele's own thoughts and opinions on gender.

On the other hand it seemed that Gisele's personal life effected her way of thinking. She discussed her Brazilian origin and her strong catholic upbringing. She personally felt that the music industry discriminated her in a number of ways. She exclaimed that she was never really listened too in terms of expressing her opinions and ideas that she ultimately just had to 'follow orders'. She concluded the discussion by saying that the industry is dominated by "men" and that they want it to stay that way.

Due to her Catholic upbringing she presented an interesting perspective on gender neutrality basing her opinion on the Christian belief of "love thy neighbour". When elaborating on this she explained she felt that no matter the gender of a person they should be respected and treated equally, seen as a human rather than a 'gender'.

Evaluation:

In this interview we encountered a technical difficulty with audio due to the fact that we had not thoroughly tested the audio when we began test shooting. Unfortunately after the interview, when we went to playback the footage we realised that there wasn't any audio at all, this was due to the fact that the microphone was not properly set-up in order for it to work with the DSLR. As an outcome of this we had only filmed the interview without any audio, which was inevitably most important. From this we learnt that it was vital to throughly test the equipment before shooting, even if that meant to upload the content onto a computer in order to be satisfied that everything was working properly.


written by I Joshua Manley
edited by I Gabriella Livingstone

survey

Online:
http://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/3CARJ/

Campus:
http://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/RJX1G/

oya's research on gender neutrality

Gender Neutrality

I done some research about definition of the gender neutral you will find different way to explain what is gender neutral link below. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Gender%20Neutral https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/gender-neutral https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality

I done some research about what is gender-neutral language link below you will read about explanation about gender neutral language

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_language Why we need gender-neutral bathrooms? For trans people who don't fit neatly into the gender binary public restrooms are source of anxiety and the place where they are most likely to be questioned or harassed. https://youtu.be/XAcARiiK5uY

University begin recognised gender neutral activists There have always been people who have felt profoundly uncomfortable in their assigned gender roles,” . “What we can do to make them safer, or make them feel recognized, heard, seen, understood? To validate their identity and experience could, in fact, save their life.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/education/edlife/a-university-recognizes-a-third-gender-neutral.html?_r=0

This video explains very simple way what is gender-neutral? Which is everything!

https://youtu.be/pTtRFNmat2E

Why gender neutral child raising is a terrible idea? What people against raising children gender neutral ? What is their points of view? http://thefederalist.com/2016/07/13/why-gender-neutral-child-raising-is-a-terrible-idea/t

A GROWING number of Aussie parents are choosing to break free of traditional gender stereotypes and instead adopting a “gender neutral” approach to raising their kids.

kids to explore all the options available when it comes to toys, clothing and media, to ensure they don’t feel their choices are limited to the gender-specific options presented to them.

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/kids/why-im-raising-my-kids-to-be-gender-neutral/news-story/56d07221c8495dc6cd2c28367cf58982

Here are the 6 worst gender-neutral parenting mistakes you can make from UK's mum.

https://youtu.be/WQdhJ7gTBFU

Gender Neutral

Gender classification where one individual does not feel/belong to neither genders. Lack of gender resolve and behaves like both but mostly neither...

urbandictionary.com

I believe best way to understand todays society do some research about gender anthropology. Anthropologists study of various aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology and cultural anthropology study the norms and values of societies. Today anthropologist know " Gender is a social construction.

http://www.livinganthropologically.com/2012/05/16/anthropology-sex-gender-sexuality-social-constructions/

Documentary film Q2P

Director: Paromita Vohra Release: 2006 Length: 55 mins Location: India, Mumbai / Asia

Q2P is a film about toilets and the city. It sifts through the dream of Mumbai as a future Shanghai and searches for public toilets, watching who has to queue to pee. As the film observes who has access to toilets and who doesn’t, we begin to also see the imagination of gender that underlies the city’s shape, the constantly shifting boundaries between public and private space; we learn of small acts of survival that people in the city’s bottom half cobble together and quixotic ideas of social change that thrive with mixed results; we hear the silence that surrounds toilets and sense how similar it is to the silence that surrounds inequality. The toilet becomes a riddle with many answers and some of those answers are questions – about gender, about class, about caste and most of all about space, urban development and the twisted myth of the global metropolis.

