PH

Search

Avatar image
cleaned by Adblock for Youtube™ Share
Toilets, bowties, gender and me | Audrey Mason-Hyde | TEDxAdelaide
1,043,514 views•Jan 20, 2018

64K

2.9K

SHARE

SAVE

TEDx Talks
30.4M subscribers
Why is it so important for us to know someone else's gender? We live in a gendered
world, but for Audrey, gender is fluid at best an uncomfortable construct. Is there
a way to be less reliant on gender in our interactions with people? And what does
this mean when it comes to the clothes we wear, or even which toilet we choose to
use? If you met Audrey Mason-Hyde, you might think Audrey was a boy, which isn’t
quite correct, but calling Audrey a girl doesn’t feel quite right either. At 12
years old, Audrey is already an accomplished actor with film and TV credits,
including 52 Tuesdays, a film that won the Directing Award at Sundance Film
Festival and the Crystal Bear, judged by the youth jury at the Berlin International
Film Festival. With a fierce intellect and a unique sense of style, Audrey has
plenty to say about our gendered world. This talk was given at a TEDx event using
the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn
more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
Transcript

00:00
Translator: María Guadalupe Niklison Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
00:14
I wonder what you first think when you see me.
00:16
Perhaps it's something about my curls - people often mention them.
00:20
Or "What a dapper little man."
00:22
In my experience, one of the first things people do
00:25
is assume I'm a boy or aren't sure whether I'm a girl or a boy.
00:29
We do this to everyone.
00:31
We assume what gender someone is, based on how they look,
00:34
and if we can't tell, we get confused.
00:37
I say "we" because I do it too. It's ingrained.
00:41
Our first decision and mostly unconscious.
00:44
But why?
00:46
Well, I'm Audrey,
00:47
and if we are talking biology, I'm female.
00:50
But I feel it's more complex than that.
00:53
For an entry point, let's look at my style.
00:56
As you can probably see, I have a unique style,
00:59
but I wasn't born wearing suits, bow ties, and flamingo socks.
01:02
My style had to evolve, and it will keep evolving,
01:06
and I think it gives some insight into my changing experience of gender.
01:11
Here's a photo of me before I started school,
01:14
wearing a Star Wars top, a skirt, and sneakers,
01:18
demonstrating to the world that I'm a girl!
01:21
It's the skirt, right?
01:22
We all know that sign.
01:24
So at this age, I was just a girl who didn't care much about what I wore.
01:28
It was functional and varied.
01:30
This all took a different turn
01:32
when I hit the age of five and started school.
01:35
I remember one of my first days at school, and I was in the girls' toilet
01:38
when two girls I knew came near me and said, "Look, there's a boy in here."
01:43
I looked over my shoulder, but there was no one there.
01:46
So I asked them, "Where?"
01:49
I realized they meant me.
01:51
I was really shocked,
01:52
as I'd only been around people who knew and understood me.
01:56
I felt upset and alienated.
01:59
Eventually,
02:00
this misrecognition started happening in public bathrooms as well,
02:04
with adults assuming my gender.
02:06
Often, I would get things like "Why are you in here?"
02:08
or "Wrong bathroom."
02:10
This eventually lead to me being hesitant and tentative
02:13
about even going to the bathroom in public.
02:16
Mostly, people didn't actually say anything at all.
02:18
They just stared at me.
02:20
This felt, and feels, worse.
02:23
At school, this happened increasingly often,
02:26
but while many people in that situation
02:28
might have started dressing more typically female,
02:31
in dresses, with long hair, or bows,
02:34
I became more and more masculine presenting,
02:37
wearing what we consider to be boys' clothes
02:39
because in them I felt most authentically myself.
02:43
I was pretty adamant about just wearing male things.
02:46
What that meant to me was no pink, or even purple,
02:50
or any form of dress, skirt, or even glitter and frills.
02:54
I didn't think of myself as a boy,
02:56
but anything that was identified as female felt uncomfortable to me.
03:01
I adopted the label of "tomboy,"
03:04
which meant a girl who wore boy clothes and played with boys' toys.
03:09
To me, this avoided conflict.
03:11
Tomboys are common, right?
03:13
They're even considered a stage - as though we'll grow out of it.
03:17
My parents never fought my insistence on avoiding dresses.
03:20
They allowed me to choose what I wore
03:22
because they believed it had no bearing on who I was.
03:27
I started wearing shirts and bow ties to any slightly formal event.
03:30
Here's a photo of me at six wearing a bow tie I made out of paper
03:34
because Dad was wearing his fabric one.
03:38
As for my experience in bathrooms, I tried to avoid the problem
03:41
by waiting until people left before I went in
03:44
because otherwise, I'd feel trapped.
03:46
Until about the age of nine,
03:48
when someone mistook me for a boy, I would reply comfortably that I'm a girl.
03:53
But eventually, it stopped feeling right;
03:55
instead of gaining confidence the more it happened, I lost it.
03:59
"Girl" didn't feel right, but "boy" didn't feel correct either.
04:04
So, what did I want? I'm not sure I really knew at the time.
04:08
My friends started getting more and more into sports,
04:10
but I was never sporty, I was a bookworm.
04:13
If I were a boy,
04:14
people would probably have said I was a sensitive one.
04:17
They don't tend to use that term as much for girls,
04:19
because it's what's expected.
04:21
So I started hanging out with a group of girls.
04:24
This didn't really alter my style, more my attitude to the word "tomboy,"
04:28
which I grew to dislike.
04:30
I started to realize I could still be a girl
04:32
and wear typically male things.
04:35
In my mind, I was still a girl because I didn't feel like a boy.
04:40
At the age of eight,
04:41
I traveled with my parents and the cast of our film, "52 Tuesdays,"
04:45
to the Berlin International Film Festival.
