fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Gazetteer deduplication in Pandas
By: Enrico Alemani
Tags: Deduplication, Pandas, Dedupe

Gazetteer deduplication is for matching a messy data set against a ‘canonical’ dataset (i.e. gazette). The former contains misspellings, typos, leading/trailing blanks, whereas the latter must be clean and well formatted. The goal is to match records between the two sources so that each mispelt entry can be replaced (i.e. canonicalized) with its correct form in the gazette.

An examples of gazetteer deduplication is the situation where a messy list of city names reported by online users are cleaned up by being matched against a clean list of names taken from a trusted domain like Open Street Maps.

Gazetteer dedupe in action

In this tutorial, I’ll go through an example showing how to perform gazetteer deduplication using pandas-dedupe, a python library built on top of dedupe. This is my third tutorial about pandas-dedupe. If you wish to learn more about the inner workings of this library as well as its parent dedupe.io, please refer to part I — Records deduplication in Pandas (see ‘[the intuition]’ section) or the excellent dedupe.io documentation.

[the code] How gazetter deduplication _is done_

First, let’s install pandas-dedupe

pip install pandas-dedupe

Note: there is a dash (‘-’) :)

Second, let’s import the relevant libraries and get some data:

We have two main dataframe:

clean_data: this is our gazette. It contains a clean and well-formatted list of street names.

Note: the gazette dataframe should consist of only a single variable.

Note: the gazette dataframe should consist of only a single variable. messy_data — this is the dirty dataframe we want to deduplicate and canonicalize. It is a simple dataframe containing two variables: ‘street_name’ and ‘city’. The variable ‘street_name’ appears to contain many typos that we need to clean up.

Third, let’s start the deduplication process

At this point, users are asked to manually label a sample of records by comparing entries in clean_data against records in messy_data and establishing whether examples are the same (‘y’) or distinct (’n’). While labelling, users can skip records by pressing ‘u’ or go back to the previous one (‘p’) in case they made a mistake. Finally, they can press ‘f’ to terminate the task. The UI looks like the following:

Active learning

Once users are done labelling, dedupe will take care of the rest: assign record to clusters (‘cluster id’), including reporting confidence in the grouping (‘confidence’) and canonicalize records (‘canonical_street_name’).

Here is how the output looks like:

Output

All examples have been assigned to a sensible cluster with reasonable confidence and canonicalized correctly.

(:
Matching Country Information in Python
By: Joe T. Santhanavanich
Tags: Data Analysis, Python, Covid 19, Pandas, Data Science

Usage

First, you can create a blank Python file and import the pycountry library.

import pycountry

Then, you can get any information from each country from the following attributes:

Name (e.g. Thailand)

Alpha 2 code (e.g. “TH”)

Alpha 3 code (e.g. “THA”)

Numeric code (e.g. “764”)

Official name (e.g. “Kingdom of Thailand”)

For example, if you have “Alpha 2 code” and you can use countries.get command to get all information:

pycountry.countries.get(alpha_2='TH')

>>> Country(alpha_2='TH', alpha_3='THA', name='Thailand', numeric='764', official_name='Kingdom of Thailand')

If you want only the name output, you can do it in a single command as follows:

pycountry.countries.get(alpha_2='TH').name

>>> 'Thailand'

The PyCountry library also comes with a “fuzzy” search to help you to find countries without input their types. For example:

pycountry.countries.search_fuzzy('Thailand')

>>> [Country(alpha_2='TH', alpha_3='THA', name='Thailand', numeric='764', official_name='Kingdom of Thailand')]

That’s about it. Now, let’s head to try this library in the real-world use case.
40 Examples to Master Pandas
By: Soner Yıldırım
Tags: Python, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Pandas, Data Science

40 Examples to Master Pandas

Photo by Heng Films on Unsplash

Pandas is one of the most widely-used data analysis and manipulation libraries. It provides numerous functions and methods to clean, process, manipulate, and analyze data.

The best way to get comfortable working with Pandas is through practice. I previously wrote a practical guide that contains 30 examples.

In this article, I will enrich the examples to cover a broader scope together with the previous article. 40 examples in this article will include not only the basic functions and techniques but also some extreme cases.

Most of the examples include the functions and methods that were not discussed in the previous article. The few examples that cover the same functions are the ones that I want to emphasize and explain again with a different example.

We will be using a marketing and a grocery data set to do the examples. The first example is reading the csv files into Pandas dataframes.
Primal Data Advent Calendar #8: How to successfully print a pandas or numpy object to a console
By: Katarina Benesova
Tags: Console, Pandas, Python, Numpy

If you’ve ever tried seeing the contents of a pd.DataFrame, you’re familiar with the story: you run print(df.head()) to see the first five rows of a DataFrame df , but what you end up with in a console [0] is just a narrow preview, by default limited to 80 characters:

Example of a 10-column DataFrame printed to PyCharm Run console.

In general, constraining the console output somehow is a reasonable approach. However, what one usually works with using pandas or numpy are data structures with more than 2-3 columns — and its rarely hundreds of them, hence printing all columns can be a reasonable idea [1].