https://youtu.be/hsJh_BamKgo

Australian anthropologist analysing notions of genitalia and sexuality in different cultures causes to reflect upon the the values ascribed to sexuality in Australian culture.

https://youtu.be/DhhkA-w02QA

Anthropologists shows how much society change last century. This also effect gender role of woman and men in the society today.

https://youtu.be/Ruzjlz2X2yU

jacopo's research on gender neutrality

Gender Neutrality

Gender neutrality  also known as gender-neutralism or the gender neutrality movement, describes the idea that policies, language, and other social institutions should avoid distinguishing roles according to people's sex or gender, in order to avoid discrimination arising from the impression that there are social roles for which one gender is more suited than another.

Gender neutral in the modern society.

One of the most common and debated  argument in the gender field is the unisex bathroom or gender neutral bathroom, According to Dalhousie University, Canada: "A gender-neutral washroom is one where the signage is visibly identified with open, inclusive language, not just male or female. It's evident these facilities are void of gender identity and have accommodations that are especially sensitive to the needs of a greater range of people. Some people are not comfortable using male or female-designated washrooms."

This

The gender neutrality  now a days it manifests it self not only  with genderless bathroom but   in Sweden we can observe some  political and social  movement  especially in Sweden.

One of the first gender neutral school opened in Sweden in 2011 called Egalia that mean: equality in Latin this institution and the same Swedish state promotes a gender neutral education among the kids  in addiction some families have start to rise their children with a genderless education using pronoun ad “hen”.  Sweden have a lot of project  in the gender equality field this is translated in  one of the most democratic country in the world.

Gender neutral in science

The issue of gender neutrality isn’t only political and social but is also scientific   gender neutral person also known as: “gender blind” or “unisex” it’s  someone who adheres to not distinguishing people by gender. Unfortunately  in a few births per thousand some individuals will be born with a single sex chromosome (X or Y) and some with three or more sex chromosomes (XXX, XYY or XXY, etc.). In addition, some males are born XX due to the translocation of a tiny section of the sex determining region of the Y chromosome. Similarly some females are also born XY due to mutations in the Y chromosome.

In this case there is a genetic disorder that in many cases could lead to a total  asexuality of individual  in other cases could be just an hormonal disorder or a mental one in all the cases the subject don’t have any attraction for any other individual.

beyond the binary

BEYOND THE BINARY: A Magazine for UK Non-Binary People
This is a magazine website which aims to give non-binary people in the UK the opportunity to contribute and share what they are experiencing.
This website has been created because of a lack of non-binary representation in the media.
'Beyond the binary' wants to re-balance that and give these people a platform.
They give non-binary people the chance to post articles and any other media on a range of different topics, discussions, opinions, artworks, etc.
They have chosen the UK because the majority of websites and resources come mainly from US and there's not a lot of visibility of non-binary people in the United Kingdom.

http://beyondthebinary.co.uk

The Happy Hippie Foundation

http://www.happyhippies.org/#our-work

The Happy Hippie Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded by Miley Cyrus. Their mission is to rally young people to fight injustice facing homeless youth, LGBTQ youth and other vulnerable populations. The organisation also supply several individual stories and opinion which can be very educational on a range of subject of matters.

