With rare exceptions, I am not a timely blogger. There have been occasions where I've reacted quickly to a current event or topic but I've usually regretted it. I'd rather think something through before committing myself to a "side." I've been offered jobs to blog for sites that cover hot topics, but I can't. Writing is a sideline for me at best, and I can't drop the things I'm supposed to be doing to quickly dash off a post during the small window when people want an opinion on the outrage of the moment. Besides, I'm not interested in fueling any fires. I'd rather find ways to put them out if possible.
So here are my thoughts on a local story that briefly went national many weeks ago, now that nobody remembers or cares. Because gender issues interest me, I do have an opinion unlike any of the ones I heard at the time, and I do find myself still thinking about it.
The elementary school a few blocks from our house had something called Switch It Up Day during their version of a spirit week. Lots of schools have special dress up days. My kids' school did an 80s day at one point, and I think a backwards day. The thing I remember most from those kinds of dress up days when I was in high school was that at the end of the week we were supposed to be decked out in the school colors, but Ferndale High's colors were brown and white and that was just boring.
Anyway, the nearby school was getting reactions from all over the country about what was being called "Gender Bender Day" on the news. The girls could dress as boys and the boys could dress as girls. Nobody had to do anything, of course, it was supposed to be voluntary and fun, but apparently one parent got bent out of shape over it, and suddenly everyone had an opinion on whether or not this was harmless or something to do with the decay of society and gender norms.
I wouldn't lodge a formal protest if I were a parent of someone at that school, because that's not the hill I want to die on, but I do object to the idea of Switch It Up Day. And probably not for the reasons others might.
My own space apart from the babble of the internet
Showing posts with label girls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label girls. Show all posts
Friday, August 2, 2013
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Friendship Angles (Babble)
Imagine you are a mom with a daughter. She’s sweet, and smart and
charming. She was your first born and taught you about the true depths
of love. She is more precious to you than your own self.
Now imagine you see her hurting. Every instinct you have is to be on her side. To make it stop. Because even though life is filled with hard lessons that we must each grapple with ourselves, and your daughter is growing up and must begin to navigate the world without you, your heart still tells you to fix it.
You talk to your daughter and find out the source of her pain is a friendship that has gone awry. A girl she has known for years has paired up with someone else and together they are snubbing her. Your daughter is being left out. She suspects she’s being laughed at. Your daughter’s friend has become a mean girl.
You soothe your daughter and dry her tears. You think about the best course of action while resisting the urge to overreact as a mother protecting her child is won’t to do. You think the best advice may be to tell her to remove such an insensitive person from her life. Let it go. Cut your losses and move on, concentrate on different friends.
Now imagine you are the other mom. The mom of the girl being labeled the mean one. Your daughter is sweet and smart and kind. She has many friends and loves them all. Your daughter is unaware that she’s made any of them unhappy. She doesn’t know that by being inclusive with one person she has excluded others and it hurts them. She doesn’t know the pain of being on the outside and wondering why. She is not intentionally cruel. She is oblivious.
You get a call from the mom whose daughter is upset. She tells you how things look from her angle. From her daughter’s angle. She wants to know if it’s safe to talk about it, or if it’s interfering too deeply in the lives and relationships of these girls who are old enough to have social lives of their own outside of the arrangements of their mothers. You say yes, of course, to please tell you everything.
You think to yourself about all the times you fretted since you first held your baby girl in your arms about what you would do if she were ever picked on. You know the pain of being an outcast at school, of being threatened and ridiculed and left out. You always figured you’d find a way to help your own daughter stand up to the mean girls. You would protect her. Accompany her to school or keep her home if you had to, but no one was going to hurt your baby the way you were hurt. It never crossed your mind in a million years that your daughter could be on the other side of that scenario. That she would be capable of hurting others. That didn’t seem possible.
You talk to the mom. You talk to your daughter, who is reduced to tears at the thought that she caused her friend pain. You talk with each of them again and even have them talk to each other. You talk to a third mother with a child involved on the periphery, and chat briefly with the teacher as well. Some of it is confusing, conflicting. There is a slightly disorienting Rashomon effect as certain accounts don’t match up, but a bigger picture emerges. There is no clear cut narrative of good and bad. There are only mistakes and misunderstandings, bruised feelings an unintended slights. But people are hardwired to construct simple stories. We like labels. We want there to be a right and a wrong and someone to blame. Real human beings are not that simple and we need to resist labels in order to give people–particularly children–a chance to be more than that.
You are glad the mom talked to you. You work together to give the girls a chance to spend some time away from the school, to connect again as friends. You talk to your daughter about remembering to step outside herself and see what things look like from other angles. To not get so wrapped up in her own activities that she can’t see what is in front of her. You tell her that friendship is not just about fun, but about responsibilities. She is determined to try harder to meet her friends’ needs. And at the moment, it is working.
I have little sympathy for bullies. I recoil at the unfairness of blaming victims for their own suffering. But in our self-righteous hurry to pick sides and feel safe in our judgments, we need to be careful. In some cases we can stop things from going too far and causing unnecessary pain. Of course we need to protect our children, but we must also be brave about speaking up and giving the other side a chance to address the issue.
Because sometimes a mean girl isn’t actually mean. And sometimes parents and their kids can do better if they are offered a different perspective. Sometimes friendships can be salvaged from misunderstanding and put on track again, but only when people give each other the benefit of the doubt and are willing to both talk and listen.
It all depends on your angle.
Now imagine you see her hurting. Every instinct you have is to be on her side. To make it stop. Because even though life is filled with hard lessons that we must each grapple with ourselves, and your daughter is growing up and must begin to navigate the world without you, your heart still tells you to fix it.
You talk to your daughter and find out the source of her pain is a friendship that has gone awry. A girl she has known for years has paired up with someone else and together they are snubbing her. Your daughter is being left out. She suspects she’s being laughed at. Your daughter’s friend has become a mean girl.
You soothe your daughter and dry her tears. You think about the best course of action while resisting the urge to overreact as a mother protecting her child is won’t to do. You think the best advice may be to tell her to remove such an insensitive person from her life. Let it go. Cut your losses and move on, concentrate on different friends.
Now imagine you are the other mom. The mom of the girl being labeled the mean one. Your daughter is sweet and smart and kind. She has many friends and loves them all. Your daughter is unaware that she’s made any of them unhappy. She doesn’t know that by being inclusive with one person she has excluded others and it hurts them. She doesn’t know the pain of being on the outside and wondering why. She is not intentionally cruel. She is oblivious.
