Sullivan's last night was a lot of fun.. thanks again for putting that together :)

While I totally agree (duh) that the gendered color-symbol-clothing-identification traditions can be part of the structure of inequality, I have a problem with parents who use their kids to make a statement, like sending a boy to kindergarten wearing a flowery shirt, without explaining to the kid what's going on, and without asking if it's okay with him, knowing all of the context and social consequences. Of course the baby thing is totally different, since babies aren't held accountable for their clothing.

If I choose to dress my son in pink, and some mouthbreathing idiot stranger comes up to me in public and sees fit to comment on my adorable daughter, I will say "thank you" and then I will walk away.

Because I have absolutely no energy to try to teach Joe Random a lesson in gender socialization NOW, and I don't even have an infant keeping me up all night.

My kids will probably hate me.

Gender socialization most definatly happens but I still believe that there is something about the idea that often girls and boys can be different from one another. I'm actually the product of a child who's mother tried very hard to keep that gender crap out of the house. My room was orange and green and yellow :::shudder::: because my mom refused to do the pink thing, my brother and I got a lot of the same "gender neutral" toys when we were very young, and then allowed to make our own choices as we grew up. By 8 I finally got my wish to have a pink room, and grow my hair long instead of the awful short thing my mom put on me. On the other hand, while I adored my barbies, I also insisted on transformers and toy cars so maybe it worked a little.

I geuss what I am saying is, while trying to provide a gender neutral environment for your child is a decent thing, listen to what they want as well. If the boy still decides to play football, or the girl decides she wants tea sets and dolls, let them be that person too.

Along Judy's lines... Maggie has a male friend who is one year older to the day. So, she has a lot of hand-me-downs from said friend. I got sick and tired of strangers telling me how cute my son was, and whe corrected them telling me I ought to pierce her ears so they can tell, so I gave into the pink (well, purple because it looks better on her) and dresses and ponytails. She does wear "masculine" pajamas, because, well, they were on sale, and because there was one with a dinosaur! And one with a dragon!

But when she falls down, I tell her to shake it off when it isn't serious. I tell her all the time she is big and strong and smart. We play with cars and blocks. But she also brushes my hair, and her own hair. She likes to play a game where we take turns kissing a doll saying, "Aw." Yesterday she attended a St. Patrick's day party, and ended up hovering around the six year old boys playing a board game as opposed to the multi-aged girls doing crafts.

Promoting gender neutral stuff is a good idea, but I would rather teach Maggie that she isn't hindered by being a girl. That she doesn't have to be a boy in order to feel good about herself.

And secretly I hope she is gay so she doesn't get knocked up before she's ready.

My boy is cooler than all the other boys.

So there.

I hear you on the Toys R' Us. I was disgusted walking through there. Esepcially seeing gender neutral toys, sitting side by side, some in pink, some in blue- with little girls or little boys (depending) on the packaging, rather than just have it be a fucking toy and leave it at that. Like blocks- pink and purple blocks, or blue and green ones. Stupid stuff like that.

Things my hypothetical son will hypothetically say when he's 25:

You mean Caine, right?

"But Mo-om, I don't want to use mascara and wear all black. I wanna play football and date cheerleaders!!"

Are the needs for equal opportunities and gender misidentification directly related, or is it a complex chain of events that are tied together in subtle ways?

Reading this, I thought of how I grew up wearing little dresses as well as my brother's hand me down corduroys and sneakers, and how everyone thought I was a boy because my hair was so short. In fact I had my ears pierced at 11, and people still thought I was a boy if I wore hoops instead of unicorns. That is, until I hit puberty and grew my hair (my choice). Until then, I played with Matchbox cars and Tonka trucks, my brother had names and voices for all his stuffed animals, and we were pretty much the best the Free to Be You and Me era had to offer.

So now, as you know, I have some Stuff wrapped around what the hell it means to be a woman. Yet I am convinced now that this has less to do with the haircut I had as a kid, the toys I played with, or the clothes I wore than it does with my mother's inability to model any desirable options of womanliness for me. She feared and hated men, she worried about my ability to get pregnant even before I was born, and she did whatever she could to keep me from stretching out of the house. So, fine - I'm working with that now, and surpassing it, and these things shaped who I am.

What I'm saying is, I think you're wise to think about these things now, because if your kid(s) see a mom who is comfortable in many venues, who has a voice and who wears what she wants, who knows how to negotiate and who honors the child's need to be independent, then you're doing right in this world. Clothes are just one small piece of the whole picture. If the child feels secure and loved, it'll be all right.

To address only a tiny part of this, I will note that I am not sure there has ever been a child anywhere who wasn't teased mercilessly for something by someone, no matter how their parents dress them or they dress themselves.

I agree with frecklefairie above, in that if I had a daughter I would not want her to think there was something limiting to being a girl.

It is also true that it is fine for girls to go for boy-things and not for boys to go the other way. But you want to know a truism? That is because many of the "girl" things (toys, I'm thinking of specifically) SUCK. Girls don't want 'em, boys don't want 'em, for gods' sake stop making inferior pink versions of actual interesting things and just give the kids TOYS. Toys do not freaking need gender.

*sigh* well, judging from your comments and the link you posted I probably ought to thank you for putting up with my whims and appologize for whining about my stupid holidays until you feel you ought to go out with me. I promise to let you alone about that stuff in the future. At least we had beer, right? :)

your "what my hypothetical son will say when he's 25" sounds a lot like the plot of Psycho IV (the greatest of all the psycho sequels... which, honestly, isn't saying much of anything)

Y'know, there are a lot of bright, thoughtful people here, saying a lot of intersting stuff on several topics, and being respectful of each other in the process; it's been a pleasure to read through it.

My own comments have, sadly, grown somewhat long, so I'll put them behind a cut:


I think that the "I've been tricked" and the "You should do something" reactions are the ways I've usually seen people deal with misidentifying one of my girls as a boy (which has happened on several occasions, as eeedge mentioned above). I don't think people are likely to learn anything about their own assumptions unless they meet the same experience many times - which, I suppose, leads nicely to snidegrrl's Gandhi quote.

On the other hand, I'm a slightly-built short man with long hair; people take me to be a woman at least a couple of times a week ("How can we help you today, Ma'am?"). I tend to drop my voice down to its lower registers, but reply as if they'd not made a false assumption. *This* seems to shake people more than thinking my daughters are boys; no one's had the guts to tell me that I ought to do something to make it more obvious that I'm a guy.

The sad part of this experience, though, is the way these people fall all over themselves to apologize, as though they've somehow offered up a mortal insult. I shrug, and tell them it doesn't bother me. I think, in light of what I've been reading, I'll start asking them "Why should it bother me?"....



Thanks for kicking this snowball down the hill.

Holy Shit!!! 102 comments?@! I dont even know what this is all about, but shit thats a record. Can I be your friend?

Never deliberately use a child to make social statements. They deserve the best possible chance at getting ahead. When grown they can make their own statements as they wish.