The video below is a very interesting discussion where two individuals talk about their experiences and also provide several definitions and clarity on expansive gender and non-binary groups. Gender Spectrum hosted a live broadcast discussion to help parents and family members to gain some understanding around when a loved one says they are genderqueer, agender, bigender, non-binary, or other gender identities.This provides a perspective on language to use and also discuss pronouns, miss gendering, stereotypical/personal upbringing as well as discrimination and is very insightful

potential colour scheme

This post puts into perspective our potential colour scheme that we intend to employ. When thinking of a particular colour scheme we felt that it was necessary to chose a certain colour that is not relatable to a gender - in other words, a gender neutral colour. We felt that the colours orange and yellow didn't have any particular association with gender and as they are both rather warm colours, they would add a positive feel to the piece which would work well in presenting gender neutrality in a positive perspective. They are with joy and sunshine. Orange represents "enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation. To the human eye, orange is a very hot colour, so it gives the sensation of heat. Nevertheless, orange is not as aggressive as red." Yellow produces a warming effect, arouses cheerfulness, stimulates mental activity, and generates muscle energy. As shown in the second image below, the fetus and womb are often visioned to be an orange, fleshy tone which correspond to the warmth and reasoning for our choice. This would hopefully look very natural, presenting the subject of matter to be natural. We believe that this could work better than using a cold blue as it would have negative connotations of sadness as well as relating to males whilst a hot red/pink would just relate to females. 

Inspirational images

potential technique

The effect seen below in the following images have been achieved through the use of using a projector to project patterns onto the subject. Ryan Panchal is a Graphic Designer and this technique of projection has been used very effectively to show the pattern of the shirt which is the same as the projected pattern. The projection provides the image with a bit of content as the pattern is used for a reason, to advertise the t shirt. This technique could be successful for us as it could allow us to add the further needed aspect to our project which could supply a clear meaning. So ultimately we could use the method of project in a similar way as we would be advertising gender neutrality in the sense that we would be making the meaning and subject of matter of our piece much clearer to the audience. This technique would also make our piece multi-media verging across different platforms and technologies. I like the sense of depth and form that is created through the placement of the projection coming from slightly off centre.This also makes it easier for the audience to realise that there is a person hidden in the projected image. The patterns work very well in disguising the subject and hiding their identity. This could be applied to our works in order to hide the gender of the subject and could perhaps be achieved through create a collage of images and detailed patterns that relate to gender neutrality. The importance of the projection would then be vital and therefore the choice of the images would have to be spot on in order to match our intentions and illustrate our concept. 

non-binary media coverage

"Nonbinary gender is an umbrella term covering any gender identity that doesn't fit within the gender binary. The label may also be used by individuals wishing to identify as falling outside of the gender binary without being any more specific about the nature of their gender."
http://nonbinary.org/wiki/Nonbinary_gender

Understanding non-binary people: a guide for the media: http://transmediawatch.org/Documents/non_binary.pdf

• Non-binary people are individuals who don't feel male or female. They may embody elements of both or feel to be something different.
• Non-binary people use a range of different terms to describe themselves.
• Non-binary people feel invisible. Media ignore them as media consider gender being the sole focus  of the coverage. In fact, media coverage of the non-binary is mostly described as ignorant.
• Poor public understanding is the main reason of street harassment against non-binary people.
• Non-binary people just want to lead a normal life and be respected as male or female individuals are.

This is a very simple and direct guide which can help people understand what non-binary means and how non-binary people feel about mass media. Media tend to ignore this topic as they consider female or male being the only two existing genders. Non-binary might be seen as 'abnormal' by some people as mass media have a great influence on their minds. This is why non-binary people do not want media to hide their identities, their stories. All they need is respect, dignity and acceptance.

gender neutral language/pronouns

GENDER NEUTRAL LANGUAGE
Many gender neutral people feel uncomfortable being addressed with masculine or feminine pronouns. They have decided to launch some gender neutral pronouns which are not associated with biological gender. The only English recognised gender neutral pronoun is they but it is not accepted by everyone. This is why some have attempted to introduce gender neutral language.
Gender neutral language avoids prejudices toward a specific social gender.
Example:  policeman becomes police officer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_language

During the 1970s, feminists Casey Miller and Kate Swift wrote The Handbook Of Nonsexist Writing based on gender neutral language to stop excluding and discriminating women.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handbook_of_Nonsexist_Writing


https://apps.carleton.edu/student/orgs/saga/pronouns/
https://genderneutralpronoun.wordpress.com/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34901704

Guidelines for gender neutral language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_language

gender neutrality

Definition (Cambridge Dictionary) -  Gender neutrality describes the notion of "relating to people and not especially to men or to women". This movement separates a person from gender in order to avoid gender discrimination.

