Yesterday, the Tiger asked me: “Mama, what’s the opposite of ‘boys and girls’?”
Me: “Do you think there has to be an opposite? Well, some people think boys are the opposite of girls, but are they really?”
Tiger: “No! They’re all just people.”
Leave it to a seven-year-old to dismantle oppositional sexism.
Patron cat of Kittywampus (1985-2001)
What a brilliant child!
Well, we also have moments when he says, “Oh, Tangled! That’s a girls’ movie.” It’s a process.
We go through this too, but one thing that is interesting to me is that the girls are just as much enforcers of femininity. My son has a baby doll that I bought him when his little sister was on the way, and when he brings it to preschool, it’s the girls who give him the most grief. Or the girls who say he can’t paint his nails. They can be pretty defensive about their territory.
“They can be pretty defensive about their territory.”
That hate that drag queens get from rad fems and Sarah Palin-type mean girls is a proof of that. That’s what I lover most about Ru Paul’s Drag U, men teaching women how to be feminine. Bunk of course, but useful in a way.
ps – Did you hear about the baby who was frisked by TSA? (That sounds like the intro to a joke about explosive diapers, but it really happened.)
Chingona – I’ve seen girls enforcing the boundaries of femininity – more than I’ve seen boys keeping the girls out of their games. The boys also police each other on certain girly things (princesses, Barbies), yet I’m hard pressed to think of an instance where one girl told enough not to play with, say, Bakugan, or mocked the toy. Maybe I don’t see it because I’ve got two boys, but overall I see so much more latitude for young girls to explore masculinity than boys have with femininity.
And yes, I did see the photo of that baby! If the TSA starts searching for explosive gel in diapers, they’re going to find it all right.
So far at least, that’s how I see it, too. (That the girls have more leeway.) My daughter is only 10 months old, so I’m not totally sure how it will play out. She certainly gets more of a fuss made over her when I dress her in something girly than when she’s in her brother’s hand-me-downs. I have seen a few girls my son’s age go from being really rough-and-tumble to much more into princesses in response to other girls at the preschool, much to the distress of their feminist mothers, but I’m not totally clear how much the dynamic is “you shouldn’t do boy stuff” versus “you’re my new best friend and I want to like what you like.” Probably some of both.
I am remembering now that at this one daycare that we went to briefly and that really, really didn’t work out, there were a few boys who teased my son mercilessly about being a girl because he had long hair. He eventually asked us to cut it, which made me quite sad, and the kids still teased him for being a girl, which I guess is a good lesson about the futility of trying to appease bullies.
Now, when he asks me to paint his nails, he tells me it will make people call him a girl and then he laughs. That does make me proud, though, like I said, we still get plenty of the boy stuff/girl stuff comments.
Chingona, that story makes me grind my teeth. I’m glad you didn’t live up to your name; maybe those boys are salvageable. I am really, really glad your boy has found the right answer so young. let me guess who pointed him in the right direction.