You get a call from the mom whose daughter is upset. She tells you how things look from her angle. From her daughter’s angle. She wants to know if it’s safe to talk about it, or if it’s interfering too deeply in the lives and relationships of these girls who are old enough to have social lives of their own outside of the arrangements of their mothers. You say yes, of course, to please tell you everything.
You think to yourself about all the times you fretted since you first held your baby girl in your arms about what you would do if she were ever picked on. You know the pain of being an outcast at school, of being threatened and ridiculed and left out. You always figured you’d find a way to help your own daughter stand up to the mean girls. You would protect her. Accompany her to school or keep her home if you had to, but no one was going to hurt your baby the way you were hurt. It never crossed your mind in a million years that your daughter could be on the other side of that scenario. That she would be capable of hurting others. That didn’t seem possible.
You talk to the mom. You talk to your daughter, who is reduced to tears at the thought that she caused her friend pain. You talk with each of them again and even have them talk to each other. You talk to a third mother with a child involved on the periphery, and chat briefly with the teacher as well. Some of it is confusing, conflicting. There is a slightly disorienting Rashomon effect as certain accounts don’t match up, but a bigger picture emerges. There is no clear cut narrative of good and bad. There are only mistakes and misunderstandings, bruised feelings an unintended slights. But people are hardwired to construct simple stories. We like labels. We want there to be a right and a wrong and someone to blame. Real human beings are not that simple and we need to resist labels in order to give people–particularly children–a chance to be more than that.
You are glad the mom talked to you. You work together to give the girls a chance to spend some time away from the school, to connect again as friends. You talk to your daughter about remembering to step outside herself and see what things look like from other angles. To not get so wrapped up in her own activities that she can’t see what is in front of her. You tell her that friendship is not just about fun, but about responsibilities. She is determined to try harder to meet her friends’ needs. And at the moment, it is working.
I have little sympathy for bullies. I recoil at the unfairness of blaming victims for their own suffering. But in our self-righteous hurry to pick sides and feel safe in our judgments, we need to be careful. In some cases we can stop things from going too far and causing unnecessary pain. Of course we need to protect our children, but we must also be brave about speaking up and giving the other side a chance to address the issue.
Because sometimes a mean girl isn’t actually mean. And sometimes parents and their kids can do better if they are offered a different perspective. Sometimes friendships can be salvaged from misunderstanding and put on track again, but only when people give each other the benefit of the doubt and are willing to both talk and listen.
It all depends on your angle.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Gender Expectations (Babble)
(Quinn art: girls and boys with balloons)
I’ve written something about this before. I will probably write something about it again. Few topics interest me more than people’s thoughts on gender, both as it relates to their own personal lives and to society at large. I think it’s something many of us implicitly believe we all agree on to a certain extent, until we actually ask someone and discover how much variability there really is. Sort of like the notion of ‘common sense,’ which is not always so common because what may seem perfectly reasonable to me could sound like a terrible idea to someone else. People’s beliefs about gender are all over the map, despite whatever tacit agreement we may believe we share.
Personally, I’m rather torn. Because there are some basic ways in which I believe men and women, boys and girls, tend to be different. I just can’t decide how important we should think those differences are.
For instance, I remember very clearly when seeing the movie Gladiator (back before children when Ian and I were able to see movies in an actual theater) having an uncomfortable revelation during the opening scene. Men on either side of a clearing are preparing for battle, and when the signal is given, they rush at one another killing anyone they come close to. It’s brutal, and it’s horrible, and even though it’s only a movie, it doesn’t show anything that hasn’t happened in human history countless times over. It struck me as I sat there in the theater that I would not be capable of running toward that kind of carnage on someone’s order. But my husband could. I believe if someone were inflicting harm on my children I would be capable of killing that person if necessary, but I cannot fathom rushing into a battlefield and simply killing whomever. I think the trait of choosing to run toward a battle rather than away from it is more typical in males.
But just because a behavior is exhibited more often in one sex than the other does not give it exclusive claim to that trait. There are many soldiers who happen to be women who are prepared to kill and die on someone’s order. That does not make them lesser women or more like men in my opinion. Men who wish to avoid violence are not lesser men. I can’t think of any one trait that should be held up as a standard by which either sex should be specifically judged. This is probably where the opinions about gender diverge, because most people I talk to seem to draw a line somewhere about what is masculine and and what is feminine, and that line is in different place for everyone I meet.
When I was in high school I had a biology teacher who asked us to make a lists of characteristics that we defined as either masculine or feminine, but we were not allowed to include anything physical. This was a hard assignment, and one I still ponder from time to time. Both sexes are capable of strength, compassion, humor, aggression, weakness, caring…. I honestly would not know what to put on those lists today. But that same teacher once made a stereotypical comment in class about either boys or girls, and when someone spoke up in protest he said, “Quick! Everyone point north!” and all the boys did, and all the girls looked around at the boys first before following their example. I found that fascinating, but is it important?
Innocently offered statements about ‘what girls are like’ or ‘what boys are like’ almost always get my hackles up. Of course there are generalizations you can make about girls and boys. But generalizations are not laws, nor standards by which individuals should necessarily be judged. When people start repeating things like, “Girls are nurturing” and “Boys are active” I feel as if it sets up artificial definitions that imply someone is anywhere from different to freakish if they don’t fit within those limits. I have two girls and a boy. All three of them are nurturing. The most active of the bunch happens to be a girl. I don’t see any of them as stepping over any lines in these ways. They just are who they are.
When I was pregnant with Quinn after having two girls I was shocked at the number of people who jumped to the conclusion we were ‘trying for that boy.’ I honestly didn’t care which sex my child was, but I started to almost wish for a girl out of a weird sense of spite. I know nobody meant anything remotely bad by it, but it seemed insulting to my girls somehow, and presumptuous about what a boy would be. I worry when people express desire for one sex of a child over another, because what if the child doesn’t conform to certain expectations? I don’t understand people who want a girl because they say they want to dress them in pink, because plenty of girls don’t like pink, and it doesn’t make them failures as girls. I hoped to be able to play music with any of my children, but I wouldn’t be disappointed in them if their interests lay elsewhere. We can’t tell our children who they are. They’re supposed to tell us.