Why would one need to print all columns?

From my day-to-day experience, you almost always want to print more than the 80 char preview, limiting the number of rows rather than columns. Consider some common use cases, such as

you’ve just created a DataFrame and you want to check if the values are as expected

you loaded data from, say a csv, and you want to see what’s inside and if the dates were parsed correctly

you joined two DataFrames in SQL-like fashion and you’d like to check the result

you want to get an idea of the values ranges and distribution of the numeric columns by running print(df.describe()) . This is what you get by a plain print:

Result of print(df.describe())

In all these cases, 80 characters are rarely enough. Let’s now take the first use case as an example and see what we can do about the printing.

I have a DataFrame, what’s inside?

The following code snippet creates a mockup DataFrame with 10 columns of data regarding, let’s say, flats and fills it with random integers and string UUIDs.

Running the code results in output we’ve already seen at the beginning:

Example of a 10-column DataFrame printed to PyCharm Run console.

You can get the full list of columns along with their their data types by running print(df.info()) , but still, seeing all 10 columns and their content as a sanity check would be useful.

The solution

The answer is pd.set_option(). While there are over 40 options available for configuration, you only need two: display.max_columns to increase the number of allowed columns and display.width to increase the line width. Adding this to the previous example should do the trick:

Setting display option for pandas objects

Now we get the whole DataFrame. While it might not look so nice in a narrow-style formatted Medium article, you might appreciate it in your IDE.
How to upload data from Excel to Firestore with Python
By: Daniel M
Tags: Excel, Python, Firebase, Firestore, Pandas

When you have to enter data into your Firestore database you are stuck with entering every document manually. This short article will show you how to use pandas and the firebase-admin sdk in Python to parse an Excel sheet and send it to your Firestore database.

I assume you already have a Firestore project. Go to your Firebase console and click on the Settings icon next to Project Overview (1.). Now you should open the Project settings menu entry (2.).

Now we have to switch to the Service Accounts tab.

Scroll down and you will see a button which says Generate new private key. Click it and download the generated JSON file.

Rename the downloaded file to something shorter like serviceAccountKey.json. Now, the last thing to do before we can start coding our python script is to create a new folder somewhere on your system and copy the serviceAccountKey.json file into the folder.
Pandas ile Veri Manipülasyonu
By: Ünal Berk Eken
Tags: Analysis, Beginner, Pandas Dataframe, Pandas, Data Science

Churn for Bank Customers(EDA and Models)

Explore and run machine learning code with Kaggle Notebooks | Using data from Churn for Bank Customers
Explorando uma rede do Comitê Permanente da FIFA com NetworkX
By: Mateus Dos Santos
Tags: Data Science, Data Visualization, Python, Pandas, Network

FIFA - UCINET Software

DESCRIPTION: Two Networks of Standing Committee membership. These are overt networks with covert elements. DATA: 2-Mode…
Q#11: Categorizing Food
By: Abish Pius
Tags: Python, Data Cleaning, Beginner, Pandas, Data Science

Answer:

This question tests your understanding of Pandas for dataframe manipulation. The first step is to create the dataframe object:

import pandas as pd raw_data = {'food': ['bacon', 'STRAWBERRIES', 'Bacon', 'STRAWBERRIES', 'BACON', 'strawberries', 'Strawberries', 'pecans'], 'pounds': [4, 3.5, 7, 3, 6, 8, 1, 3]} data = pd.DataFrame(raw_data, columns = ['food', 'pounds'])

Now there are multiple ways to add columns to a dataframe in Pandas, I will use the most simple method which is just declaring a new column name as an index in your pandas object and setting it equal to a list/array of your desired results.

Before this, lets create the conditionals, note the differences in spelling of the food objects this is a common trap and it requires that you know some string manipulation in python. In this case, we are going to force all the characters to be lowercase with the method .lower(). Let us make a list to store the results and then add the list to the dataframe.
Performing Analysis of Meteorological Data
By: Ayush Kumar
Tags: Data Analysis, Data Visualization, Matplotlib, Meteorological Data, Pandas

First of all let’s import all the required libraries -

Now we’re going to load the ‘WeatherHistory’ dataset -

We will use our 'Formatted Date' column as the index.

Let’s explore this dataset…

Now that we’ve studied the dataset in detail, it’s time to move on to the next step which is cleaning the dataset.

We will convert the Timezone to +00:00 UTC and resample our data to include only the required columns for our analysis.

Now let’s dig deeper using some graphs and visualizations.

Here we’ve plotted the yearly variation in Apparent Temperature (C) and Humidity over the 10 year period starting from 2006 to 2016 -

As we can see that both the peaks and the troughs in the graph are almost same throughout the 10 year period.

Here is a plot that shows the yearly variation in Apparent Temperature (C) and Humidity for the month of April over the 10 year period starting from 2006 to 2016 -

We can clearly see that global warming has caused an uncertain fluctuation of average Apparent Temperature over the past 10 years.

There is a sharp rise of temperature between years 2008-2009 which again decreases in year 2009-2010.

It is observed that the average Apparent Temperature is at its peak in year 2009 which further drops to its lowest in year 2015.