It could be considered that gender neutrality is a subculture when applying Dick Hebdidge's theory. He believes that "A subculture is a group of like minded individuals who feel neglected by societal standards and who develop a sense of identity which differs to the dominant on to which they belong." Many gender neutrals wish to detach themselves from gender as they could feel discriminated by the dominant "societal standards" would cloud over gender and even sexuality.

What is Gender Neutral?
 



Public policies - Gender neutral restrooms have been designed to eliminate gender distinctions, without distinguishing the gender of the person using them. They act as an anti-discrimination protections on the basis of race, colour, religion, national origin, sex, pregnancy status, age, disability, and genetic information. According to Dalhousie University, Canada: "A gender-neutral washroom is one where the signage is visibly identified with open, inclusive language, not just male or female. It's evident these facilities are void of gender identity and have accommodations that are especially sensitive to the needs of a greater range of people. Some people are not comfortable using male or female-designated washrooms."

We feel that the awareness of Gender Neutrality isn't vivid in society and believe that a lot of people do not know what being gender neutral is or are confused about it. Our aim is to attempt to create a piece that educates our audience about the subject and raise further awareness.

(video research) beyond the gender binary

Yee Won Chong

• Harassment in the bathrooms
• Don’t use humour

Judith Butler - Theorist

Judith Butler is an American philosopher and a gender theorist who played influential role in shaping modern feminism. She is most recognisable for a her book “Gender Trouble” which promotes the notion that Gender is “performative” meaning that “gender is the repeated stylisation of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance”.

She believes that gender roles are constructed by society which form the stereotypical categorisation of gender. She feels that gender is developed, stating that " nobody is a gender from the start" and that "Gender is culturally formed" but “it's also a domain of agency or freedom". The idea that gender ideals is formed by society suggests that those who do not follow these ideals will have to “resist the violence that is imposed by ideal gender norms” which comes in the form is gender discrimination.

Gender discrimination is a situation in which someone is treated less well because of their sex, usually when a woman is treated less well than a man. We as a group found this very interesting as through our research we found that one of the main purposes of the Gender Neutral movement is to avoid gender discrimination. We believe that gender neutrality allows a person to be judged on who they are as a person rather than their gender and if the conform to gender stereotypes. Being gender neutral allows people to do and act however they feel.

when no gender fits

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/when-no-gender-fits-a-quest-to-be-seen-as-just-a-person/2014/09/20/1ab21e6e-2c7b-11e4-994d-202962a9150c_story.html

When no gender fits
This is the story of Kelsey, a non-binary person who has encountered several issues during their teenage years, feeling that the world we live in insists that we have to choose between male and female and there's no other way to identify ourselves.
Luckily enough, Kelsey has discovered that they are not alone. Many people feel the way they feel.
Many people have fought and still fight to make societies understand that gender identity is ''one's personal experience of one's own gender.''

• Which box do you check when you don't belong in any box? 
• How do you navigate a world that identifies with male or female and the place that feels most right to you is neither?
• “I’m non-binary, agender, and use they/them/their pronouns.''
• Using a pronoun that feels right: ex.: They.
• Defining gender on a spectrum rather than as a binary.
• Being agender is like living on an island apart from the rest of the world, so it is important to learn thinking of people in terms of how close they are to reaching this island.

fingering fruit- Stephanie Sarley

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRfQuRn-dFRH1953qz0RorQ/videos
http://stephaniesarley.com/videos/
 We also found the sexualisation of objects interesting and felt that Stephanie Sarley's use of fruit was also interesting due to the role/identity that fruit has in Botany. In Botany a fruit is the ripened ovary or ovaries—together with seeds—from one or more flowers. The fruits of a plant are responsible for dispersing the seeds that contain the embryo and protecting the seeds as well. So we felt that this worked well in relating to the women's reproductive system and opening up various interpretations as to why the fruit was being touched in a sexual manner.