There’s a good article in the Times this week about challenging gender stereotypes and allowing kids to just be who they are in school:
At the Park Day School in Oakland, teachers are taught a gender-neutral vocabulary and are urged to line up students by sneaker color rather than by gender. “We are careful not to create a situation where students are being boxed in,” said Tom Little, the school’s director. “We allow them to move back and forth until something feels right.”
Nothing wrong with that.
I’ve never understood the overwhelming need for adults to push children into narrow gender roles before the kids themselves even really understand what those roles mean. There’s nothing about a dress or nailpolish that requires a vagina; there’s nothing about Tonka trucks or cops & robbers that requires a penis. Kids aren’t born neurotic about their gender orientation. Many little boys play dress-up in women’s clothes, just like little girls. I hardly think that’s damaging. And I don’t see the point in trying to force a five-year-old into a restrictive identity that limits how he or she can enjoy him/herself.
From the article, it seems that many parents are more concerned about how their child will be treated by the outside world than about the fact that their child wants to dress in a gender-variant way. That’s certainly understandable. No one wants their child to be ostracized, and no parent wants to set their child up for (at best) teasing and (at worst) physical assault or even murder.
The answer, I hope, will come from shifting the social adherence to gender roles, not from forcing children to conform to things that are essentially constructed and relatively inauthentic in the first place (but certainly still “real” in practice). But the adults who defend pushing children into the social roles matching their biological sex do so on the grounds of “protecting” them — when it actually seems that what they’re protecting is their own discomfort.
But it’s coming along, and allowing children to have any more fluidity in their gender identity is unquestionably the right decision. It sure is a step forward from this:
Catherine Tuerk, a nurse-psychotherapist at the children’s hospital in Washington and the mother of a gender-variant child in the 1970s, says parents are still left to find their own way. She recalls how therapists urged her to steer her son into psychoanalysis and “hypermasculine activities” like karate. She said she and her husband became “gender cops.”
“It was always, ‘You’re not kicking the ball hard enough,’ ” she said.
Ms. Tuerk’s son, now 30, is gay and a father, and her own thinking has evolved since she was a young parent. “People are beginning to understand this seems to be something that happens,” she said. “But there was a whole lifetime of feeling we could never leave him alone.”
Thanks to Shannon for pointing this article out.
Similar Posts:
- Why fix the problem when we can push for a feel-good policy that won’t work? by Sheelzebub October 31, 2006
- The Gender Education Achievement Gap: how it used to be, what changed, what “they” say, what researchers say, and the way forward by tigtog March 26, 2013
- What the “Boy Crisis” is Masking by zuzu August 17, 2006
- Working Girl by Jill November 1, 2007
- How to write about lady-scientists (e.g., stuff they cook that ISN’T dinner) by Caperton April 2, 2013
The first time I realized things might be changing on this front whas when my then-five-year-old brother introduced me to his also-five friend, “chris” by saing–”this is my friend chris. He wants to be a girl.” chris nodded solemnly,and said “yes,I’m going to be a girl.” Chris mom also nodded and joked, “yeah, hes been saying that since he could talk. We’re saving for college or a sex change operation. Hopefully, he gets a scholarhip.”
I’m a parent, and it’s hard to not parent your children into assumed gender roles, even if you’re really adamant about not wanting to. I find myself telling my four-year-old that she’s beautiful, almost unconsciously. It’s not a message I want to send. Mind you, she is beautiful, but it’s it’s not the first-, fifth-, or eightieth-most important thing about her. And so I try to recover and tell her she’s smart, or tough, or something like that–but I’d rather it didn’t come out in the first place.
That said, before I commented here I was looking for Karate classes for my daughter to join, because she’s said she wants to. I’m trying my best, as is my ex-wife, to not box her in. I hope that’s enough–and I feel bad for kids whose parents start out with the intention to box their kids in.
You know what? I catch myself doing that to my pets (all female), who can’t actually understand what I’m saying. And then I catch myself treating other people’s male pets differently than I do my own, based on assumed gender roles.
This shit’s pervasive.
Wow, that is really interesting! We definitely need more of that attitude in schools and other institutions, particularly those that deal with children and adolescents.
Though I was weirded out a bit by this part of the article: “As their children head into adolescence, some parents are choosing to block puberty medically to buy time for them to figure out who they are — raising a host of ethical questions.”It sort of seems to me that maybe puberty would help you figure out your gender and sexual identity, not the other way around. I am not transgender, so I certainly have no personal experience with how puberty affects the evolution of one’s gender identity. Does anyone have any input on this?
Edit to my previous post: I did go through puberty, obviously, and I know that it helped me become more certain that I identified primarily with my biological gender (female). However, I don’t have an idea how a transgendered person would feel about going through puberty.