Whereas the average Humidity has remained nearly constant over the period of time.
All You Need to Know of the Pandas Transform Function
Tags: Group By, Programming, Pandas, Python

Why and how you should use the Pandas Transform function in your code

Photo by Pascal Müller on Unsplash

After reading this article, you will know:

How you should use the Pandas transform function in combination with groupby() Use cases of the transform function

1. Pandas transform function

The Pandas transform is a relatively unknown function in the pandas packages.

You use it in conjunction with the groupby function to aggregate data but at the same time you keep your orignal shape.

If you use groupby with apply to summarize data, you notice that your data gets reduced on the level of the groupby variable.

However, if you want to keep your original shape, you should use transform.

2. Use cases

Imagine, we would want to know the earliest invoicedate of each customer.

Using a normal aggregation function

df.groupby('CustomerID')['InvoiceDate'].min()

Notice that your total rows have been reduced to 3 rows instead of 7 rows since the output only displays the minimum date for an unique customerID.

Using transform()

df.groupby('CustomerID')['InvoiceDate'].transform('min')

Notice that the original shape stays the same.

The minimum invoice date is now given for each unique ID. You can add this result back to your original dataframe in the following way:

df['minimum InvoiceDate'] = df.groupby('CustomerID')['InvoiceDate'].transform('min')

An other use case are calculating the % share of total sales of each transaction by customer.

Happy programming!

Cheers,

Ewoud
Pandas read_excel removed support for xlsx files
Tags: Pandas, Python Programming, Python, Python Pandas

How you can solve the XLRDError since support for xlsx filetypes has been removed

Source: Myself with the application Mematic

A lot of people encounter the following error when using their read_excel function from the pandas package:

Pandas uses the xlrd as their default engine for reading excel files. However, xlrd has removed support for anything other than xls files in their latest release.

This causes you to receive the error that the xlsx filetype is no longer supported when calling the read_excel function on a xlsx excel using pandas.

To solve this, do the following:

Install openpyxl : This is another excel package that still supports the xlsx format

: This is another excel package that still supports the xlsx format Set the engine to “openpyxl” instead of the default “xlrd”

# Install openyxl

pip install openpyxl # set engine parameter to "openpyxl" pd.read_excel(path, engine = 'openpyxl')



Happy programming!

Cheers,

Ewoud
03: Things That Frustrates Me
By: Leticia Liao
Tags: Gender Equality, Social Construct, Gender

The Unspoken Rules

Throwback to a summer when I was 12, I was running around with a white tank top because it was hot in our house. Keep in mind that age 12 is when puberty just hits. I loved wearing tank tops around the house. I didn’t see a problem with it.

Mum: You shouldn’t be wearing just a white tank top. Your dad is here.

Whoops. 12-year-old me was confused about what that was supposed to mean. I wasn’t bothered wearing a crop top at home because it gets quite itchy and stuffy. After all, I’m in my house and dad is someone I know. I didn’t see a problem with it.

Soon I figured out more of these “rules” which falls under the How to Puberty guide, or perhaps it’s called How to Be Self Conscious. I was sitting at my desk in a T-shirt one day, with sleeves that are slightly over my shoulder.

Dad: Why don’t you shave? That’s gross.

Oh no. I didn’t see a problem with it, but I knew it made me very self-conscious. Since then I don’t think I’ve ever looked at my body hair the same way again. They seemed… gross. Even though none of these rules made sense to me at the time, I never questioned why. I subconsciously learnt these unspoken rules.

These thoughts didn’t hit me again until I was 17, when I’ve grown to become a more independent thinker. I would spent hours at night getting frustrated over things that still don’t make sense. Sometimes it hurts my head when I think too hard, but I’m glad that it is hurting— it means that I’m consciously questioning these weird social constructs.

Awhile ago I was told by my best friend that I am “too obsessed with the topic of gender”. Aha quite offended. “Sometimes you are forced to speak up about these issues”, I replied, “maybe you are lucky to not realise any of these things, because they do bug me a lot.”

Photo by Qijin Xu on Unsplash

Making Sense of the World

My thoughts become louder as I stepped out of the all-girls’ school comfort bubble. When you are stuck in the same environment for too long you tend to forget how people in the outside world interact differently. I love observing how people communicate with one another, especially their tone and body language — you realise how you get treated differently because of your identity.

As I watched a man giving another man a pat on the chest as a sign of comfort and reassurance, I realised I could never get that sort of “brotherhood intimacy”. If it was done to me it would be harassment.

As I observed guys taking off shirts casually on scalding hot days, I questioned why I couldn’t do the same. I too want to run in the field bare-chested without causing any issues. That would be a dream.

I proceeded to Google “why can’t women take off shirts in public but men can”, “why do women have to shave but not men”, “since when did women’s bodies become sexualised”…

I couldn’t find answers to my questions.
Misgendering hurts, no matter who you are.
By: Charlotte Lumae
Tags: Gender Equality, Sex, Gender, Social Justice, Feminism

When someone acts like they know your gender better than you know your own gender or lack of gender, they are misgendering you.