I’m not saying there aren’t differences between boys and girls, I’m just saying that the differences that exist within the group that is girls and the group that is boys are wider than the differences between the two groups. Why anyone cares about the sex of another person beyond themselves or a potential sexual partner is a mystery to me.
I think on issues of gender (and many other characteristics for that matter) people need to recognize that a need for conformity has more to do with personal insecurity than some greater good. We feel safer in our own choices when we can relate to the choices and behaviors of others around us, but we need to realize our own comfort is not enough to dictate what others must do or be. The sex of each of my children is an interesting and important part of who each of them is. But it’s far from the most important.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
When Friendship Isn't Friendly (Babble)
I have big problems with stereotypes in general, and gender
stereotypes in particular. But every once in awhile I find myself face
to face with one that is apt. I’m currently struggling with one that
applies to my oldest daughter, and probably many girls her age.
In broad terms, boys and girls navigate social relationships at school differently. There can be a lot of overlap, and the basic stereotypes currently don’t apply to my younger kids, but they do to Aden. Boys’ friendships have their own complexities, but seem to be somewhat loose. There is greater opportunity among boys for joining in most play. They can be less selective and more forgiving. Girls’ friendships, however, can be like emotional minefields.
I was never what anyone might consider a popular girl. Far from it. I had friends in grade school whom I still keep up with on Facebook today, and a few of those stuck by me through the Jr High low point of my existence. Then I met Gabby on the last day of school and life was forever better. That’s not hyperbole. I understand the courage and joy having a best friend provides, and I don’t take that lightly. Interacting with family and knowing how to socialize with others outside it can be very different things, and as much as I owe my family for a great deal of who I am, credit for my being able to translate that to the larger world goes to Gabby. She taught me what real friendship looks like and there are few things more precious to me.
So I understand the need that girls have to bond with someone, to want to be two friends against the world. The intimacy of your own private language of inside jokes, of passing notes and sharing secrets, of laughing until your sides hurt, and feeling special and safe and chosen because you can lay claim to a best friend and that person can lay claim to you. I get it. But there can be a dark side to that, too, and it involves excluding others. Having been on both sides of that divide I can relate to either.
Aden, by comparison, seems to be a popular girl, as far as such a thing applies in 4th grade. She has never lacked for friends. She makes new friends easily wherever she goes. She certainly has her shy moments and times when social events don’t go the way she would like, but for the most part I watch the way she draws in her peers with engaging small talk in a manner that I was not capable of at her age.
This year she is in a new classroom, and for the first time has most of her friends in one place, not scattered throughout the school. Individually she still gets along fine with just about everyone, new friends and old. But there is something about girls and being inclusive beyond pairing off that is difficult. It’s not instinctive for many girls to let people in, even people they like in a different setting. There have been hurt feelings this year, and talk of nosiness and snubbing and people feeling left out. Friendship has gotten trickier.
A couple of weeks ago Aden and I were walking together across the park to pick up treats from the bakery for our book club meeting, and we talked about this a little. We actually started off talking about why there is fighting in the world. We talked about different reasons countries and groups of people go to war. We agreed it was sad. Then we started talking about school and her friends and some of the problems she’s run into this year. I listened as she told one side of a story, and I told her what I imagined the other side might be. She had trouble understanding why leaving certain friends out of particular games on the playground might hurt their feelings. She wants to have special things with different people and doesn’t see why they should mix.
I told her that sometimes our instincts don’t lead us in a good direction. That I understood why it was so tempting to pair up with a single friend and purposely leave another out. But just because we may be pulled one direction doesn’t mean it’s the one that does us the most good or is even all that much fun. I told her when in doubt it is always better to include people, to pull people in, to expand the game to let more friends play. I explained that it was a lot like what we talked about at the beginning of our walk, about nations fighting. Human beings seem to have a natural inclination toward war, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to do better. We tend to do what gives us an immediate sense of safety and belonging, and that’s natural. But natural is not always synonymous with right or healthy or desirable. Both the great curse and salvation of ourselves as a species is we can choose. I want her to choose better. I want her to be a good friend to many, not an exclusive few.
I’ve talked about this a little bit with the mothers of the other girls involved. The dynamics are complicated by past histories and differences in age and just the way people change over time, but we would like our girls to still all get along and continue to play happily.
So here’s the question: Is this the kind of thing where I should be stepping back or stepping in? Do I withhold my opinion, or give Aden advice? Do we leave them to make mistakes that cause hurt feelings because those experiences are their own, or do we as mothers attempt to guide them toward something better? Maybe we can create situations that teach our girls how to function in groups of three, not just two.
I suspect in the end it’s unrealistic to think we can save them from the pain that changes in friendships can cause, but I don’t think it’s crazy to at least try. I’m glad I’m able to talk with the mothers of the other girls to help fill in the blanks of Aden’s stories, and be able to report back to her that, yes indeed, when she turned her back on so and so, that girl’s feelings really were hurt. Aden cried when she realized how some of her actions had been interpreted by people she cares about. It’s hard to pick a better path when you can’t see where you are stepping. I would like to think with enough information and tools my daughter could defy the stereotype of this particular phase. But it really may just be something girls do.
In broad terms, boys and girls navigate social relationships at school differently. There can be a lot of overlap, and the basic stereotypes currently don’t apply to my younger kids, but they do to Aden. Boys’ friendships have their own complexities, but seem to be somewhat loose. There is greater opportunity among boys for joining in most play. They can be less selective and more forgiving. Girls’ friendships, however, can be like emotional minefields.
I was never what anyone might consider a popular girl. Far from it. I had friends in grade school whom I still keep up with on Facebook today, and a few of those stuck by me through the Jr High low point of my existence. Then I met Gabby on the last day of school and life was forever better. That’s not hyperbole. I understand the courage and joy having a best friend provides, and I don’t take that lightly. Interacting with family and knowing how to socialize with others outside it can be very different things, and as much as I owe my family for a great deal of who I am, credit for my being able to translate that to the larger world goes to Gabby. She taught me what real friendship looks like and there are few things more precious to me.
So I understand the need that girls have to bond with someone, to want to be two friends against the world. The intimacy of your own private language of inside jokes, of passing notes and sharing secrets, of laughing until your sides hurt, and feeling special and safe and chosen because you can lay claim to a best friend and that person can lay claim to you. I get it. But there can be a dark side to that, too, and it involves excluding others. Having been on both sides of that divide I can relate to either.
