Justin Tran

We call young people who step outside gender lines “brave.” But if adults truly want to support them, we need to be willing to show some courage and embrace some discomfort, say Michele Yulo and Audrey Mason-Hyde.

“When we find out that someone is having a baby, what is the very first question we ask? ‘Boy or girl?’” says Michele Yulo in a talk given at TEDxUtica. Beginning with the blue or pink wallpaper and continuing to trucks or dolls, this distinction sets children on separate gender paths that can shape much of their lives.

But does it need to? Or, are there ways in which we can offer kids more freedom to discover who they are? Yulo and teenager Audrey Mason-Hyde offer their suggestions.

When Michele Yulo’s daughter Gabby first learned to walk and talk, she didn’t show any interest in so-called “girly” things. “In fact,” says Yulo, the Atlanta-based founder of kids’ clothing brand Princess Free Zone, “she didn’t want to be anything like me; she wanted to be more like my husband.”

Yulo made a conscious decision to support Gabby’s preferences, and, when possible, not restrict her from doing and wearing what she wanted. For Yulo, a turning point came when Gabby was seven.

“She already had short hair. One day she said to me, ‘Mom, if boys can have a buzz cut, why can’t girls?’” recalls Yulo. “And there was nothing I could say to that. She was absolutely right; it was her hair, it was her choice. I did say to her, ‘Gabby, if you buzz your hair, I just want you to know people might look at you funny.’” But Gabby told her mother she was fine with that, so they went out to get her a buzz cut.

The result was worth it, says Yulo. “Gabby could not have been happier, and I knew right at that moment that allowing her to walk out into the world how she wanted to walk out into the world was what mattered.”

“These stereotypes set in and attach themselves like a second skin that will follow a child all the way through adulthood.”

How can we translate this to the kids in our own lives? Adults need to learn to embrace them and their choices, according to Yulo. “Sometimes, kids who step outside gender lines are viewed as courageous, but I don’t believe that kids should have to be brave to be who they are. As parents, we have to be.”

This means standing up for them in public when they go against the stereotypes. For example, when Yulo and her family went to Disney World, a hotel employee asked Yulo: Was Gabby her little prince?

Yulo’s response: “No, and she’s not a princess either.’”

However, this doesn’t mean that children can’t enjoy the things they’re naturally drawn to. But we should think about when, where and how we may be directing them to fit the norms. Yulo recalls feeling her heart sink on seeing parents shoo their girls away from the boys’ clothing aisles where she and Gabby were browsing.

It’s easy to think, “What’s the big deal? Our kids have plenty of time to make their own choices when they’re grownups.” But childhood is when so many of our beliefs and self-conceptions are formed, work that it’s much harder to undo later. As Yulo says, “The reality is that these stereotypes set in and attach themselves like a second skin that will follow a child all the way through adulthood.”

Ultimately, this comes down to the aspirations that we hold for our children. Yulo asks, “We have the capability as parents to open up their worlds so that they truly have endless opportunities from which to choose. Isn’t that what we all want for our kids?”

And if we’re truly interested in expanding the possibilities for all children — not just the ones we know well — we need to look at how we handle our casual interactions. In a 2017 TEDxAdelaide talk, Audrey Mason-Hyde, then 12 years old, speaks openly about how strangers can unwittingly impose on one’s personal freedom. “In my experience, one of the first things people do is assume I’m a boy, or aren’t sure whether I’m a girl or a boy.”

Audrey’s distinctive style includes suits, bow ties, and flamingo socks. Exploring the world through fashion and clothing has been key to Audrey’s relationship with gender. “Until about the age of nine, when someone mistook me for a boy, I would reply comfortably that I’m a girl,” says Audrey. “But eventually, it stopped feeling right; instead of gaining confidence the more it happened, I lost it. ‘Girl’ didn’t feel right, but ‘boy’ didn’t feel correct either.”

“What my gender expression and identity is, is entirely about me and not about how other people perceive me.”