Misgendering goes beyond ignoring, questioning, or forcibly replacing our names, the pronouns we use, or how we choose among words like male, female, other, or n/a, because gender is more complex than labels. Misgendering goes beyond mistaking us for a man or mistaking us for a woman. Misgendering can include these things, yes, but misgendering can also happen on unspoken levels, even without words.

For gender-nonconforming, gendervague, agender, and some genderqueer folks, for example, our names and our pronouns and the boxes we check may have little to nothing to do with gender. We may not experience gender at all. There are nonetheless many deeply toxic ways that people push an unsuitable gender on us. This kind of misgendering can include being shamed, being mischaracterized, or being punished for how we communicate, what we enjoy, how we think, how we spend our time, what we are good at, who we are attracted to, or how we wield personal power, based on how other people perceive what our genders should be. It cuts deep.

Sometimes people set aside these experiences as being less serious than misgendering over identity labels or pronouns. Sometimes people say these experiences are "only minor issues with gender presentation" rather than "actual gender identity." I disagree. Who we are is not only about words. Who we are is also composed of our practice and our lived experience.

When people push unwanted gendered stuff on us, whether that stuff is unwanted gendered pronouns or unwanted gendered clothing or unwanted gendered activities or unwanted gendered names or anything else, none of it is okay. Whether we are trans or not, and whether or not we kept the pronouns and sex assigned at birth, if it is gendered and it is being pushed on us against our wishes, it is misgendering, and it needs to stop.
A reminiscence to THE SECOND SEX.
By: Sabia Rasool
Tags: Sex, Gender, Simone De Beauvoir, The Second Sex

A reminiscence to THE SECOND SEX

Reminiscing over Simone de Beauvoir’s title of her book “The Second Sex” in which she discusses the treatment of women throughout history, one is reminded of a very subtle yet widely prevalent question of Sherry Ortner “Is female to male as nature is to culture?”

Image: wrbh.org

Largely following Ann Oakley’s feminist explanations for inequalities based on

sexual difference, a quick distinction can be drawn between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’,

one that parallels a more general sociological separation of the biological from the social; of ‘nature’ from ‘nurture’. According to this distinction, while ‘sex’ refers to the biological differences between males and females and provides the (pre-social) basis for gender socialisation, ‘gender’ refers to the socio-cultural construction of roles appropriate to men and women, and to the qualities and characteristics ascribed to being masculine or feminine. According to this perspective we are all born as human beings but later become gendered subjects.

Most recent explanations put forward how gender is not something that happens to us, but rather something that we do. The fact that man is considered the ‘default’ and woman the ‘other’ hints at how painfully a girl is taught to be a woman and her feminine destiny is imposed on her. The very fact that menstrual blood is probably the only blood that is not traumatically induced but is still the ‘most hidden blood’ gives us the idea of how there exists a need of total reformulation of sociology wherein women are not merely an addition to the syllabus. We as a society need to substantiate this, not only by explaining what feminist sociologists have found out but also by demonstrating how this requires a rethinking of existing sociological assumptions, methods, concepts and theories.
Universal Sexual Forces
By: Stefanos Sifandos
Tags: Sex, Sexual Polarity, Gender, Polarity, Gender Dynamics

Masculinity and femininity are not reserved solely for gender. They refer to universal sexual forces. Polarity within that either attracts or repels… And just because wild magnetic attraction exists doesn’t mean you should be romantically and deeply involved…

These energetics reside within all of us. The truth is for us to be in attraction and remain in attraction it is essential that we attract (and remain attracted) via means valuing the opposing energies we bring to a relationship.

Difference attracts and maintains attraction and desire, similarity helps us feel safe and grounded enough to explore this attraction.

Sexual attraction, deep spiritual ecstasy, and intimate union expand in relationships when there is a clear polarity between the energies of both people. If two people have a similar sexual polarity, eg. Both are more “masculine” then the attraction between them will be lessened.

Attraction unravels with the energetic charge from the sexual polarity of opposites. These masculine and feminine energetics are essential life energies to be expressed and experienced. Sexual polarity is the main energetic force that ignites the passionate flow of sexual attraction that arcs between the masculine and feminine poles in romantic partnership and creates safety and attunement.

Take electricity, the electrical charge of energy is conducted when the “masculine” plug is inserted into the “feminine” receptive outlet. Two masculine plugs can hang out but they don’t create intimate polarity and most of the time you would probably find them engaging in “masculine motivations”.

The love we have for family or things is different from the energy of attraction. Sexual polarity often diminishes in longer-term relationships because life becomes busy, roles become heavy and people do not know how to re-ignite the spark.

Of course, there are other reasons sexual polarity diminishes: closed hearts, low emotional intimacy, unresolved trauma and pain, and paralyzing fears. Two polarizing energies, a loving heart connection, and devoted intimacy are required to create the passionate energy of sexual polarity attraction in any romantic relationship.

One is glad to be of service.

Photo: https://unsplash.com/@dainisgraveris
Gender Reveal!
Tags: YouTuber, Gender Reveal, Reveal, YouTube, Gender

I actually wasn’t sure if I wanted to post this or not it was a last minute vlogging everything this day. But so happy I captured this moment!

