Underbellie

My daughter Sophie, who turns eight today, is friends with several children – all male – from the neighborhood.  The normal group numbers about seven boys ranging in age three to ten.  We moved here in December; in late February our weather opened to an early (and likely false) spring.  So the sun is out and the kids are too, which is inviting all kinds of play and skirmishes.

Some of these boys?  Their parents may be letting them down. Because they’re exhibiting behavior like miniature Entitled White Males and it’s all I can do not to heap a little strangling on them, although I know just as my hands slipped around their necks I’d realize it was their parents, and maybe The Patriarchy, I am pissed at.

But my daughter?  She seems to be handling it well enough.  Here are four examples for the last handful of days:

Friday: her nine year old friend is avid about handling Sophie’s new pet, a leopard gecko named Anna.  The boy keeps calling the reptile a “he”.  “She’s a girl, P.,” my daughter responds firmly and immediately.  And she has to repeat this as P. keeps repeating the masculine pronoun, because the child can’t apparently grasp the concept of an entity being female if there are no obvious gender qualifiers (if Disney were God it would have designed the creature with high heels, a feminine swish-walk, and long, batting lashes).

The next day we have a sleepover.  My children’s ten year old friend shouts to the other three kids, “Hey guys, hey guys, come in here!” Sophie responds with, “I’m not a guy, L.”. Again: instinctively, firmly.

Last Wednesday: my daughter comes in from the sunshine and tells me she and about five boys had been playing War (with nerf guns) and the group – all five of them – joined on one team and singled her out.  My stomach instantly curdles at the cowardly pack-behavior exhibited – note, I had no fear for my daughter, whatsoever – I open my mouth to tell her Wow, it seems like they must perceive you as a real threat if they need the odds to be five-to-one, but before I can do so she says, “I’m going back there and telling them that’s not fair,” and calmly walks back out the door.

The day after this, upon returning in the afternoon she tell Ralph these same boys told her they would “kick the c. out of [her]” (she says “c.” instead of “crap”, and my children make me laugh; my eldest won’t allow even the most minor of curse words to escape her lips; my youngest has a specific and acerbic tongue that can put curses to use in such a way as to make a pirate blush).  My daughter, even though threatened (however hollowly) with a beating, is not particularly distressed; she is home, waiting it out.  A little later she ventures back over to play and apparently all goes well.

These examples, piling one on top of the other, are striking.  And my daughter? Sometimes you gotta call a success a success – and after all, those who read my blog know I’m good at admitting failure -

And this?  Is a success.

Now first off, don’t get me wrong: my daughter is not being overtly and scarily targeted by bloodthirsty miniature thugs.  As far as I can tell these kids are playing with eachother mostly nicely.  There is no Lord of the Flies shit going on here (yet!) because it seems they enjoy one another and find enough diversions to have a good time.  And also?  This pack stuff?  This is life, this is how you have to figure it out.  She’s sorting it, and she’s sorting it out well.

Earth-shattering?  Perhaps you think not.  But then, here’s my very young child speaking out against bullying and – perhaps even more important to me and dear to my heart – in the examples of the “guys” and the “he”-reptile, she is speaking out against the concept that “women are women and men are people”*, a subtle but earth-shatteringly devastating construct we live and move in.  She’s perceiving and addressing things when so many others – children and adults alike – simply do not.

I told her father about these incidents the other day over dinner.  “We’re raising a feminist,” I said, half-amused, and we exchanged an exuberant high-five in the restaurant (note to self: next time employ a fist-bump).

I remember the days I parented babies and the simpler ideals I had at the time.  You know, all that gender-neutral parenting stuff floating around in the self-referential progressive and liberal parents I associated with (I am less exclusive with who I hang out with these days). I’m going to let my girl play with boy stuff and let my boy have pink stuff, that kind of thing. Because those ideals, those plans, they’re only a start – and I so often see it peter out as the twin forces of school and entrenched family dynamics win over.  Babies don’t give a shit what color receiving blankets they’re wrapped in, and their baby playmates don’t either, and for a couple years anyway some fathers don’t mind as well.

But by about age five I’m hearing my friends say well, actually, My five year old boy just prefers to wear blue and play with trucks (seriously? XY literally makes that shit go down that way?) and My girl, well, she really does like pink and princessy stuff, and what to do [handwringing]? (Note: “progressive” parents seem more concerned when their daughters choose and re-choose the femme, and largely okay when their sons consistently reject the femme.  Femme=bad).

Here’s the thing: I don’t have a problem with preference, even when it includes the femme for girls or the masculine for boys.  My children seem healthy and well-adjusted and their predilections flip back and forth.  Sophie’s favorite color used to be pink; now it’s light blue.  My son at four wore drag regularly; he now and then experiments with growing his hair shoulder length.  His nails are currently hot pink.

Yet preferences aren’t often as innate and innocently biological as so many parents want to believe.  Heaving a big sigh of relief and resignation at your son’s gendered dress preferences, or your daughter’s entrenchment in Barbie and Taylor Swift is not the correct response; although I admit, it’s the easiest one.

