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Thanks and give me another slice of pie
My baby sister (in-law) kindly cooked the family Thanksgiving dinner. She’s a brave person, in my books. She didn’t show any fear for the loud, opinionated, creative crowd of brothers and others. I like that in a person. She and my brother had their plan of attack for the event and executed it deliciously. Once the remains had been Tupperwared, the discussions and opinions began. One of our long weekend, family-visiting, discussions was something we’d never tackled before, at least out loud. We discussed raising a child in a gender-neutral atmosphere. LOML and I lean toward, “Why in our day boys were boys and girls were girls. Girl babies wore pink and boy babies wore blue.” How else would anyone know which pronouns to use unless the baby was clad in a gender-appropriate manner? The gender-neutrality discussion arose from an encounter LOML had at a restaurant in Belleville. A younger woman was explaining to anyone who was within earshot why her infant daughter was wearing navy blue, instead of pink. Apparently, “navy blue is gender-neutral” and all. I wasn’t upset about her choice of navy as a gender-neutral colour, but I was confused about why she felt she had to tell everyone the infant was her daughter. Maybe mom missed the memo on how gender-neutral childrearing works. It’s more than a clothing colour choice.
In different times, from the moment a child was born their gender would determine what they will wear, which toys will be in their crib and how we expected them to behave in public. An uncomfortable society imposed gender stereotypes on children. If you know me, and some of you think you do, you’ll know I’m just about average when it comes to stereotypes. Sometimes I am able get in touch with my feminine side when I’m getting dressed for an occasion and sometimes I just think, “who really cares, I’ll wear whatever is most comfortable”. The thing is, I was raised in a “man’s world”. Dads went to work, mostly. Moms stayed home, mostly. Those dads who didn’t go out to work were ridiculed for being weak, like women. And those moms who went out to work were ridiculed for taking jobs away from men or being—you know, those types of women. Folks who didn’t conform to gender stereotypes were labelled with gender-opposite slurs. Parents expected their daughters to behave one way and allowed their sons to behave another. The old nugget, “boys will be boys” and “girls should behave like ladies” was, sort of, the way I was brought up. I didn’t always agree, but I knew I was supposed to do what I was told to do so as not to cause problems. Wanting to play with Meccano or to saw and hammer and or take things apart and put them back together wasn’t encouraged as a girl’s activity. I wanted to get in on the fun with my brothers by building forts or taking a bike apart or throwing stones at the crab apples on the fence. Those behaviours were tolerated, but only barely, and certainly not okay if my grandmother was around or the neighbour used the word tomboy with regard to me. At Christmas time I once asked for MiniBrix, but I got a Tiny Tears doll and Pop Beads. It wouldn’t have mattered what colour my overalls were, my hair was always in braids and I had cute hair clips to keep the tangles in order. Dirty hands and faces were completely taboo for me and the sisters, but were pride-instilling for the brothers.
I get where all of this is going. This genderneutral thing. And I get how it came about. It certainly isn’t about the pink or the blue. It really isn’t about the pronouns, either. It is about how we value a person, without qualification. We must learn to stop imposing gender stereotypes on children. We have to make their world more inclusive than our world was. Opportunities to explore and to learn should be available to children without the barriers or prejudices that have been imprinted on our minds. Genetically, boys and girls are different, but a person’s gender is learned. “Gender is what people think about being a man or a woman. Gender is not what we are, but what we do.
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