My Husband’s Channel:

YouTube Channel

Twitter

LinkedIn

Facebook

Instagram

Medium

TikTok

Podcast

LETS BE FRIENDS

Boutique Accounts:

~ Listen Here ~

Thanks for watching!

Brittany
You Think?
By: Donny Duke
Tags: America, Gender, Racism, Coronavirus, Hate

You Think?

Photo by fotografierende on Unsplash

Nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, [line sung]

you aren’t going to call me?

Isn’t that special.

What’s happened today,

when a word means more than us?

It’s unspeakable,

unmentionable;

I hold your hand and say it

if I’m Afro-American.

My God the choices we make,

make racism institutional.

I can’t tell you what it means to be White.

You’d get offended.

Is this wrong?

It’s all bottled up.

Whip people with it.

Am I sayin’ the times?

Come on people now smile on your country. [line sung]

America is it not?

It’s a racial divide

all our saints say.

It’s not as divided as you and me.

We’ve got a group problem.

Your group allegiance hates mine.

Am I wrong?

Look at the field today.

Angels versus Democrats,

a Republican program

will just boil and say.

What arrow-feet do I use?

The ones that’s wasted on the bank.

All else are commies.

Am I shoulderin’ democracy?

Tell Pete I said that.

I don’t know which lines are drawn.

It’s our country you see.

Keep those immigrants out,

brown skin,

Arab wears,

Mexican sneakers.

You get my drift?

A nation of immigrants said that.

And yet we subdue the Indian,

take their land,

build pipelines on it.

It’s all in a day’s work.

Oh my God cultural appropriation:

I’ve called them Indians.

Would India get mad?

You can’t call it that,

a football team.

You’re just being racist you know.

Our heritage said that

are you sure you’re tellin’ me?

It’s a wavy movement,

the hate divide.

It’s got all your apples in a row.

Differences of opinion are the divide.

Let’s choose our words carefully.

I’m sorry you can’t use that word it’s taken.

Even gender says that.

Binary, non-binary,

I’m a bad boy

I grapple with man.

Ze said that.

Come on people now let’s go fishin’

and change languages.

It’s a pronoun fight.

Can we just be reasonable?

Male and female,

got it on my bike.

You know about those

same ours, okay?

A teacher for him a teacher for me

Coronavirus.

Remember what her ID cards says:

give heroes thanks.

I was lookin’ for you

Coronavirus,

but my friends showed up instead.

Now who am I to believe?

A pendemic you would believe.

It really hit hard in some places.

Now Bible now,

that would be the end of it,

documentary

They Suspected Everybody.

You can’t change people’s minds.

I don’t understand

the smorgasbord I see.

It’s just use excuses to hate each other,

wear your ego on your sleeve.

I’ve got business to attend to.

I’m a property manager.

Your property

I’ve trespassed anyway.

Pick a big gun

to shoot me:

no one reads this poem is it?

Where abouts,

everyone,

will I rack up some views?

Medium said that,

a holistic thinker,

the trouble with today:

knock him out John!
The Fluidity of Identity in Cameron Awkward-Rich’s Transit
Tags: Books, Black Writers, Book Review, Gender, Poetry

An exploration of movement in language and concept, Cameron Awkward-Rich’s stunning chapbook Transit examines the idea of always being in transition.

Awkward-Rich’s words smooth and sting; each hyphen and ampersand a way forward and a sudden, jolting stop. The techniques in language parallel concepts of transit interrogated in this collection. Structure, punctuation, pauses — all of these are strategically placed to halt the reader in all the right places.

This is poetry that questions the existence of an absolute truth. There is no permanent identity we can latch onto, no finality to the “self” that we claim to be. Awkward-Rich’s poetry is rich in expressing the glorious and complex messiness of existence, the contradictions and the “tendency to cross & recross the small terms of our own lives.” After all, isn’t life a constant flux of identities, where we grow and move and settle and uproot?

And so this is also poetry on fluidity, of trans identity when seen as motion. Like riding a train or driving a car, it’s as much about the in-between as it is about the impermanence of destination. Or, like a country, it’s “like a field of signifying roses you can walk through, or wear tucked behind your ear. / Eventually the flower wilts & you can pick another, or burn the field, or turn & run back across the tracks.”

This is poetry on how movement between states feels simultaneously casual, powerful, and frightening.

But we don’t move in a vacuum. We move and are being moved. We are in transit, perhaps from a conscious decision to move, but never without other passengers jostling around us and someone else driving the train. Others around us — strangers, our ancestors, those closest to us, and even our own selves—have the power to hurt and move us to states of trauma. In “The Child Formerly Known As ____,” the speaker’s father calls out for the girl the speaker no longer is, each naming a painful transport to the speaker’s past and a disavowal of his current identity as a boy. In “Theory of Motion (6): Nocturne,” the speaker calls the act of naming a girl at birth an easy ruin, inconsequential for those doing the naming: all “for want of a little color / to decorate the kitchen.” In “Theory of Motion (4): Another Middle-Class Black Kid Tries to Name It,” the speaker grieves inherited trauma and “being born of sorrow / that isn’t [ours].” Awkward-Rich also acknowledges a human longing for an absolute identity. After all, we grow up idolizing those who seem to know exactly who they are; we grow up being told that we should define ourselves in binaries; we grow up listening to narratives that romanticize “finding” ourselves, as if being lost is the worst kind of fate. He writes, “in the end, isn’t that what we all want? / To not feel so / split? / To carry an image of ourselves / inside ourselves & known exactly what we mean / when we say I — . I — . I — ?”