There’s nothing about a dress or nailpolish that requires a vagina
Indeed true about the dress … I dare someone to say otherwise to a Scottsman ;)
But about the nail polish … I dunno why or how, but in my experience, girls and women seem to like the smell of the nail polish solvents much better than boys and men … although for acetone nail polish removers, the smell preferences reverse.
Kids aren’t born neurotic about their gender orientation. [...] I don’t see the point in trying to force a five-year-old into a restrictive identity that limits how he or she can enjoy him/herself.
Speaking as maybe somewhat of a Nice Guy(R) there are certain situations in which, if you behave more in accordance with a restrictive gender identity, you’ll be more successful (e.g. the heterosexual dating scene amongst college students in Sunny So.Cal.)
I’m amused that therapists considered karate among the “hypermasculine activities.” Martial arts are very popular with girls these days, including a friend’s daughter who started taking classes because of maternal fear of trying to fix her hair into a bun for ballet.
Broadest possible gender roles, woot!
I find myself telling my four-year-old that she’s beautiful, almost unconsciously. It’s not a message I want to send.
I think it’s a somewhat instinctive nurturing thing — I often tell my cats (both neutered males) that they’re pretty boys. (Then I get worried that the other cat heard me and will be jealous, so I then tell the other cat that he’s a pretty boy, too. And don’t get me started on when I accidentally tell one that he’s the prettiest kitty in the world — yikes! ;-)
I think that if it’s mixed in with messages about her other good qualities, you’ll be fine.
I’d bet thatt’s 99% acculturated–I don’t have any strong like or dislike of either nail polish or nail polish remover fumes. And I have at least one friend who liked having his girlfriends paint his toe/fingernails, though he eschews that in adult life, at least as far as I know.
And then, back in my home state, a bunch of schools are starting to segregate classes based on gender, apparently to “boost confidence” in the students so they don’t have to worry about acting up in front of the opposite gender.
Ugh.
This gives me a lot of hope for the future.
I hate the smell of both nail polish and remover. I do tell my cats that they are pretty girls. I have never had a male pet so I have no idea if I would tell a male cat that he was a pretty boy. I hope so. Maybe I will go to friends’ homes and start telling their cats that they are pretty boys now.
My daughter is beautiful, and I no longer try to squelch the many people who tell her so, but I just realized that I myself never compliment her appearance. I tell her when she’s dressed herself well, compliment her emerging hygiene skills, and praise her for the skill she develops in managing her own appearance…but I never tell her she’s pretty.
I think I’m fairly concerned about the effect that being preturnaturally gorgeous may have on her personality as it develops.
She compliments us; until she learned last month that ‘handsome’ is generally used on male persons, she would say, “Wow, Mommy is dressed up fancy and you’re handsome!” Now she uses ‘fansome’, which she explained to me quite seriously is like handsome but it’s for girls like me, not girls like mommy.
Yes, I’m the kind of girl that the boys in her first-grade class have been working up the courage to get close to in order to report back to their mates: Yeah, [my kid]‘s not lying, that IS her other mom! Not her dad!
So I think that it’s hopeful that gender variance within genders isn’t prescribed like it was when we were kids, so the kids at my kid’s school are exposed to adult women like me who aren’t immediately IDed as female.
I also think it’s hopeful for a more tolerant future that I have a friend from high school days who is allowing her 8 year old boy to live as a girl. Because that’s what feels right to him/her/that kid. In a town of 5000 people, the girl who invited me to Bible study because she knew my family was unchurched…is raising her son to be whoever /she turns out to be.
And they’re only had one mailbox burned! So that’s progress!
I don’t have an idea how a transgendered person would feel about going through puberty.
Basically, like alien things are growing on/out of you and you stop wanting to look at yourself b/c your body isn’t yours anymore.
Speaking as maybe somewhat of a Nice Guy(R) there are certain situations in which, if you behave more in accordance with a restrictive gender identity, you’ll be more successful (e.g. the heterosexual dating scene amongst college students in Sunny So.Cal.)
Off-topic, but I have never understood why you would long for dating success if it meant not being who you really are. All this worrying among girls my age (18 and the surrounding years, and also anything Cosmo says) about what boys want and what they don’t like and it’s just like… but why would YOU want THEM if they don’t want YOU? How would being in a relationship be in any way worth it?
Not necessarily, but it is often a very difficult time. It depends on the individual identity and on where the transperson is in terms of their self-awareness, but it’s a time at which your assigned gender is becoming even harder to ignore.
but why would YOU want THEM if they don’t want YOU? How would being in a relationship be in any way worth it? – Isabel
I myself realized this a few years ago (and at the same time, my dating life improved, hmmmm … coincidence?), and even had an inkling of it earlier (considering that my parents were always telling me this): but it’s a hard lesson to grasp when you are a horny teen (or post teen) and everyone but you seems to be in a relationship.
For the sex, of course.
I think a fair number of cis-gendered people get this too, honestly, though doubtless to a much lesser extent.