Entries Tagged 'Genderization' ↓

Deborah Siegel asks some compelling questions in the Ms. Blog Magazine, Are We Too Isolated to Fight the Pink v. Blue Battle?, about gender stereotypes and gender identity. I’d like to answer some of them, from my own perspective. My perspective being one where I started The Girl Revolution to both talk about gender issues, knock down stereotypes, and as a mother of both a boy and a girl.

The author and I have a lot in common in that we both held the belief several years ago that gender is mostly a social construct and that we, as parents, had the power to alter the social construct for our kids.

My views on this have changed with the experience of raising a daughter for nine years and a son for five years. It’s also drastically changed with additional knowledge about the powerful role hormones play in our lives, experimentation with my own gender identity and what feels good to me and observing the greater cultural picture about gender.

The author asks if we (I assume she means those of us who see gender stereotypes as a problem), are too isolated to really break down the barriers of gender stereotypes. I would have to say that in my experience the opposite is true. If I moved myself and my family into a bubble in which there was little to no contact with the outside world – and by outside world I mean grandmas and grandpas, other children, parents of other children, teachers, pediatricians, television, all media, literature and abstained from visiting a grocery store – well, then it would be really, super easy to raise androgynous children completely unaware of gender identities or stereotypes.

Practically the second my son was born, my mother-in-law who was in the room, said, “Oh he’s such a boy!” Then she said it over and over and over and over. Now, academically, I was sure that if dressed exactly the same as his girl cousin and taken into a mall not a soul would be able to tell if he was a boy or a girl. But, instead I just couldn’t resist giving him the most adorable mohawk, which identified him as a boy. Add to that the plethora of toys, games and clothes with gender designations given to my children for birthdays and Christmas and it didn’t take me too long to figure out that I, in truth, was not powerful enough to control the gender identification or stereotyping of my children.

Nor, I realized, did they want me to.

My daughter, it would seem, really did love the color pink. She really did like to be a girl. She liked to identify as one and she had absolutely zero desire to be androgynous, forsaking all gender roles and stereotyping. When I would try, it would irritate the dickens out of her.

My son, likes the color pink too, enjoys watching Dora over Diego, but you know what, even as a tiny baby if we walked by a television display with a football game on, he was profoundly attracted to that. He could also pick out the sound of a train, tractor or diesel and was entranced by it in a way that neither my daughter or I could relate to.

I had to reconsider my position.

The other day, I watched Lisa Ling’s Our America about transgendered people. These are people who feel they are born in the wrong gendered bodies. Even small children who are born in bodies that they feel are the wrong gender find it incredibly painful. Their families, even if they were supportive of a gender change, also found their children’s gender confusion incredibly painful. What I took from that show is the gender is somehow, inherently important to who we are. It is the basis for much of our identity. Enough so that if you are born feeling like a girl and the world wants to identify you as boy that person doesn’t feel whole, complete or happy until they are acknowledged to be a girl and visa versa. They will go to drastic, painful surgical and hormonal lengths to ensure the outside world identifies them as their chosen gender.

So, what’s wrong with a gender stereotype?

Well, it’s wrong when it limits our choices. Feminists are especially irked by it because gender stereotyping limited our choices and our freedom to express our full selves. The box they were trying to shove us in was way too small to allow the full expression of our gifts and talents. This type of gender stereotyping forced us into economically and physically dangerous positions. Which is never okay. Which felt horrible.

But, being a girl and identifying as one and being allowed the full freedom to express ourselves as feminine isn’t dangerous, shouldn’t be fought and feels good.

We’ve made a great deal of progress. Essential progress that our daughters have really benefitted from. The box, is disintegrating. There are more and more ways to be a woman in today’s world and gender stereotypes are less damaging. Yes, there are still problems and in some cases the pendulum appears to have swung too far in one direction, but consider that my mother had to wear a skirt to college because pants weren’t allowed. Consider that I was taught that the only way to be a good mom, was to stay home and forsake work. Consider that women weren’t allowed to have many of the good jobs because they were women.

My daughter doesn’t identify with any of that. The entire concept is foreign to her. When she hears about it she thinks it’s just stupid. When I try to insist that she fight the fights of my youth, or my mother’s youth, she thinks I’m being stupid. In her world, women are chemists, scientists, accountants, lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, teachers, therapists, writers, bloggers, executives, presidential and vice-presidential candidates, pastors, clowns, stay-at-home moms, furniture saleswomen, Oprah and anything else they decide to be. Those fights are fought and won. There is still enough to do that she can pick her own battles, choose her own barriers to break down. I’ll keep hacking away at the barriers I still see in front of her.

My son doesn’t identify with it either. He doesn’t have any of the old paradigms in his head about what men and women do or don’t do.

But, they are not the same. They do appear to think differently. They do seem to be attracted to different sorts of activities and they do like to express themselves in some different and gender-identified ways. And I’m glad of it. What’s so great about androgyny anyway?