Ultimately, Transit celebrates all these components of movement — the joy, pain, and complications. This is a wonderful book of poetry to take your time with.
Random observation on the gender of support…
By: Sarah J. Baker
Tags: Behavior, Women, Gender, Writing, Feminism

Random observation on the gender of support…

It’s no secret I view the world through a gendered lens. It’s like my brain is hardwired to see disparity; like the time I noticed the male gender bias in Facebook gifs, or the time I started following a domestic violence awareness organisation, then started thinking, hang on a minute, something feels off, so I dug a little deeper, did some analysis to make sure I wasn’t imagining it and discovered the organisation was a cleverly disguised MRA page.

Lately, I’ve been noticing the gender of support. When fellow writers ask for editorial help it’s always women who step forward. I don't think I’ve ever seen a man volunteer to help another writer in this way. Even when, like today, the support seeker is male, and writing on a topic dominated by males.

Fellow writers, what’s your experience?
Does gender matter in Design?
By: Jessica Triana
Tags: Product Design, Inclusive Design, Design Patterns, Gender, Digital Product Design

❓ What is Gendered Design?

Put simply, it is a design that targets a particular gender demographic. This is tied to how a product is marketed because the more specific the target audience is, the more the user will feel like the product is made for them.

We see this on most products we use in our daily lives, even when the product is the same. An example of this is products like deodorants or razors. The same product is communicated in very different manners depending on the target audience’s gender. Usually, men’s advertisements use a more aggressive tone and color palette, while women’s advertisements use softer and more playful language.

If we look at ads from only a few decades ago we see that this language is even more radical, because gender stereotypes and roles have evolved in the last few decades, and we can see that societal change in the way this product is sold and communicated.
The Hoops We Jump Through
Tags: Queer, LGBTQ, Transgender, Family, Gender

My brother is an autistic individual. Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell his tale for him, and I also asked him if I could disclose this fact before doing so, even ensuring I phrased that first sentence comfortably for him. This wouldn’t be something I disclose to strangers usually, or even to casual friends. But, there’s a reason I’m bringing it up.

You see, my brother was diagnosed at a young age. My parents (mostly my father because my mom doesn’t drive) took him to specialists purposefully to get his diagnosis. They could have done nothing, but they did do something. When first diagnosed, my father read up on autism from all sources of literature. He wanted to be sure he could accommodate my brother as best he could. To this day, he reads things here and there about it.

The reason I bring this up is because I was never afforded that. I know comparing autism to being transgender is like comparing apples to steaks, but I still feel incredibly slighted by my dad as he still hasn’t read up on trans topics. I’ve had him meet my gender therapist as well as attend a trans/family support group with me. Neither of those things helped him as he remained silent or off-topic both times. It isn’t as though I haven’t sent him sites to help expand his knowledge, but rather, he is simply unwilling to do anything other than remain ignorant.

Still, he hasn’t kicked me out or hurt me. He says he loves me. But sometimes when I correct people he yells. And other times, he sends me transphobic memes. There are also the times he argues with people about my identity behind my back, like yelling at my brother for referring to me by my name. He did call me by my name once, but only to please a group of people around him.
How do male and female roles differ in your family?
By: Inbar Mor
Tags: Gender Equality, Ideas, Change, Gender, Equality

“Your father shouldn’t wash the dishes" my grandma said (almost yelled), “It’s too heavy for a girl like you, let him pick it up for you" said my uncle, all I wanted to say was — why shouldn’t we be treated as equal?

For centuries now woman grow up with the wrong belief that they aren’t capable to replace a lamp or to fix the leaking sink while they are doing the most precious and difficult job going through pregnancy and labor, but a lamp? No, that is too much.

Men also suffer, from theirs direction, it results in depressed feelings followed by a cover of ego just to supress the need to express their feelings, or, God forbidden, to cry.
What I Learned Today- Day 2
Tags: Evolution, Learn, Genders, Word, Curiosity

After having spoken to my brother, an individual who studied evolution, he explained to me why men tend to have skinnier legs than women. This is because men needed thinner legs to be able to hunt/run, while women would store fat around their thighs in order to bare children. Additionally, he explained that women's forearms are at a slightly different angle in order to hold their infants, in comparison to men’s.

Words I learn Today:

Inadvertently: without intention.

Acquiesce: to accept something reluctantly but without protest

Food For Thought:

Be kind with the person you are becoming.