Now 14, Audrey identifies as non-binary, or just simply Audrey (and uses the pronouns they/their/them). But this comes with some unexpected complications in public spaces. “I remember one of my first days at school, and I was in the girls’ toilet when two girls I knew came near me and said, ‘Look, there’s a boy in here,’” Audrey recalls. “I looked over my shoulder, but there was no one there. So I asked them, ‘Where?’ I realized they meant me. I was really shocked, as I’d only been around people who knew and understood me. I felt upset and alienated.”

Similar incidents happened in restrooms outside school. Audrey says, “Often, I would get things like ‘Why are you in here?’ or ‘Wrong bathroom.’ This eventually led to me being hesitant and tentative about even going to the bathroom in public.”

These experiences made Audrey only more determined to be themselves. Audrey says, “I’ve realized that, for me, gender is a spectrum. What my gender expression and identity is, is entirely about me and not about how other people perceive me.”

For Audrey, having to think hard about which toilets to use and how people may respond is stressful and a bit dehumanizing. Audrey says, “Using the girls’ toilets, I never feel good, and I still have a tendency to go with someone else. Though I’m not labeled as a particular gender when I go to the disabled toilets, I don’t feel great still, because it just reminds me that there are mostly no toilets for people like me, who don’t identify within the gender binary, and that toilets are just another way we categorize people.”

So, what should we do when find ourselves in a bathroom with someone who has a gender identity that we can’t quite place? Audrey’s advice: Accept not knowing.

Audrey says, “Would it hurt you not to know someone’s gender? Despite how uncomfortable it might make you feel, you assuming my gender makes me feel uncomfortable every day. All I’m asking is for you to just sit with that little bit of uncomfortable to make someone else feel better.”

Watch Michele Yulo’s TEDxUtica talk:

Watch Audrey Mason-Hyde’s TEDxAdelaide talk:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Halton is Assistant Ideas Editor at TED, and a science journalist based in the Pacific Northwest.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

Ranging in age from 17 to 25, they are challenging their country’s gender norms by learning engineering and coding, and setting their sights on infinity and beyond.

In Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, a dedicated group at the Kyrgyz Space Program is intently focused on building their nation’s first-ever satellite and prepping it for a 2019 mission. The surprise: the team consists of roughly a dozen young women between the ages of 17 and 25 — and Kyrgyz Space Program is the name they’ve given themselves.

Kyrgyzstan is a sparsely populated country in the mountains of Central Asia whose economy is based on agriculture and mining; more than 30 percent of people here live below the poverty line. And it’s not one of the 72 countries with an official space agency.

And yet, in March 2018, journalist Bektour Iskender (a TED Fellow) colaunched a free course to teach girls and young women how to build a satellite. “Women in our country are physically and spiritually strong. All we need is to believe in ourselves and get external support,” says Kyzzhibek, a 23-year-old on the team. “The mission of this program is not just about learning how to make and launch a satellite. It’s just as important to be a role model for girls afraid to explore and discover their talents.”

So … why did a news reporter start a space program? The story starts back in 2007, when Iskender cofounded a project he called Kloop. An independent, Bishkek-based journalism school, Kloop gives young people ages 14 to 25 the tools and chops to produce high-quality reporting, with an emphasis on politics, human rights, culture, music and sports. It encourages peer-to-peer learning by enlisting older students to teach the younger ones. And it changed education and journalism in Kyrgyzstan forever.

Kloop’s stories took aim at corrupt politicians, exposing serious abuses such as election-related bribes and fraud. Soon, the upstart reporters began scooping traditional press outlets. Today Kloop is recognized as one of the top five news sources within the country, surpassing even BBC Kyrgyz Service.

Then, in 2016, Iskender began thinking about a new frontier for Kloop: space. He met Alex MacDonald, another TED Fellow and a program executive for NASA’s Emerging Space initiative, which encourages and enables nascent space programs around the world. MacDonald told him about small, relatively inexpensive satellites that people who aren’t aerospace engineers can build and use. “I’ve been a fan of space exploration since I was a kid, so when Alex told me that you could build a launchable satellite for $150,000, I joked, ‘I’d love to send one to space!’” recalls Iskender. “But Alex started to convince me that Kloop should start its own program.”

