Gender, Part I: "be girly or else"

Let me just get this out of the way: men and women (and also boys and girls) are biologically different from each other. There are certainly physical differences, as well as observable psychological differences, that can't be denied. I will never argue that men and women are the same. My concerns are not about the biological differences, but with the pressures of our society that magnify, ritualize, and eroticize those differences to the detriment of both sexes.

Here's an example: men have larger bodies than women. Their shoulders are broader, their muscles larger. They are on average taller than women. What have we done with this difference? We have magnified it by expecting boys/men to get larger muscles and expecting girls/women to be skinnier and diminutive. We have ritualized these expectations by making body size awareness a part of coming of age (which is happening earlier and earlier these days, btw. More on that in Part II). And we have eroticized it by holding up bulky men as the sexy ones, and skinny, frail women as beautiful.

I know women (who are we kidding? I dare you to find a woman for whom this is NOT true!) who hang their own sexiness almost 100% on how skinny they are. There are dire consequences to this exaggeration of difference, most easily seen in the tragedy of eating disorders in girls or the abuse of steroids amongst boys. Is highlighting, magnifying, and eroticizing the slight difference in body size worth the price our children are paying? If your answer is, “No!” then we need to be careful about the images we allow our children to see (advertisements) and the language we use with them (“oh, what a big, strong boy you are” vs. “oh, what an adorable cute little girl you are”).

Here's another dare: find me a difference between men and women--a measurable, biological difference, that our society hasn't tried to magnify and eroticize.

Another way that male and female "traits" get pushed on our kids is the toys we direct them to. We buy our 6 month old girls little dolls (even though all they are learning to do is grab, stack, and open things) and we buy our baby boys Tonka trucks. When we see a baby while on a walk with our daughters, we ooh and aah over the cute little baby, but it is the construction site down the block that we marvel over with our sons. And then when our five year old daughters are playing tea party with their dolls and our five year old sons are working on the race car track, we smile and say, "Isn't it amazing how boys and girls are drawn to different things?!" This kills me. If you want your daughter to be girly (or whatever you think feminine is), go ahead and push her towards that. But don’t look up five years later and say that she is super girly by nature.

Hello?! Am I the only one who doesn't want to actively push Grace and Natalie towards typical feminine pursuits, while ignoring all the other diverse toys that are out there? It's not that I don't want them to be the girls that they are or the women that they will become. I do not want to raise genderless children. Grace totally has a tea set. And loves it. What I want is for Grace to show me what she is interested in, and I will encourage that. Same for Natalie. Grace actually loves caring for babies. Baby dolls and puzzles are probably her favorite toys. I love that she wants to take care of them. I am especially proud when she asks for the sling or tries to nurse them. But I will not continually buy her all the doll accessories and forget that she also loves trains and that her favorite jammies have a construction scene on them with diggers. If Grace or Natalie grows up to be the most feminine girl of all time, it will be because that was her nature and we were following her interests, not because I decided to surround her with girl things to make sure she ended up being feminine.

And this brings me to my last point for this “Part I” post on gender. We have set our society up around these perceived gender differences to the extent that anything or anyone that threatens them, threatens us. Why is being called a "girl," (or try fag, pussy, etc.) such the ultimate insult for boys? We are so threatened by people who don’t fulfill their duty by being appropriately feminine or masculine, that we ridicule and alienate them for being different.

As a parent, I want to see my children grow up being valued for who they are. I don’t hold typical masculine traits as better than feminine ones, and I am not trying to strip my daughters of their natural femininity. I simply want to open them to the broad spectrum of life’s choices, instead of limiting them by shoving society’s gender expectations down their throats.

Grace plays tea party, but it is almost exclusively with Daddy, Grandpa C., Grammy, and Mike. It is critical that in our effort to open our daughters to life’s possibilities, we don’t undermine the beauty and/or importance of typical girl behaviors by having men dismiss them. I love that three of the four tea party guests are men.

In Part II:
-Finally, an answer to the all-important question, “What is wrong with Disney princesses?”
-A discussion ot “adorn them with enough accessories, and they will become mannequins.”
-Why daddy (and/or other male figures) are so important to a girl’s future sexual health