Aden, by comparison, seems to be a popular girl, as far as such a thing applies in 4th grade. She has never lacked for friends. She makes new friends easily wherever she goes. She certainly has her shy moments and times when social events don’t go the way she would like, but for the most part I watch the way she draws in her peers with engaging small talk in a manner that I was not capable of at her age.
This year she is in a new classroom, and for the first time has most of her friends in one place, not scattered throughout the school. Individually she still gets along fine with just about everyone, new friends and old. But there is something about girls and being inclusive beyond pairing off that is difficult. It’s not instinctive for many girls to let people in, even people they like in a different setting. There have been hurt feelings this year, and talk of nosiness and snubbing and people feeling left out. Friendship has gotten trickier.
A couple of weeks ago Aden and I were walking together across the park to pick up treats from the bakery for our book club meeting, and we talked about this a little. We actually started off talking about why there is fighting in the world. We talked about different reasons countries and groups of people go to war. We agreed it was sad. Then we started talking about school and her friends and some of the problems she’s run into this year. I listened as she told one side of a story, and I told her what I imagined the other side might be. She had trouble understanding why leaving certain friends out of particular games on the playground might hurt their feelings. She wants to have special things with different people and doesn’t see why they should mix.
I told her that sometimes our instincts don’t lead us in a good direction. That I understood why it was so tempting to pair up with a single friend and purposely leave another out. But just because we may be pulled one direction doesn’t mean it’s the one that does us the most good or is even all that much fun. I told her when in doubt it is always better to include people, to pull people in, to expand the game to let more friends play. I explained that it was a lot like what we talked about at the beginning of our walk, about nations fighting. Human beings seem to have a natural inclination toward war, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to do better. We tend to do what gives us an immediate sense of safety and belonging, and that’s natural. But natural is not always synonymous with right or healthy or desirable. Both the great curse and salvation of ourselves as a species is we can choose. I want her to choose better. I want her to be a good friend to many, not an exclusive few.
I’ve talked about this a little bit with the mothers of the other girls involved. The dynamics are complicated by past histories and differences in age and just the way people change over time, but we would like our girls to still all get along and continue to play happily.
So here’s the question: Is this the kind of thing where I should be stepping back or stepping in? Do I withhold my opinion, or give Aden advice? Do we leave them to make mistakes that cause hurt feelings because those experiences are their own, or do we as mothers attempt to guide them toward something better? Maybe we can create situations that teach our girls how to function in groups of three, not just two.
I suspect in the end it’s unrealistic to think we can save them from the pain that changes in friendships can cause, but I don’t think it’s crazy to at least try. I’m glad I’m able to talk with the mothers of the other girls to help fill in the blanks of Aden’s stories, and be able to report back to her that, yes indeed, when she turned her back on so and so, that girl’s feelings really were hurt. Aden cried when she realized how some of her actions had been interpreted by people she cares about. It’s hard to pick a better path when you can’t see where you are stepping. I would like to think with enough information and tools my daughter could defy the stereotype of this particular phase. But it really may just be something girls do.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Rethinking Pink (the Misogynist Within) (Babble)
Pink. Pink is the current most identifiable symbol for what is
girlie. Pink is nothing in and of itself, but it is the tip of an
iceberg. I have been, on some level, struggling with the color pink in
different ways for most of my life, and I may have finally come to
terms with it. Maybe. But it’s taken accepting some hard truths about
myself to get there.
Anyone with any proximity to someone raising little girls in our culture knows that pink dominates the girlie girl landscape. For those who love pink this is wildly convenient. For those buying clothes or toys for girls who do not care for pink it can be problematic. Then there are parents like myself who personally have tried to push back against the avalanche of pink based on our own tastes and preferences, regardless of what our particular girls want.
My girls have both been through fluffy looking princess phases, and they both like pink, but they like other things too. We’ve never had a problem with them insisting on any particular color, so I never felt as if they had been brainwashed by society to choose one. But I resisted the onslaught of Disney princess related movies and merchandise as much as I could, and I was thrown into a mini crisis in my mind one Christmas when a relative gave my girls Barbies and I debated whether I should let them keep them.
I have never thought of myself as particularly feminine. I’m always surprised when other people see me that way, since I don’t wear makeup, I live in clothes that could double as sleepwear half the time, and I don’t have pierced ears or interesting shoes or a cute purse. (Actually, I own one cute vintage purse I found in an antique store, but I’ve never found a time to use it and I likely never will.) Many of my interests have put me in environments dominated by men. When I gave a lecture about violin making to the local Woodworkers’ Guild a man actually came up to me afterward just to say how jarring it was at first to listen to a woman talk about tools, but that the longer I talked the more he got over it. So I’m used to moving in circles where I don’t feel I’m being judged by particularly feminine standards.
I fretted a little for my girls because I don’t want them to feel limited in this world. I want them to tackle whatever interests them and not be held back. The princess stories bothered me because they struck me as promoting images of women that were passive and weak and dependent on men for happiness. Barbies seemed overly focused on physical beauty as a woman’s greatest attribute. Everything wrapped in pink hit me as mildly distasteful and unhealthy for these reasons.
Then I had a boy. And you know what? He’s a boy who adores his older sisters and when he was two his favorite shirt was a hand-me-down that made him feel included. And it was pink. I had to stop and reassess for bit. Because it started to dawn on me that there was bigger issue with pink that I hadn’t considered before. The bigger issue was misogyny, and I was guilty of it.
That may sound extreme, but when I started to look around at the larger society for cues about how my son would be treated walking out into the world in a pink shirt I did not like what I saw. Among my family and friends there was no problem, but once you are attuned to stories about boys in pink you start hearing some very scary things. The intolerance in some cases is frightening.
And that’s when I began to come to the defense of pink. Because what I see all too often now is that girls and the things they like are considered inferior. If a girl aspires to partake in things more stereotypically associated with boys–anything to do with weapons, or sports, or tools–she is viewed by many as taking a step up. Conversely, if a boy wants to pursue something regarded as feminine–like sewing, ballet, or organizing a tea party–this can still be controversial. It’s okay and often encouraged if a girl wants to play with boys’ toys. We think it’s cool if a girl can throw a football or fire a gun. If a boy wants to play with girlie things–with pink things–the reaction can be incredibly negative. It might be tolerated, but seldom encouraged.
