fulfilling stereotypes all on my own

I'm supposed to blog about movies & tv, but I hope it's OK if I deviate and blog about myself.

I'm finding that I'm a lot more gendered than I thought I was. I see it in my own (hetero) marriage, I see it in the way I react to my new niece, I see it in my job. How much of it is socialized? How much of it is who I am?


I don't want to go into too much personal detail, because despite my anonymous name, that is my face attached to these posts, and my husband and I share the same computer. So I'll be diplomatic and draw the line at blogging about my marriage.

But my niece. She was born on Wednesday night to my sister-in-law (husband's sister). She has a 3-year-old boy, and ever since I knew that her husband and she were going to start trying for baby #2, I hoped they would have a girl.

So what did I do, now that we know she's a girl (they didn't find out the sex until birth)? I bought her a bunch of pink baby clothes. Why? My sister-in-law isn't particularly girlie. They have all of their son's newborn clothing. But I just couldn't resist. There's just something so cute about dressing a little girl in cutesty, pink, girlie stuff, way girlier that anything I have worn past the age of 8 (save for a few pastel bridesmaids dresses). Or is it just that kids clothing in general is pretty cute and borderline ridiculous? I mean, especially some of the holiday-themed stuff. It's ridiculous in it's cuteness.

Moving on to work. I'm a shy person. So when I'm in meetings, I don't participate as much as I should (I'm sure my boss just loves that). And I hate public speaking. But is it weird that on a committee of like 10 women and 2 men, the men are always the one that do the public speaking? Is it because all of the women just don't like public speaking, or that we just let the men do it? Even when that public speaking is at a breast cancer fundraiser of all events.

So anyway. I have no answers. These are just observations of myself. Observations that bug me when I actually stop and think about them.

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Dear Dumbledore,

So I heard.

While I'm really happy there's a gay character in the Harry Potter books, it must have been hard to be the only one in a seven part series. No wonder you were so hidden all the time, so restrained and soft-spoken.

And I heard the truth about Grindelwald, too; I can't imagine what it must have been like to have fought the one you love, and then be subject to years of stories about the time you defeated one of the most evil tyrants in history. It's hard for people to understand things unless they're completely black and white.

But perhaps the most horrible thing of all, the part I feel the worst about for you, is that the person who knows you the most deeply, a person who you trust to represent you to the world community, your creator...OUTED YOU!

In this day and age, most of us know about the repercussions of outing someone's homosexuality to the rest of the world. And what was most interesting was that the way in which your friend, J.K. Rowling, went about doing it -- at a book reading she answered a question about your romantic history, noting nonchalantly that you were in love with a man, that you were gay, that she knew it all along, that she knew as she was helping your character grow with each page. This also means, as I'm sure you're well aware, that she planned to hide your sexuality in a way not unlike the hidden, lost-to-the-world homosexuals from some of the more repressive works of Victorian literature.

So the way this all rolled out was really interesting. A lot of people like me were upset with Rowling for not including a queer character in the series, but with this announcement it seemed like she answered our pleas. The news set in and fans everywhere were shocked; scores of people, I'm sure, flipped back through each chapter of your history, from the moments when you shared wise advice with the children of Hogwarts, to the time you brought Harry to his foster family, to the momentous time you saved Harry from Voldemort using the most astonishing magic, to flashbacks in the later books giving snapshots of your past. With but a few sentences, Rowling refashioned your entire history for the world to see. Your character was, quite honestly, hijacked.

But I guess that's how outing works, how coming out often works. You "come out" of supposed hiding, and the world sees you in a different light; sexuality is a huge part of one's identity -- whether it's discussed or not (heterosexual or homosexual), it shapes many of our thoughts and behaviors in life. The question then becomes, it seems, is whether Rowling did you real justice or not.

I would argue that Rowling is operating within the framework of the literary market, making choices about her characters that seek to "gently push" rather than "revolutionize"; she did not include gay characters in the story because, well, the sociopolitical climate in which Harry Potter most profoundly exists is one that does not welcome gay characters in children's literature -- the books wouldn't be bought. ("I would have told you earlier if I knew it would make you so happy." *) And while in many parts of our country the notion of a Victorian gay sexuality, a gayness that can only exist behind closed doors and in deep secrecy, is disappearing...children are still seen as at risk; real gay characters, real gay mentors, gay teachers, are a threat to their childhood and their growth.

And so, dear Dumbledore, I'm sorry that you had to live your life like the many gay characters we have seen from movies past, their youthful romances stifled by fear of heteronormativity, their identities quelled into a restrained silence. When you watched over the children of Hogwarts, you did it so they could grow to be themselves, free of unjust limitations and empowered by love.

But Dumbledore, for all the good you have done in your life and the happiness I am sure it brought you, I am still left with one telling image -- an image of you standing in front of the Mirror of Erised with Harry, describing the view in front of you, a view that reflects your life's deepest wishes: "I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks. One can never have enough socks." For those in hiding, mirrors can be the most debilitating; you looked in the mirror, and you were forced to see...nothing.

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The Gravity of the Matter

Ava is 23 years old. She’s a busy girl: just sixteen months out of college, she is the head of a middle school science department and one of two science teachers serving all three grade levels on her campus. Although her work as an educator consumes much of her life, she also plays soccer for an all-city women’s league, runs regularly, raises a dog, holds Saturday morning science tutorials, and participates in a book club.

Somewhere in between, she wants to conceive her first child by the time she’s 27.

That means that if she wants at least one and a half years of marriage prior to a pregnancy, she’ll need to walk down the aisle at 25. Which means that, if she wants to date the man of her dreams for at least a year or two before the big hitch, then she needs to meet him—oh, well… right about NOW.

