So we had a speaker today in PS214 Adolescent Development. It really wasn’t anything to get excited about, until we started reading the board from the previous class. The lecture was from an openly gay man about what it is to be male or female vs. what it is to be masculine or feminine, or androgenous. So we are talking about biological gender determination, sociological gender determination, and psychological sexual preference determination, and all the while I am wearing my flagrantly pink shirt for the first time in a few weeks. Help me out here, did I pick the wrong day to wear my pink shirt? Example: he would say that about 1 in 10 statistically has same-sex attractions, and so statistically speaking, there should be 3 people in the room that are attracted to the same sex. And then he looked at me. Akward? Maybe. Then he started talking about what happens to little children when they are first taken shopping to the toy store: girls are encouraged to purchase “girly” toys like barbies and such, and boys are encouraged to get “manly” toys like trucks and guns and sporting equipment. He goes on to say that girls are more able to take on masculine roles and play with masculine toys, but if a little boy were to try to be feminine, it would be discouraged. You know what happened when I first went shopping? I chose a doll to be my first hand-picked toy. My parents fought it a little, but I wanted that doll so bad that I held out until I got it. Does that make me socially unacceptable? Oh well. We all had a good laugh about it. Besides, that doll was totally worth it: it closed its eyes when you tipped it on its back. How cool is that?