Because how gender-neutral, how feminist, and how anti-racist can you raise a child if you are not seriously checking your own baggage?  Egalitarian treatment and feminist values begin with the head of household and how he/she/they operate. This may mean allowing your daughter to be assertive and managing your own discomfort; many parents I see are instead (constantly and either directly or subtly) socializing her to be more passive and people-pleasing.  This may mean, as a father, speaking out against injustice so your son can learn behaviors of rejecting the alpha-male and pack cruelty mentalities. Raising egalitarian children may mean reducing their exposure to marketing, video games, and television (Guess what? Seriously! Advertisers should not get to raise your child! It really is your choice how much of this stuff they consume!).  Raising a heroic and equality-minded child means more than waiting for your kid to say, “What does ‘gay’ mean?” – it means bringing the subjects of homo- and transphobia into the house and the discussion, in whatever ways are appropriate for the family.

Raising non-sexist children means actually caring about this stuff and enacting it in our lives – yes, including the hard work between heterosexually-partnered couples – because I can’t just put these items on a to-do list for when they now-and-then come up.  The marginalization of certain groups of human beings and the suppression and subjugation of the female is happening all the time and all around us.  If you are waiting for your children to come to you and then you’ll do the ‘splainin’ about how we should be nice to people and stuff, this strategy just won’t be able to compete with larger cultural tropes and your own as-yet unexamined social conditioning.  This latter element is, I’m sorry to say, actively passed onto your child if you do not do what my friend recently referred to as “excoriating self-examination”; a process constant, gentle, persistent, humble, sharp-minded, and committed to the Good.  “Raising kids right” involves parents’ or caregivers’ active influence and a fight against unfairness in the home and in the community.  With respect to feminism, women who do the “invisible work” of the family and get little acclaim, and the men who contribute to this, raise entitled little boys and overworked and resentful little girls, however healthy and “normal” their children may seem much of the time.  Sadly, the overlooked and undervalued work of women and the low social and interpersonal status of their efforts is trickier to fight than it might first seem and involves more than the occasional tepid “girl power” t-shirt or pop star.

And yet strategies?  There are many (perhaps I will list more later). Here are a few: I “self talk” a lot in front of my kids – I say things like, “I finished making dinner and got my writing done today – I’m proud of myself.”  I point out that when Daddy is cooking, it takes longer and he needs more time, because he is not as skilled as I. I talk about my life before children.  I let my children know our lives with them were a choice we’ve made, and one we stand by. I reject sexist shit my friends and family say in my presence – yes, including the sexist shit children say in my presence.

My partner does his part: he accepts my expertise in family matters when he is not performing well and he commits to improvement.  He does not shame my daughter’s body, and therefore self, by refusing to help her care for and wash it.  He actively seeks out female musicians to collaborate with in his musical projects.  He straight-up points out sexism, misogyny, racism, ableism, and homophobia when he sees it in a film or on a magazine cover or in a real-life interaction we are a part of.

I don’t want to be, like so many women before me, an “invisible woman” to my family. I don’t want my husband to get an ass-out when he fails at doing the laundry – hello, he can run an entire computer system at an educational facility, he sure can learn to separate whites from colors!  I don’t want my daughter to be invisible and overworked, nor my son to expect someone else to take care of his deemed-”lesser” (but essential) needs should he end up partnered or married.

I want my kids to tune into their own voice – the voice that tells them when they are proud of themselves, or sad, or feeling uncertain, or happy – or when something is not fair. I’ve found my kids have a very high level of emotional intelligence and can express themselves accordingly. It’s been wonderful to watch this process; it has helped me grow personally.

So we’ve taken on the hard work of gender-baggage and prescriptive heterosexism and the laughable concept of a “post-race” America – among other things – and so far it’s going well enough. With regard to ladyness, I have a boy-child who feels free to wear long hair, dress in a formal gown for shopping, sing Abba and Skakira, display tenderness and eschew the pack mentality; a girl who can play aggressively on a soccer field, paint her fingernails black, cut her hair short, select and occasionally wear Gucci Flora perfume – and stand up to five boys with nerf guns (fuck yeah!).

My daughter? In this week or so of playing with the kids it’s dawning on her some of these boys are behaving like asses.  But she’s so far sticking to it, and giving them the heads-up when they’re acting like jerks.

I don’t know about you, but I am actually eager to see what she gets up to.

Mentioned / Further Reading:

Anna Dell Geckaboom

* “[i]n which men are people and women are people”: The Smurfette Principle, a twelve-minute video that is a must-see for children of the 80s and the 90s, or anyone who grew up watching cartoons now and then; further links after the video include those of default avatars, “girls as an afterthought”, and “girls relate to girls and boys but boys only relate to boys”. All good stuff.

* Stick figures vs. stick figures who parent

“Raising an Equality-Minded Male”, or the subject of gender neutral parenting, at The Feminist Breeder

Nels and his skirt, on Flickr

“Gender Stereotyping and Under-representation of Female Characters in 200 Popular Children”‘s Picture Books: A 21st Century Update”, February 2007 study

“Strong Female Characters” in film, a must-read.  Because guess what?  It’s still mostly dudes writing movies.  And they aren’t getting it right.

Speaking of film, if you liked the last link, you may enjoy “The Cinematic Man-Child and His Perpetual Harem of Willing, Nubile Females“, my own post from Red Room