I became offended by the idea that somehow the toys my girls liked were contaminated. Pink was lesser. I was guilty of having thought that too. I had avoided pink for myself because it lumped me in with girls. I wanted to be better than girls. That’s misogyny.
I began to really look at things differently. I started with Cinderella. I had remembered the Disney movie as a sad example of a woman waiting to be rescued by a prince and not much more. But I sat and watched it with my kids and that’s not what I saw at all. I saw a variety of different female characters, from the scary step-mom to the silly step-sisters, to some industrious mice, to Cinderella herself who was strong and decent. She was in an impossible situation without real options and she worked hard and looked for the good in life despite her circumstances. Yes, she’s eventually rescued by a prince, but he’s more a symbol of the ultimate prize of love and wish fulfillment. The prince is part of her reward of the better life she deserves. (I still can’t stand the Little Mermaid, though. You don’t relinquish your voice.)
Next I looked at Barbie. I never liked Barbies and my kids aren’t particularly interested in them either, preferring snuggly stuffed animals as I did, but when I took a look at the Bratz dolls suddenly Barbie was looking pretty good. Barbie at least seemed to have an education and could hold a variety of jobs. The Bratz dolls just looked trashy. I tried to pinpoint what bothered me about Barbie, and I realized it was unfair to essentially dislike her because she was many people’s idea of pretty. Yes, I know the problems associated with unrealistic body image and emphasizing looks over substance, but isn’t it wrong to discount people because of their looks either direction? If I dismiss Barbie the veterinarian because she’s blond and wears heels, how am I likely to treat a real woman vet who is pretty and wearing heels? If all I had against Barbie was her looks, well then I’m being shallow. (I’m still trying to figure out how I came to feel I need to stick up for Barbie, but there we are.)
When I started looking at any number of female figures from past and present with the perspective that feminine did not equal less valid I learned something. What looks like passivity is sometimes really patience. Being polite and gentle is not the same as weakness. To blame a woman for being judged by her beauty is to blame the victim.
But where does this sense of the feminine as lesser come from? I think it’s a power imbalance. The worst insults you can throw at a man are all some way of calling him a girl. At its core, I believe it comes down to the fact that typically during sex the woman is the person who is ‘done to.’ I’m not saying I don’t understand about all the different varieties of intimate behavior possible between people, but at a basic level it’s understood that women are at the receiving end of the sex act, and there is a sense that that is lower. It’s not considered a position of strength. For the same reason I think for many men the underlying root of homophobia is really misogyny. The idea of a man accepting a feminine role is intolerable to some, because it flies in the face of accepting the masculine role as superior. I don’t think it is.
But the masculine role can be more threatening. And women are so disproportionally the victims of violence that I think a lot of misogyny is not wanting to be vulnerable out of a sense of self-preservation. When you witness abuse you see two sides–the abuser with the power, and the victim who suffers. Many people don’t want to identify with victims because it’s an unsafe place to be. When you choose masculine pursuits you are choosing power. You are choosing safety. Choosing pink means needing protection. We don’t respect the vulnerable as equals.
I want all children to have the freedom to choose what interests them. I don’t believe in girl toys and boy toys. There are just toys. I don’t think my son’s toys are inherently better than his sisters’. And I don’t think pink is a sign of something weak simply because girls like it. I’m not saying it’s wrong to think a tea party game is more boring than a wrestling match–everyone is entitled to his or her personal preferences–but it is wrong to use your personal preferences to judge something as negative. The tea party is different but not less valid. I may still have no interest in Barbie, but I no longer harbor any sense of disgust about her either.
Freedom to choose does not make my less-traditional choices better, it just makes them truly mine. I want my kids to have choices and sometimes they choose pink. Pink is fine. For anyone. Even me, finally.
Anyone with any proximity to someone raising little girls in our culture knows that pink dominates the girlie girl landscape. For those who love pink this is wildly convenient. For those buying clothes or toys for girls who do not care for pink it can be problematic. Then there are parents like myself who personally have tried to push back against the avalanche of pink based on our own tastes and preferences, regardless of what our particular girls want.
My girls have both been through fluffy looking princess phases, and they both like pink, but they like other things too. We’ve never had a problem with them insisting on any particular color, so I never felt as if they had been brainwashed by society to choose one. But I resisted the onslaught of Disney princess related movies and merchandise as much as I could, and I was thrown into a mini crisis in my mind one Christmas when a relative gave my girls Barbies and I debated whether I should let them keep them.
I have never thought of myself as particularly feminine. I’m always surprised when other people see me that way, since I don’t wear makeup, I live in clothes that could double as sleepwear half the time, and I don’t have pierced ears or interesting shoes or a cute purse. (Actually, I own one cute vintage purse I found in an antique store, but I’ve never found a time to use it and I likely never will.) Many of my interests have put me in environments dominated by men. When I gave a lecture about violin making to the local Woodworkers’ Guild a man actually came up to me afterward just to say how jarring it was at first to listen to a woman talk about tools, but that the longer I talked the more he got over it. So I’m used to moving in circles where I don’t feel I’m being judged by particularly feminine standards.
I fretted a little for my girls because I don’t want them to feel limited in this world. I want them to tackle whatever interests them and not be held back. The princess stories bothered me because they struck me as promoting images of women that were passive and weak and dependent on men for happiness. Barbies seemed overly focused on physical beauty as a woman’s greatest attribute. Everything wrapped in pink hit me as mildly distasteful and unhealthy for these reasons.
Then I had a boy. And you know what? He’s a boy who adores his older sisters and when he was two his favorite shirt was a hand-me-down that made him feel included. And it was pink. I had to stop and reassess for bit. Because it started to dawn on me that there was bigger issue with pink that I hadn’t considered before. The bigger issue was misogyny, and I was guilty of it.
That may sound extreme, but when I started to look around at the larger society for cues about how my son would be treated walking out into the world in a pink shirt I did not like what I saw. Among my family and friends there was no problem, but once you are attuned to stories about boys in pink you start hearing some very scary things. The intolerance in some cases is frightening.