The Bible . . .

You know the story where Jesus washes his disciples’ feet?

Of course you do.

Surely you’ve also heard this as a metaphor for servitude.

The male preacher asks the Sunday school class, “Have you ever had your feet washed?” as if to imply that to wash another’s feet is the ultimate in humiliating experiences.

“Uh Yeah. A pedicure. Women pay others to wash their feet as a precious and luxurious taste of what HEAVEN feels like.”

The whole room looked at me like I was the one who was crazy.

Yesterday was one of those rare days when I witnessed a staggering work of genius.

Astoundingly, I witnessed two.

One of the works of genius is likely to change all media forever.

Of course I mean James Cameron’s Avatar. It is Epic.

In The Girl Revolution terms it was startlingly beautiful with a mixture of female roles any parent should be proud to expose their daughters to: the Navi female lead was attractive but not hyper-sexual, instead she was a warrior and hunter and in line to be the next village spiritual leader. The head human scientist was science fiction genre-queen Segourney Weaver, the human female supporting actress was a fighter pilot, the village spiritual leader was a wise and holy matriarch.

The typical female film archetypes are nowhere to be found in this epic film. The village whore was not cast, the promiscuous girl was not doing it with the football player so the audience could catch a glimpse of her boobs, the dumb blond was not featured, the submissive wife was nowhere to be found, the powerless and trapped beauty in need of saving is missing and my friends, there was not a single evil stepmother or conniving man-stealer.

The sexuality of the film was authentic. By this I mean, there was no gratuitous ogling, fondling, crass, boys-will-be-boys, everyone-just-wants-to-get-laid, casual-sex-is-fun, porno-inspired, beer-commercial-craptastic, look-at-the-plastic DDDs, Oh-Edward-I-want-to-damn-my-soul-and-die-to-spend-eternity-with-you, prince-come-save-me-for-I-am-helpless “romantic” scenarios.

There was a singular sex/romance scene in the entire drama in which the male and female leads chose each other after several months of non-sexual intimacy and spiritually joined together at the Navi’s holiest Temple. The scene was not graphic nor porno-graphic, but very loving and intimate. It ended with the words, “We are mated for life.”

As a creative-type myself, it was a sheer pleasure to experience the film. I consider it of high honor to witness an artist’s work of creative genius. Creative energy poured out in a spiritual way, as in this film, is even better. I had read about Cameron’s visualizing the Navi and the Pandora world since the 1970s in a New Yorker article and my interest was peaked. My main attraction to the film was to see what 30 years of meditating, expanding, working on idea would culminate in. The sheer scale of the film is tantalizing. The attention to detail is intimidating. The technology he invented to make the film is creation in high-tech genius. The visual beauty is so great that several times I gasped in awe and wonder.

The film is so surreal you can taste it, smell it, touch it. There is a palpable and quite lovely energy to the film one can absorb if one is so inclined. I am.

Jeremy, my husband, and I are debating whether to allow Ainsley to see it. I want to expose her to creative and inspiring genius while it’s in the theaters, with the 3D glasses, for full effect. DVD will not do this film justice. It will be like turning a pop-up book into a flat postcard. Avatar will be this generation’s Star Wars. I believe it will be culturally significant, become part of the lexicon of world culture, weave its way into our speech and casual conversations, develop a following of people who parade around in blue and have Navi conventions, and change Halloween costumes forever. I don’t want her to miss it. It will be culturally significant in a way that someone who forgoes the experience will be missing cues, comments and humor. I don’t want her to miss an opportunity to witness creative genius. Avatar is Art – rare, precious and inspiring.

Jeremy disagrees. He feels it is too emotionally intense for an 8 year old. He feels the themes are rather mature, the emotions run extremely high, and it will be overwhelming or frightening for her.

Oh, the other work of staggering genius is the book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. Come back next week because we’ll be talking a lot about it. It will have a profound impact on our work here at The Girl Revolution.

When I started The Girl Revolution I had experience being a daughter, girlfriend, wife and mother of a very young girl. It would be fair to say that I believed boys and girls are “basically the same except for social conditioning.”

The social conditioning appeared to be more in the boy’s favor than the girl’s. This was upsetting.

If I could just right the wrong, make the perception shift and give girls a more equitable social conditioning, well that would be my Girl Revolution.

I don’t think I agree with my former self. I’m not sure the theory pans out in real life. It hasn’t proven true.

Two main things happened to shift my perception:

* I’ve been married to a kind and decent man for nearly a decade now. The new has worn off. Neither of us are as motivated to “attract” the other because we accomplished the whole child-bearing thing. It’s a different sort of relationship than I’ve previously had with boyfriends or male family members. The longer I’m married to this particular man, the more convinced I am that men and women have entirely different motivators, ways of relating to the world, and even primary values. These appear to be inherent. The puzzling part is why I, and other women I know, are so baffled, confused, angry and in denial about how inherently different women and men are.