It seemed like a stretch: what was the connection between a youth-led media company and space technology? The answer: computer programming. Coding courses were already part of the Kloop curriculum. “We work with open government data in our investigations, extracting data related to corrupt officials, and so on. For that, you need coders, which are expensive. So we decided to grow our own,” says Iskender.

Their data journalism courses were successful, so Kloop decided to add robotics instruction, to teach student journalists to operate drones for aerial reporting. That was when Iskender noticed a huge gender gap. “Despite an open call for the course, of the 50 people who showed up for it, only two were female,” he says. “It was reflective of a problem in Kyrgyz society: girls are brought up with an attitude that technology is not for them.”

This gender imbalance was a problem. “Kloop is known in our country as the most feminist-friendly, LGBT-friendly media outlet — maybe in the whole of Central Asia,” he says. “We have the largest number of female camera operators, for example, and our sports editor is an 18-year-old girl. We also have a brilliant video engineer who is also a young woman.”

In response, Iskender and Kloop cofounder Rinat Tuhvatshin considered setting up a girls-only robotics course in 2017. Then, they thought, Why not integrate satellite building into the course? Iskender says, “A satellite-building school for girls only — what a strong message it would be for our patriarchal society, to have Kyrgyzstan’s first satellite built by a group of young women!”

Kloop put out a call for women and girls with some coding experience to join the class. About 50 young women turned up, and now, a dedicated group of a dozen meet twice a week at Kloop’s office, where they’re led by two alumni of Kloop’s programming course. They’ve spent the first part of the class learning engineering basics, including how to solder and work with Arduino hardware. They’re also receiving instruction in coding (if they’re not already proficient) and 3D printing.

What are they building? A CubeSat. CubeSats are microsatellites typically used to conduct scientific research in low Earth orbit. Each cube is 10x10x10 cm, and can be customized to take all sorts of different measurements, shoot photos or even host a tiny science experiment. CubeSats are cheap to build, and they’re cheap to put into orbit too; because they’re so small, they can squeeze into the payload of someone else’s spacecraft. “We don’t have to build a rocket, fortunately,” says Iskender. “That would be too expensive and complicated for us at this stage.”

For their first satellite, the team has pretty humble goals; they want to launch a working device that is able to send and receive signals. However, they’ve recently gotten funding — the program is supported by Patreon donations, and Kloop is also seeking private grants — for a second satellite, which will be more complicated. The group is looking into several experiments, including one that would prove whether it’s feasible to use space junk as rocket fuel. “They’re exploring the idea of directing the sun’s rays toward orbiting garbage to vaporize it and use the energy to propel the CubeSat,” says Iskender. “They’re also considering using it to take satellite imagery of the Tibetan plateau, one of the least photographed places in the world from space.”

“We’d like to involve girls in more areas mainly occupied by boys, not only space exploration,” Iskender says. But he worries that Kloop’s gender-busting efforts may have limited impact in Kyrgystan, a nation where young women are still kidnapped and wed against their will. “How do we change this?” he asks. “You can publish stories, and we do, but that’s not enough. Having Kyrgyzstan’s first space program be launched by young women — it destroys all the norms beautifully.”

Just ask Kyrgyz Space Program member 21-year-old Aiganysh. “At first I thought this idea was crazy; now I clearly see that it’s brilliant,” she says. “This experience has definitely changed my mindset. It’s made me believe that with passion, anything is possible.”

All images courtesy of Kloop.

If you’d like to support the Kyrgyz Space Program, visit its Patreon page.

Watch Bektour Iskender’s TED talk here:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karen Frances Eng is a contributing writer to TED.com, dedicated to covering the feats of the wondrous TED Fellows. Her launchpad is located in Cambridge, UK. This piece was adapted for TED-Ed from this Ideas article.