Do not think less of yourself because today you were not at your best.
What do we really know about young people?
By: Olga Haberny
Tags: Movies, Correlation, Young People, Gender, Data Science

Introduction

In 2013 over one thousand young people in Slovakia were asked to answer nearly 150 questions about their lives, hobbies, preferences, fears and many more. This data set, available on Kaggle platform, turns out to be the perfect source of information about young people, just waiting there for deeper analysis. And guess what, I found it interesting too!

This data set is very rich and full of information. I decided to focus on several points, that I found the most fascinating. I started with movie preferences analysis as watching movies is one of my favorite way of spending free time.

Movie preferences

My analysis of movie preferences was technically speaking, hypothesis testing. Respondents were asked 12 questions, starting with “do you enjoy watching movies?” and then going through most popular movie types with the same question: “how much do you like/dislike certain type”, with 5 — meaning enjoy very much and 1 — don’t enjoy at all.

My questions were simple: do young people in general like watching movies, and what are the main differences in preferences of men and women.

Let’s take a look at some diagrams.

[Fig 1] Movie preferences among young people

Watching movies, in general, is loved by everyone, the score reaches here almost maximum. When it comes to movie types, comedies are definitely number one, whereas horrors and western fall apart. Now, are there any differences between men and women choices?
Ten defining moments for women in 2020
By: Un Women
Tags: 2020, News, Women, Gender, Equality

While 2020 will be remembered most for the way COVID-19 changed our lives in nearly every way and in every part of the world, we made some strides for women’s rights and gender equality. From new laws addressing domestic violence and equality to women’s critical leadership during the global pandemic, join us to celebrate some key moments for gender equality this year.

Women leaders shine in the face of COVID-19

Governments across the world worked to respond to COVID-19, with research suggesting that in countries where women lead, the responses were quicker, more effective and stronger. In countries with women leaders, including New Zealand, Germany, Finland, Bangladesh and more, the quick and decisive actions of the women in charge led to lower cases and lower deaths.

Even though COVID-19 has demonstrated the important role of women in leadership and decision-making, as of December 2020, there are only 22 countries with women serving as Heads of State and/or Government worldwide. As we look ahead to building back better in the future, women’s leadership is critical to success.

US elects first woman vice-president

In November, Kamala Harris became the first woman vice-president-elect of the United States, shattering barriers that have kept men entrenched at the highest levels of American politics for many years.
Amaka is Dead
Tags: Identity, Short Fiction, Nonbinary, Gender, Gender Identity

A was binge-watching The Amazing World of Gumball when they suddenly realised it was almost time for the call.

They had to talk to their mum at least two or three times a week.

A was happy that today’s call wasn’t going to be a video call. They were ready for the back and forth, but they weren’t looking forward to it.

As if on cue, their phone began to ring.

“Hello, mummy.”

“Hello, Amaka. How are you?”

“My name is A, not Amaka.”

“A what?”

“Nothing. Just A.”

“Chiamaka, what sort of ridiculous name is that? This girl don’t kill me.”

“I am not a girl.”

“So what are you? A man? A for a man?”

“I didn’t say I was a man.”

“But you said you’re not a woman. Is America affecting you?”

“Because I am not.”

“Okay, Amaka.”

“I am not Amaka. Amaka is dead.”
Petak Umpet Bisnis Mainan Seks
By: Perihal Perempuan
Tags: Lifestyle, Gender, Sexuality, Seksualitas

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Men Are Damaging Themselves and Those They Love by Not Opening Up
By: Agents Of Change
Tags: Identity, Life Lessons, Gender, Stereotypes, Masculinity

Men Are Damaging Themselves and Those They Love by Not Opening Up

Photo credit: iStock

By Dustin “Doc” Lehmann

Life is a constant teaching moment, rather than a series broken up by the otherwise mundane daily tasks at hand. And while people may think they have a handle on all the aspects of their world, very few actually do. Most are one bad decision from disaster, one missed paycheck from being on the streets, one lie away from loneliness.

And while it is said that everyone has secrets, should they? Is that the best way to live life to the fullest?

Men, more so than women, have a terrible habit of closing off or shutting down when they have a problem. Instead, what men should be should be doing is opening up, speaking openly and honestly, and asking for help when they need it. When men fail to do this the situation has a tendency to escalate rather than resolve itself.

Why is that?

One school of thought is that it is due to the broadband of nerves connecting the two hemispheres of the brain, the Corpus Callosum. This part of the brain is much larger in women than in men, and it’s theorized that this is why men can more easily separate emotion from their thought processes.

And while the science is there to support the physiology, that doesn’t paint the entire picture. The fact that men have a smaller Corpus Callosum can’t be creating one hundred percent of the problem. Men often “suffered in silence” and fight to keep issues private, and while it may also be true that society conditions our young men to ‘man up’ that still doesn’t account for all the behavior either. Men have to be accountable and give credit where it’s due.

Simply, men are the culprits.
Let It All Out
Tags: LGBTQ, Transgender, Creative Non Fiction, Nonbinary, Gender

Let It All Out

Photo by Gabrielle Henderson on Unsplash

I started this blog in June, only a handful of days after injecting myself with my very first dose of testosterone (T) alone in my childhood bathroom.