And that’s when I began to come to the defense of pink. Because what I see all too often now is that girls and the things they like are considered inferior. If a girl aspires to partake in things more stereotypically associated with boys–anything to do with weapons, or sports, or tools–she is viewed by many as taking a step up. Conversely, if a boy wants to pursue something regarded as feminine–like sewing, ballet, or organizing a tea party–this can still be controversial. It’s okay and often encouraged if a girl wants to play with boys’ toys. We think it’s cool if a girl can throw a football or fire a gun. If a boy wants to play with girlie things–with pink things–the reaction can be incredibly negative. It might be tolerated, but seldom encouraged.
I became offended by the idea that somehow the toys my girls liked were contaminated. Pink was lesser. I was guilty of having thought that too. I had avoided pink for myself because it lumped me in with girls. I wanted to be better than girls. That’s misogyny.
I began to really look at things differently. I started with Cinderella. I had remembered the Disney movie as a sad example of a woman waiting to be rescued by a prince and not much more. But I sat and watched it with my kids and that’s not what I saw at all. I saw a variety of different female characters, from the scary step-mom to the silly step-sisters, to some industrious mice, to Cinderella herself who was strong and decent. She was in an impossible situation without real options and she worked hard and looked for the good in life despite her circumstances. Yes, she’s eventually rescued by a prince, but he’s more a symbol of the ultimate prize of love and wish fulfillment. The prince is part of her reward of the better life she deserves. (I still can’t stand the Little Mermaid, though. You don’t relinquish your voice.)
Next I looked at Barbie. I never liked Barbies and my kids aren’t particularly interested in them either, preferring snuggly stuffed animals as I did, but when I took a look at the Bratz dolls suddenly Barbie was looking pretty good. Barbie at least seemed to have an education and could hold a variety of jobs. The Bratz dolls just looked trashy. I tried to pinpoint what bothered me about Barbie, and I realized it was unfair to essentially dislike her because she was many people’s idea of pretty. Yes, I know the problems associated with unrealistic body image and emphasizing looks over substance, but isn’t it wrong to discount people because of their looks either direction? If I dismiss Barbie the veterinarian because she’s blond and wears heels, how am I likely to treat a real woman vet who is pretty and wearing heels? If all I had against Barbie was her looks, well then I’m being shallow. (I’m still trying to figure out how I came to feel I need to stick up for Barbie, but there we are.)
When I started looking at any number of female figures from past and present with the perspective that feminine did not equal less valid I learned something. What looks like passivity is sometimes really patience. Being polite and gentle is not the same as weakness. To blame a woman for being judged by her beauty is to blame the victim.
But where does this sense of the feminine as lesser come from? I think it’s a power imbalance. The worst insults you can throw at a man are all some way of calling him a girl. At its core, I believe it comes down to the fact that typically during sex the woman is the person who is ‘done to.’ I’m not saying I don’t understand about all the different varieties of intimate behavior possible between people, but at a basic level it’s understood that women are at the receiving end of the sex act, and there is a sense that that is lower. It’s not considered a position of strength. For the same reason I think for many men the underlying root of homophobia is really misogyny. The idea of a man accepting a feminine role is intolerable to some, because it flies in the face of accepting the masculine role as superior. I don’t think it is.
But the masculine role can be more threatening. And women are so disproportionally the victims of violence that I think a lot of misogyny is not wanting to be vulnerable out of a sense of self-preservation. When you witness abuse you see two sides–the abuser with the power, and the victim who suffers. Many people don’t want to identify with victims because it’s an unsafe place to be. When you choose masculine pursuits you are choosing power. You are choosing safety. Choosing pink means needing protection. We don’t respect the vulnerable as equals.
I want all children to have the freedom to choose what interests them. I don’t believe in girl toys and boy toys. There are just toys. I don’t think my son’s toys are inherently better than his sisters’. And I don’t think pink is a sign of something weak simply because girls like it. I’m not saying it’s wrong to think a tea party game is more boring than a wrestling match–everyone is entitled to his or her personal preferences–but it is wrong to use your personal preferences to judge something as negative. The tea party is different but not less valid. I may still have no interest in Barbie, but I no longer harbor any sense of disgust about her either.
Freedom to choose does not make my less-traditional choices better, it just makes them truly mine. I want my kids to have choices and sometimes they choose pink. Pink is fine. For anyone. Even me, finally.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Crying (Babble)
With the recent death of my grandmother I have a good excuse to be
crying lately. Although, honestly, things are already feeling a little
better. The strange thing about her passing, for me, is that since
there is no living person in the present to think of as my grandma, I am
free to remember her as the person she was before the dementia set in
and the woman I knew began to fade. I’ve been released from thinking of
that frail figure as my grandma, and back to thinking of her as the
independent, intelligent, and generous person she was for most of her
life. She exists purely in memory now, so I can choose any memories of
her I want, and I choose the ones that represent her best. Oddly, for
the first time in a long time, I feel like I have my old grandma back.
But experiencing strong grief has got me thinking about crying in general. It’s one of those topics that doesn’t seem as if there would be much to it, until you give it a moment, and realize there are more types and situations involving crying than I’d ever have room for on one blog post. From the parenting perspective alone, consider babies with colic where crying is like torture, babies who learn to fake cry just to get attention, kids who cry only when someone is watching, kids who only cry in private, arguments about letting a baby ‘cry it out’ at night, being able to recognize your own child’s crying in a crowd, if your kid cries in her sleep, crying about shots, crying about nothing, crying about everything….
I was fortunate that as babies my kids almost never cried. I don’t really remember Mona crying about anything until she was around eight months old. (She was the happiest little thing, and I had to check her crib often if I put her down in the day because if she woke up she’d just entertain herself with her hands or her toes and not make a peep.) If they started to fuss I’d scoop them up, and I didn’t see any reason to ever let them cry. (So for anybody out there whose instincts are telling them to not let their babies cry but are doubting themselves because of some outside influence, I say go with your gut. I can’t name you one ill effect of having done that myself.)
From the time Aden was a few months old to the present day, if I cry in front of her, she cries. If I cry in front of Quinn or Mona they can’t deal with it, and they act as if they are ignoring it, but I can tell it’s unsettling to them. When something effects Aden emotionally tears come quickly and she accepts them. Her tears flow and she wants a hug. She even got emotional while we were doing violin practice the other day and got tears all over her instrument (ironically while working on “The Happy Farmer.”) We got through it and then cuddled for awhile and all was well. If I start to say something that Mona expects will be upsetting she tries to make me stop. Mona wants to avoid public tears at all cost, and chooses often to be angry rather than sad to protect herself. Quinn only cries out of pain or exhaustion, or if I act upset with him. (If I raise my voice at Quinn it seems to destroy his world so I do my best to not let that happen.)