* I had a son.  He is very much like his sister in a great deal of ways. However, he is also inherently different. Intuitively I know that pushing him to do flash cards is the wrong method to teach him his alphabet, just as intuitively I know that it was the perfect way to engage my daughter. I attempt to buy them gender-neutral toys like Tinker Toys, yet I notice that she has played with them twice in a year and he has played with them nearly every day. She has no interest in the cars. Dinosaurs do not hold her attention. He never wants to talk, she wants to talk constantly. He doesn’t look me or anyone else in the eye, she makes eye contact all day long.

Men and boys really are  . . . different. Could that be true?

My perception of how The Girl Revolution is going to go down has shifted.

The Girl Revolution is far more achievable, fun and exciting not if girls and boys are the same and equity is achieved. Because the bar for equity – throughout the entire Women’s Revolution – has been masculine and patriarchal.

No good enough.

That bar is far to low.

The Girl Revolution will be achieved when girls and women are acknowledged, respected and rewarded socially, politically, economically, familially and relationally for their inherent feminine selves.

There is an economic shift going on right this very second on the planet. I predict girls and women are going to come out ahead. Except, not the way we’ve pushed forward in the last 35 years, pushing against our natural instincts and theirs. Yes, we can and yes, we did. Still, its so much harder to go against the flow than with the flow.

But, its time to take a deep breath and refocus, readjust, re-assess. I think we’re going to stake a claim to something much, much bigger. We’re discovering a strength in ourselves that the planet has not yet known before.

What do we really want? What does femininity seek to achieve for its precious daughters? What does it seek to achieve for its precious sons?

I suspect it has very little to do with achieving economic equality in the status quo. In fact, I suspect with the entry of truly honored femininity we’ll breeze right by the low bar of equity we’ve set for ourselves previously.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

In The Way of Boys: Raising Healthy Boys in a Challenging and Complex World, Anthony Rao, Ph.D. cautions parents and educators to stop treating young boyhood as an illness.

Dr. Rao has spent 20 years working with young boys. Most boys he words works with are  in need of intervention in some way. Some of his clients are getting in trouble for emotional outbursts, others are being recommended for medication because they can’t stand sitting still for eight hours a day, others are in trouble for bullying or throwing  tantrums, some are too bright and have conflicts with teachers.

Dr. Rao, in nearly every case in the book, recommends social conditioning over medication.

Rao is obviously deeply concerned that boys are being labeled and medicated at alarming rates for what he believes is normal boyish behavior. ADD, ADHD, Manic-Depression, Autism and Autism Spectrum Disorders like Aspergers are often misdiagnosed and quickly medicated for normal boy development.

• Can’t sit still
• No eye contact
• Fidgeting
• Lack of Empathy
• Slow Language Development
• Doesn’t Want to Talk
• Aggression
• Lack of Focus
• Emotional Meltdowns

These are all symptoms of normal development in boys, rather than symptoms of some diagnosable condition in need of medication.

He strongly cautions against going along with one professional or quasi-professional’s opinion after seeing a child once or twice or basing a diagnosis on school records. He calls a doctor or therapist writing a prescription for medication right away, without attempting a course of behavior modification therapy first, a Red Flag.

In most instances, Dr. Rao cautions against authority-defeating and child-defeating punishment like withholding recess and physical activity because a child won’t sit still and can’t seem to focus.

Of course, boys can’t focus, he tells readers. They have to run their energy off, boys are naturally and inherently physically active and boys focus and learn better if they are given ample opportunity to run wild and explore.

News Flash: No normal person – boy or girl, male or female – wants to sit still eight hours a day. There is something wrong with the person who does want that for themselves, their students or their children.

Rao even walks parents through dealing with a school system bent on disciplining or medicating their sons, explaining carefully how to deal with school officials, counselors and teachers. He carefully points out what parents should say, how they should behave and what rights they have to protect their children.

Rao convinces parents to view their boys as a work in progress and insists that whatever behavior your child is exhibiting right now, they will be very different in six months. He strongly urges a “wait and see” approach to most problems. Early testing for Autism seems to be the singular instance in which Rao recommends early testing, because early intervention has proven so effective.

Rao convincingly shows parents that while a teacher might point to a tendency to line up and sort objects as “Asbergery,” its more likely a sign that your son will grow up to be an engineer. While a teacher might find your child disruptive and fidgety, it is more likely a sign that your child might be a fabulous athlete than that he has ADHD. An early developmental lag might point to a strength that will truly shine in higher grade levels when the focus shifts.

Sometimes medication is useful for older boys, Rao says, but only if the following conditions are present: the problem persists over time, in every situation or condition, and if it is greatly interfering with your child’s life and development.

I found this book to be an interesting examination of the male psyche.

“I don’t wanna talk,” my three-year-old son, Zack tells me when I ask him how his day was at school. Just like your dad, I think.

As frustrating as hearing “I don’t wanna talk” has been for females, evidently, that’s completely normal for the males of our species.