Blog 5: Project Proposal

My critical question that I am hoping to answer is, "What impact do families have on the gender identities of young people?" For my second project, I will be doing a profile of an agender individual named Bobbi. I chose Bobbi to do my profile on because, as an agender person, they are neither male nor female. I thought that this would be a very interesting topic to cover, as most people don't know much about the gender identities outside of cisgender and transgender, and I also thought that interviewing an agender person would help shed some light on gender roles and the gender binary since they do not fit into either of the preset gender roles.

Specifically, I want to know about Bobbi's interests, hobbies, and mannerisms that make up their unique gender identity, and I want to know how these have changed over time. I will be asking them about what they did when they were younger, and how their parents and siblings reacted to that to see how their family may have influenced their choices of activities when their gender identity was still forming.

I barely know Bobbi. They are dating one of my coworkers, and I know very little about them except that they are agender and they are into punk fashion. I asked them if they would be interested in conducting an interview with me for my English class when I met them last night (they came to pick up their girlfriend from my work), and we have been in contact through text message. I have arranged to perform my first interview with them tonight.

Here are some questions I have decided to ask in my interview:

1. Tell me a little bit about yourself. (What are your interests, hobbies, things like that?)
2. Do you consider any of your hobbies to be masculine or feminine?
3. What is your family like? (Do you live with both parents? Any siblings?)
4. How do you personally define "agender?" 
5. Are you "out" as agender to your family?
6. How does your family feel about you being agender?
7. When did you first start identifying as agender?
8. Before you realized you were agender, in what ways were you different compared to how you are now? (Appearance, personality, interests?)
9. When you were young (elementary school age) what sort of hobbies and interests did you have?
10. Were there any activities that your parents tried to make you do that you were not interested in? (And if so, why did you not want to do them?)
11. As you grew up, were there any hobbies that you stopped doing?
12. When you were young, what was your relationship like with your siblings?
13. What sort of things did you do with your siblings when you were young, and how were they different from what you do together now?
14. What do you think you will be doing in your life in five years?
15. Do you think your family will continue to support you as you continue your transition to being agender?

I will be conducting this interview in-person. I have an AT-2020 cardioid condenser microphone that I will be using to make an audio recording of the interview.