I also uploaded the sequel to my initial trans coming out letter, detailing the struggle to get my name legally changed, asking for my pronouns to be respected, working through my first month on T, and beginning the lengthy process of getting top surgery.

I had hardly been out of the trans closet for six months, and I was holed up in my childhood bedroom with nothing but time and gender dysphoria to spare. I spent my pandemic summer blogging my feelings, learning the trans and gender non-conforming lexicon, and trying to figure out who I was and who I wanted to become.

I eventually began submitting my work to Prism & Pen and Gender from the Trenches, two fabulous trans-inclusive publications.

From there, I started meeting other trans and queer Medium writers — reading their work, secretly (or not so secretly) looking up to them, and learning from their ways of bending language in order to tell stories from the heart.

I expanded my thinking and poured my thoughts and emotions out in article after article, positioning my time in the lonely summer of 2020 as an olive branch I could slowly extend to my gender.

Little by little shifting from a newly-on-T, pre-top surgery, baby trans who lacked the words to define themself by anything other than what they were not to a more experienced, more educated, and more open-bookish genderful human.
The Feminine Trans-Masculine
Tags: Femininity, Transgender, Gender, Self, Masculinity

When I was younger I hated feminine things. I was a ‘tomboy,’ someone you wouldn’t catch dead in a dress. Someone you would never see gussied up in makeup with painted nails. I wore dark colors and my wardrobe wasn’t all that big. I wore the same pair of sneakers every single day. I resented the gender I was assigned at birth and because of that, I despised everything associated with it.

I always knew I wasn’t a girl. When I first learned about nonbinary people, I thought that was what I was. It didn’t feel right the more I thought about the label and myself. Before investigating further, I saw the backlash people got for their gender expression and I locked my identity up then buried it deep down inside myself. I couldn’t be nonbinary. I couldn’t be trans either. I just couldn’t.

Enter my transgender awakening, when I finally decided to explore my feelings. Surprisingly quickly I figured out that I wasn’t nonbinary, but rather simply a trans man. That isn’t to say you can’t be both, however I simply don’t feel correct with the label of ‘nonbinary.’ My whole experience in figuring my gender out isn’t worth entirely exploring for this piece, but someday I might write it up. Needless to say, I finally recognized myself as a man.

It wasn’t until I came to terms with my gender identity that I could express my femininity.

What kind of man was I, though? At first I considered myself very masculine, after all that’s what we’re told a man is supposed to be like, right? But slowly I began to learn that gender expression is completely different from gender identity.

Illustration from GenderBread.com

It might seem confusing to many people. I know it was confusing to me at first. Anatomical sex didn’t have to match gender identity already — which was something I’d had trouble understanding. But now I could present in a feminine manner without being a woman? It was a completely alien concept to me. Growing up in a conservative area didn’t help any of this, but slowly I learned these lessons, and with them, I could explore who I was.

All of a sudden, my repulsion to all things feminine simply faded away. In dresses and skirts I felt empowered and sexy because I knew who I was when I wore them. I didn’t have to be scared with the labels society would put on me anymore. I was me, and I was feminine. Makeup, nail polish, and all the beautiful chiffon blouses I bought didn’t lessen my identity.

Despite my own acceptance of who I am, I’m still extremely hesitant to show this part of myself to anyone other than my brother and partner. I’m pre-T and while I can appear masculine to many, my voice gives my assigned sex away.
“I’m Comfortable With All Pronouns.”
Tags: Identity, LGBTQ, Transgender, Nonbinary, Gender

“I’m Comfortable With All Pronouns.”

Photo by Dainis Graveris on Unsplash

I can tell you the truth, or I can tell you what you want to hear. I am a person, first and foremost. I am deserving of respect, understanding, compassion, and community. I am a young adult, a college student navigating a disgustingly complicated and difficult time to be a human being.

I am Brown. I am trans. I am queer. I am in active danger the moment I step outside of my home, but the physicality of that danger is for another article on another day.

Let’s talk about the emotions behind that danger — knowing that my authentic self isn’t comprehensible to many of the people I interact with. My neighbors, my banker, my professor, my college hallmates, my grandparents, one of my moms, the other mom’s friends.

Knowing that they look at me and experience confusion.

I don’t mean to confuse you by being myself. I’m sorry that I’m different from what we’ve all been trained to expect when we see another human being walking down the street. I’m sorry that you can’t immediately categorize me into one box or another, and I’m sorry that, in truth, I don’t want you to.

I don’t mean to confuse you by being myself.

I don’t want you to look at me and see a man or a woman. I am neither, and I am both, and I am something beyond, and it honestly shouldn’t matter to you half as much as it does.

As much as it pains me to say, I am not a they any more than I am a he or a she. I want words that go beyond the limits of Other, masculine, and feminine. Of Who the fuck knows, man, and woman. I hate that I have to categorize myself. I want to be free of words that aren’t befitting to the soul that I possess.

Why should a skirt be feminine?

Why should a tie be masculine?

Why are a skirt and a tie put on the same body at the same time suddenly androgynous?

Who made up these rules? Whose supervisor do I need to talk to?