Sometimes I feel like I cry at everything. There are songs on the kids’ CDs that will make me weep, and if I sing along with pop tunes I’ve noticed that usually a modulation in the chorus will induce tears for some reason. I enjoy a good cry sometimes, and certain movie or TV moments can send me instantly over the edge. (The final moments of Six Feet Under, the end of Harold and Maude, Spock dying in The Wrath of Kahn, emotional scenes in the new Dr Who, that episode of Star Trek the Next Generation where Picard lives out a whole lifetime in his mind and then snaps back to reality….. Yes I know my Sci-Fi nerdiness is showing–what of it? Huh?)
Anyway, when I think about crying I think about how unfortunate it is that women, in general, are wired to cry more easily than men. I hate that. There was a time in martial arts class many years ago when I got thrown particularly hard, and I had to clamp my mouth shut for a few moments or I knew I would burst into tears and not be able to stop. I did not want to cry in the dojo, so I couldn’t even say, “Hai Sensei” in response to the teacher’s questions because I knew once the dam broke it was over. I got away with a serious nod instead. It’s not that I think crying itself is bad or weak, but the sense of not being in control of yourself is horrible and embarrassing.
And I do believe it’s biological. I once heard a fascinating radio interview with a person who had transitioned from male to female, and she described what happened after the hormone shift began. She was on the phone arguing with someone at an airline, and she knew in the past the way she’d gotten results as a man was to speak forcefully, but when she opened her mouth to do just that, all that came out were sobs. She said she felt as if she were suddenly insane because it wouldn’t stop and the experience was bewildering and awful.
I used to wonder how this could have evolved because incessant weeping doesn’t seem like a useful or desirable trait, but I developed a theory after an incident in college. I was running a music cognition study that required subjects listen to recordings, and the equipment for doing that was only available in a certain room shared by other psychologists and musicians. I had clearly signed out the room for use in the afternoon, and a graduate student (who, frankly, no one liked) barged in during the middle of my hour and disrupted everything. I had to throw out all those data and find new subjects which was very frustrating. I had a right to be mad.
But what happened was after my subjects left the graduate student turned on me and told me I couldn’t use the room without my adviser present (not true) and he made me write down the rules (as he saw them) for the use of the room. He stood over me as I scribbled in my notebook and yelled at me while I kept my mouth shut. I knew the second I opened it I would cry and I was not going to cry in front of that irritating man. I walked the entire half a mile home without opening my mouth. I maintained my composure until I stepped inside our apartment and saw Ian. Then I lost it.
Ian jumped instantly to my side and tried to figure out what was wrong. By the time I was able to choke out why I was crying I remember very clearly the sense of Ian bristling as he held me. He was furious. He was ready to march out and kill the guy and I had to assure him it was okay and I would deal with it myself later. That’s when I started to realize the utility of tears. In the modern world with odd disputes about procedures and protocol I should be able to fight my own battles, but what if the threat had been physical? It is probably a bad idea for the average woman to seek a physically aggressive confrontation with the average man.
If I learned anything in martial arts it was just how intimidating a man’s upper body strength can be, and that was just with calm, careful grappling. So physical fighting is not a good option. But crying? That would cause other men who care about me–boyfriend, brothers, father–to leap to my defense with their muscles. That’s sort of interesting. So I don’t like that I can’t completely control some crying fits, but I think I know why they exist. Lord help the boy that makes one of our girls cry someday if Ian’s anywhere around to see it.
Another thing I think about is how crying can help tell us if something matters. I remember trying very hard to cry when I was four and my grandfather on my dad’s side passed away. I barely knew him, but it seemed wrong not to acknowledge his death with tears if I was a good granddaughter. But I couldn’t make them come because from my end that relationship was technical but not emotional. There are other people since then who have died where I was surprised at my lack of reaction, and when I was honest about how little I was connected to their lives it made sense that I had no tears for them. It’s a bad sign when a relative does so little to touch your life that you can only hope to muster tears in his or her honor. (Which is saying something for someone who cries during Star Trek.)
My mom once asked me if I ever cry when I perform music. I thought that was a great question because I can be moved to tears by certain pieces, but at the time I couldn’t think of an example of crying while playing something. I’d been moved, or had shivers run up my spine if something was particularly amazing to be in the middle of, but never experienced crying. I told her the concentration level for getting through a typical quartet or orchestra performance probably blocked that possibility out. But I had to perform a children’s concert the day after the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and now I know it’s possible. It was a whole program of patriotic music, and as I played our national anthem while blissfully innocent toddlers smiled and clapped, I found out what it was like to perform with tears streaming down my face.
At the moment I’m not shedding as many tears for my grandma as I would have expected. I’m sure I will at the memorial service in a few weeks as the loss is more palpable, but I’ve cried for her so much in the past few years that now I find myself preferring to focus on thoughts of her that make me smile. She was losing her life while she was still alive and I’ve been grieving for her for since the first difficult decisions about moving her to the nursing home. There was so much about her end that was painful to witness (and I’m sure to live), that relief has swallowed my tears for the time being. My gram wouldn’t want me to cry anyway. She’d want me to bake her famous spritz cookies with my kids. So I will.
--photos missing
(Okay, and just because Sad Mona in particular breaks my heart, this is her about two minutes after that other photo was taken. Because eventually all crying stops.)
But experiencing strong grief has got me thinking about crying in general. It’s one of those topics that doesn’t seem as if there would be much to it, until you give it a moment, and realize there are more types and situations involving crying than I’d ever have room for on one blog post. From the parenting perspective alone, consider babies with colic where crying is like torture, babies who learn to fake cry just to get attention, kids who cry only when someone is watching, kids who only cry in private, arguments about letting a baby ‘cry it out’ at night, being able to recognize your own child’s crying in a crowd, if your kid cries in her sleep, crying about shots, crying about nothing, crying about everything….