04:48
"52 Tuesdays" was partly about a mom transitioning from female to male.
04:52
I image some of you are thinking, "Oh, no!
04:54
Audrey just got this gender confusion from her parents film making."
04:58
But this gender questioning happened before they started considering it,
05:01
and they say I've taught them as much about this as they've taught me.
05:06
Anyway, in Berlin, I met Bart.
05:09
Bart wore drapy black materials,
05:10
high heeled boots, nail polish, and eyeliner,
05:13
but he wasn't dressed as a woman.
05:16
This demonstrated to me
05:17
that I could be flamboyant and androgynous with my style,
05:20
that my love of bow ties didn't need to exclude anything traditionally female.
05:25
That year, when the film won the Crystal Bear Youth Jury Award,
05:29
I took to the read carpet in eyeliner and nail polish.
05:32
Here's a photo of me that night. Note the bow tie.
05:36
I started to think of gender as something more dynamic.
05:39
Gender was not your genitals or even what you wore or acted like,
05:43
and maybe it wasn't fixed.
05:45
I'm going to take a second to pose a question to you.
05:48
Why does it matter to you whether I am a boy or a girl?
05:52
And if you think it doesn't,
05:53
I'm going to really ask you to stop and think.
05:56
Have you ever come across someone whose gender you just can't place?
06:00
Have you wanted to know, even if you don't care either way,
06:04
have you wanted to know what they are?
06:06
For those of you who say, "No, I'm totally comfortable not knowing,
06:10
I don't use 'he' or 'she' when talking about them,
06:12
I just treat them as a human without any gender identifiers."
06:15
Well, that's impressive. It's hard to do.
06:19
Just try and talk about someone for a minute without using gender terms.
06:22
It's really difficult.
06:24
This is Audrey.
06:25
Audrey is a ...
06:26
... young person who doesn't identify as any gender.
06:29
Audrey writes stories and they love writing.
06:32
Audrey loves writing - not the stories love writing.
06:34
Oops.
06:36
It's hard for all of us.
06:38
We want to know because of our language
06:40
and, also, in my experience,
06:42
it's because we treat men and boys differently to women and girls.
06:46
And we want to know how to treat them.
06:49
Sometimes I'm glad that people mistake me for a boy
06:52
because I get to have real conversations with people.
06:54
They ask me about my future, and we talk about about what I want to do.
06:58
Often, when they find out I'm not a boy, they don't know how to treat me.
07:02
My friends, who show more outward signs of being girls,
07:05
often get called things like "sweetheart," or "darling," or "love."
07:09
People comment on how pretty they are.
07:13
Recently, when I traveled overseas,
07:15
I noticed a trend of gender neutral or all-gender public bathrooms,
07:19
which makes me feel so relieved.
07:21
Having that choice makes me love going to the bathroom in public,
07:25
and I love I don't have to tell anyone what genitalia I own.
07:30
Here's a photo of me in my sparkle pants, as I call them.
07:33
They really added flare to my style,
07:35
and they also really confuse some people about whether I am a boy,
07:39
or even, possibly, make them uncomfortable
07:43
because I seem like a very flamboyant, or even girly, boy.
07:48
Though I don't think this is always easy,
07:50
I'm so happy with the choices I made when I was younger
07:53
to wear what made me feel good and that I felt expressed me
07:56
because I think I would be a much unhappier kid otherwise.
07:59
I still get called a boy in public situations,
08:02
but, in terms of bathrooms,
08:03
I try to go to the all-gender or unisex ones,
08:06
or, if I can't, I go to the disabled toilets.
08:09
Although I do still use the girls' loos in school and sometimes in public.
08:14
Using the girls' toilets, I never feel good,
08:16
and I still have a tendency to go with someone else.
08:19
Though I'm not labeled as a particular gender
08:22
when I go to the disabled toilets, I don't feel great still,
08:25
because it just reminds me
08:26
that there are mostly no toilets for people like me,
08:29
who don't identify within the gender binary,
08:31
and that toilets are just another way we categorize people.
08:37
My style has evolved drastically
08:39
since the Star Wars t-shirts and skirts of my early childhood,
08:43
and I think it has a lot to say
08:45
about how I now appreciate and consider gender.
08:48
I've realized that, for me, gender is a spectrum.
08:51
What my gender expression and identity is, is entirely about me
08:55
and not about how other people perceive me.
08:57
I don't know how we deal with that
08:59
in a world so desperate to define by gender.
09:03
I'm going to leave you with that same question.
09:05
Why does it matter to you whether I am a boy or a girl?
09:09
Or that I am in the wrong bathroom?
09:12
Does it really matter to you which bathroom I use?
09:16
Because it does matter to me.
09:18
Would it hurt you not to know someone's gender?
09:21
Because despite how uncomfortable it might make you feel,
09:24
you assuming my gender makes me feel uncomfortable every day.
09:28
All I'm asking is for you to just sit with that little bit of uncomfortable
09:32
to make someone else feel better.
09:35
Because it does matter to me.
09:36
It matters to me when I walk with my friends
09:39
and you say, "Hey, girls!"
09:40
But I don't want you to make amends,
09:42
I don't hold my grudges, but everytime you say that
09:45
it smudges my happy thoughts into undefinable words.
09:48
It matters to me when you say I'm a handsome lad
09:51
because while you may be complimenting,
09:52
it makes me question my inner vision of myself.
09:55
So, strangers, sit uncomfortably
09:57
while I tell you how my gender ranges from day to day,
10:01
sometimes neutral, sometimes fluid, sometimes gentle, sometimes fierce.
10:05
It doesn't make me a boy, but it doesn't mean that I'm realigning,
10:08
and I don't want to be redefining what it means to be a girl.
10:13
Because I'm not a girl.
10:15
So it does matter to me.
10:18
(Applause)

19:27
NOW PLAYING
The first 20 hours -- how to learn anything | Josh Kaufman | TEDxCSU
TEDx Talks
25M views
8 years ago

18:37
NOW PLAYING
Master Shi Heng Yi – 5 hindrances to self-mastery | Shi Heng YI | TEDxVitosha
TEDx Talks
8.7M views
1 year ago

14:20
NOW PLAYING
Living With High Functioning Anxiety | Jordan Raskopoulos | TEDxSydney
TEDx Talks
1.4M views
3 years ago

14:26
NOW PLAYING
HOW I ESCAPED CHILD MARRIAGE TO BECOME A WOMEN’S RIGHTS ACTIVIST | Mercy Akuot |
TEDxKakumaCamp
TEDx Talks
562K views
2 years ago

Mix
NOW PLAYING
Mix - TEDx Talks
YouTube

10:56
NOW PLAYING
การปรั บเพื่อไปตอ
่ ในยุคปกติใหม่ | Sanon Wangsrangboon | TEDxBangkokSalon
TEDx Talks
434 views
2 days ago
New

13:31
NOW PLAYING
Why I live a zero waste life | Lauren Singer | TEDxTeen
TEDx Talks
3.6M views
5 years ago

12:19
NOW PLAYING
Papel da Mulher Rural no Desenvolvimento da Economia | Catarina Chidiamassamba |
TEDxBeira
TEDx Talks
534 views
2 days ago
New

17:37
NOW PLAYING
How not to take things personally? | Frederik Imbo | TEDxMechelen
TEDx Talks
6.3M views
1 year ago

26:34
NOW PLAYING
Mindset is Everything | Cole Bennett | TEDxUIUC
TEDx Talks
3.1M views
1 year ago

How to learn any language in six months | Chris Lonsdale | TEDxLingnanUniversity

TEDx Talks
25M views
7 years ago

The Super Mario Effect - Tricking Your Brain into Learning More | Mark Rober |
TEDxPenn
TEDx Talks
9.8M views
2 years ago

Conectando mãos e coração | Lu Gastal | TEDxSaoPaulo

TEDx Talks
838 views
2 days ago
New

Own your face | Robert Hoge | TEDxSouthBank

TEDx Talks
7.6M views
6 years ago

What makes you special? | Mariana Atencio | TEDxUniversityofNevada

TEDx Talks
15M views
4 years ago

Life's short, make the most of it | Michiel Vandeweert | TEDxUHasselt

TEDx Talks
350K views
2 years ago

The most important lesson from 83,000 brain scans | Daniel Amen | TEDxOrangeCoast
TEDx Talks
15M views
7 years ago

My philosophy for a happy life | Sam Berns | TEDxMidAtlantic

TEDx Talks
45M views
7 years ago

Life is easy. Why do we make it so hard? | Jon Jandai | TEDxDoiSuthep

TEDx Talks
11M views
9 years ago

Learning a language? Speak it like you’re playing a video game | Marianna Pascal |
TEDxPenangRoad
TEDx Talks
8.5M views
3 years ago