I was fortunate that as babies my kids almost never cried. I don’t really remember Mona crying about anything until she was around eight months old. (She was the happiest little thing, and I had to check her crib often if I put her down in the day because if she woke up she’d just entertain herself with her hands or her toes and not make a peep.) If they started to fuss I’d scoop them up, and I didn’t see any reason to ever let them cry. (So for anybody out there whose instincts are telling them to not let their babies cry but are doubting themselves because of some outside influence, I say go with your gut. I can’t name you one ill effect of having done that myself.)
From the time Aden was a few months old to the present day, if I cry in front of her, she cries. If I cry in front of Quinn or Mona they can’t deal with it, and they act as if they are ignoring it, but I can tell it’s unsettling to them. When something effects Aden emotionally tears come quickly and she accepts them. Her tears flow and she wants a hug. She even got emotional while we were doing violin practice the other day and got tears all over her instrument (ironically while working on “The Happy Farmer.”) We got through it and then cuddled for awhile and all was well. If I start to say something that Mona expects will be upsetting she tries to make me stop. Mona wants to avoid public tears at all cost, and chooses often to be angry rather than sad to protect herself. Quinn only cries out of pain or exhaustion, or if I act upset with him. (If I raise my voice at Quinn it seems to destroy his world so I do my best to not let that happen.)
Sometimes I feel like I cry at everything. There are songs on the kids’ CDs that will make me weep, and if I sing along with pop tunes I’ve noticed that usually a modulation in the chorus will induce tears for some reason. I enjoy a good cry sometimes, and certain movie or TV moments can send me instantly over the edge. (The final moments of Six Feet Under, the end of Harold and Maude, Spock dying in The Wrath of Kahn, emotional scenes in the new Dr Who, that episode of Star Trek the Next Generation where Picard lives out a whole lifetime in his mind and then snaps back to reality….. Yes I know my Sci-Fi nerdiness is showing–what of it? Huh?)
Anyway, when I think about crying I think about how unfortunate it is that women, in general, are wired to cry more easily than men. I hate that. There was a time in martial arts class many years ago when I got thrown particularly hard, and I had to clamp my mouth shut for a few moments or I knew I would burst into tears and not be able to stop. I did not want to cry in the dojo, so I couldn’t even say, “Hai Sensei” in response to the teacher’s questions because I knew once the dam broke it was over. I got away with a serious nod instead. It’s not that I think crying itself is bad or weak, but the sense of not being in control of yourself is horrible and embarrassing.
And I do believe it’s biological. I once heard a fascinating radio interview with a person who had transitioned from male to female, and she described what happened after the hormone shift began. She was on the phone arguing with someone at an airline, and she knew in the past the way she’d gotten results as a man was to speak forcefully, but when she opened her mouth to do just that, all that came out were sobs. She said she felt as if she were suddenly insane because it wouldn’t stop and the experience was bewildering and awful.
I used to wonder how this could have evolved because incessant weeping doesn’t seem like a useful or desirable trait, but I developed a theory after an incident in college. I was running a music cognition study that required subjects listen to recordings, and the equipment for doing that was only available in a certain room shared by other psychologists and musicians. I had clearly signed out the room for use in the afternoon, and a graduate student (who, frankly, no one liked) barged in during the middle of my hour and disrupted everything. I had to throw out all those data and find new subjects which was very frustrating. I had a right to be mad.
But what happened was after my subjects left the graduate student turned on me and told me I couldn’t use the room without my adviser present (not true) and he made me write down the rules (as he saw them) for the use of the room. He stood over me as I scribbled in my notebook and yelled at me while I kept my mouth shut. I knew the second I opened it I would cry and I was not going to cry in front of that irritating man. I walked the entire half a mile home without opening my mouth. I maintained my composure until I stepped inside our apartment and saw Ian. Then I lost it.
Ian jumped instantly to my side and tried to figure out what was wrong. By the time I was able to choke out why I was crying I remember very clearly the sense of Ian bristling as he held me. He was furious. He was ready to march out and kill the guy and I had to assure him it was okay and I would deal with it myself later. That’s when I started to realize the utility of tears. In the modern world with odd disputes about procedures and protocol I should be able to fight my own battles, but what if the threat had been physical? It is probably a bad idea for the average woman to seek a physically aggressive confrontation with the average man.
If I learned anything in martial arts it was just how intimidating a man’s upper body strength can be, and that was just with calm, careful grappling. So physical fighting is not a good option. But crying? That would cause other men who care about me–boyfriend, brothers, father–to leap to my defense with their muscles. That’s sort of interesting. So I don’t like that I can’t completely control some crying fits, but I think I know why they exist. Lord help the boy that makes one of our girls cry someday if Ian’s anywhere around to see it.
Another thing I think about is how crying can help tell us if something matters. I remember trying very hard to cry when I was four and my grandfather on my dad’s side passed away. I barely knew him, but it seemed wrong not to acknowledge his death with tears if I was a good granddaughter. But I couldn’t make them come because from my end that relationship was technical but not emotional. There are other people since then who have died where I was surprised at my lack of reaction, and when I was honest about how little I was connected to their lives it made sense that I had no tears for them. It’s a bad sign when a relative does so little to touch your life that you can only hope to muster tears in his or her honor. (Which is saying something for someone who cries during Star Trek.)
My mom once asked me if I ever cry when I perform music. I thought that was a great question because I can be moved to tears by certain pieces, but at the time I couldn’t think of an example of crying while playing something. I’d been moved, or had shivers run up my spine if something was particularly amazing to be in the middle of, but never experienced crying. I told her the concentration level for getting through a typical quartet or orchestra performance probably blocked that possibility out. But I had to perform a children’s concert the day after the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and now I know it’s possible. It was a whole program of patriotic music, and as I played our national anthem while blissfully innocent toddlers smiled and clapped, I found out what it was like to perform with tears streaming down my face.
At the moment I’m not shedding as many tears for my grandma as I would have expected. I’m sure I will at the memorial service in a few weeks as the loss is more palpable, but I’ve cried for her so much in the past few years that now I find myself preferring to focus on thoughts of her that make me smile. She was losing her life while she was still alive and I’ve been grieving for her for since the first difficult decisions about moving her to the nursing home. There was so much about her end that was painful to witness (and I’m sure to live), that relief has swallowed my tears for the time being. My gram wouldn’t want me to cry anyway. She’d want me to bake her famous spritz cookies with my kids. So I will.
--photos missing
(Okay, and just because Sad Mona in particular breaks my heart, this is her about two minutes after that other photo was taken. Because eventually all crying stops.)
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