My friends and I are aging quickly, and we’ve only begun to realize the urgency of our dating situations. Oddly enough, the physical dating aspect of dating isn’t quite as pressing as its eventual extension: the children we want.

Four days ago, I walked out of a boba tea café after a few hours of post-work-hours work. I saw a young couple sitting on the rear edge of an open-bed pick-up truck, and, unlike the Power Points and planning that had taken hold of my evening, relaxation and calm had permeated theirs. These sensations were palatable to me, a distant observer, despite (or perhaps because of) where their attention was turned: their child. Indeed, the tumult and unpredictability of child-rearing was nowhere to be found, as an aura of comfort and awe embraced the trio. As the child—no more than two years old—played atop the truck’s empty bed, the couple looked at each other for a moment, silently, as if to say with just their eyes: Look—we created this together. This is the wonder of life.

It was then that I cemented the gravity of the matter, of dating, relationships, and love. While not everyone makes it a life-long goal to start a family (biologically or otherwise), many people do. The choices we make as to who, what, where, when, why, and how we flirt with others begin a domino effect that could—inevitably—lead to the creation of a family. As fun, light, and innocent as eye contact in a dimly-lit room may seem, it may be that same look that changes a lifetime, not just for two people, but also for—as serious and dire as it may be to name them—the unborn.

This introduces a young adult dilemma, fodder, if you will, for a quarter-life crisis: If we know that our actions as daters have an eventual end-product attached, then should we focus on career aspirations, thereby creating solid foundations to support ourselves and a future relationship or family? Or should we sacrifice part of that desire for stability in order to search for and secure the partner with whom we can root the life of primogeniture and (perhaps) a few siblings? A more complex question: How can we successfully juggle the two competing interests with limited amounts of energy and time?

Two co-workers of mine, Emma and A.C., also 23 years old, may have found an answer to the third question. The two of them have been dating for almost a year now. Their love blossomed after Emma had a bad day, and A.C., simply a friend at the time, came over to make sure she was doing okay. The tears led to hugs, and the hugs led to history. Since then, they’ve met each other’s families, attended the weddings of relatives, and practically live together. Two weeks ago, A.C.’s car died for the umpteenth time, and instead of investing in a mechanic’s temporary fixes, he decided that it was time to get a new car. While purchasing a new vehicle is, in itself, an enormous move, he pushed its intensity up a notch: they discussed A.C.’s new car as their new car. At the age of 23, they wondered: what will be best for us? What will we need when we have cats and kids? Furthermore, Emma’s parents decided to help finance A.C.’s new car with a contracted loan. Although their one year anniversary isn’t for another four weeks, Emma and A.C., still in the shadow of their twenty-first birthdays, are thinking about and working towards the future—their future. As rushed as that may seem for a young, intelligent, and urban couple, they’ve chosen to create stability in light of their relationship instead of having stability be separate from them and work for someone; for Emma and A.C., a solid foundation for the future is created together.

What makes it easier for them to come to that conclusion, though, is that they’ve already found each other. They can think about a child and cats and cars because they don’t have to think about finding an other. Ava can’t think of those ends without the means to that end.

I am in the same boat. I’m a twenty-something salaried professional. Single. Hard-working. Seeking to re-enter school for a Master’s and PhD within the next two years, for a doctorate degree by the time I hit 30. Although I have the rest of my life in front of me, I, too, have a deadline I want to meet: at 30, I want to adopt a child because I don’t want to be an old-fogey father.

Fortunately, maybe my homosexuality provides a loophole to having to deal with a dilemma like Ava’s. I can picture myself, at the time of adoption, still single. Between research, teaching, work, and somehow finding time to breathe, I don’t know if my energy and time will be best put into dating during those five years. Moreover, I don’t know if the year or so after I finish defending my dissertation will possess enough fated magic to help me find the perfect parent for the child I know I want. I foresee, then, putting dating on the backburner. I can do that. I don’t have to create a child with another—I just have to raise one.

My priority, then: getting me off the ground so that I can be the best parent I can be when I get there. My partner will just have to follow. Who would’ve thought that, with all the complications and urges surrounding dating, he’d be the least urgent thing?

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Children

I love the fact that I know many people who are pregnant, have just had children, or have very young kids. I love kids, kids love me, and I can’t wait to adopt three kids from various continents around the world. Seriously, I can’t wait. I have wet dreams about traveling the country with my partner in search of lgbt-friendly, family-friendly neighborhoods with good schools. I’m going to be that guy with the station wagon, the baby on board stickers, and a rainbow fanny pack filled with baggies of trail mix (no raisins, though – they’re gross).

But it wasn’t until I entered a party supplies store the other day that I was reminded of a big obstacle I will have to face when I one day have kids (and, well, a big obstacle my kids will have to face, too). As I walked down the long aisle designated for children’s parties, I was attacked on both sides – screaming pink on the left, and a defiant blue on the right, items hanging over me almost ten feet above my head, both sides whispering in my ears: “choose”.

After walking through that nightmare, I was reminded of theory explaining how gender is most intensely imbued into our psyche when we are very young. As I’m thinking, I can’t imagine any kind of child-related event that is not somehow gendered hardcore according to the binary. Why is it that we barrage kids with things that are blue or pink, tough or girly – from clothes, to toys, to party favors, to gifts? Wouldn’t it make the most sense to get a better idea of what the kid really wants instead of an assumed set of gendered behaviors and interests, most of which they won’t have even fully cultivated into their personalities until the age of 4 or 5?

For all my bitching, though, I have to admit it’s likely harder than it looks. When you’re raising a kid, worrying about their health and general well-being, why do you want to waste time making sure everything you buy is gender neutral? What if your partner has dreams of their son becoming the greatest basketball player, or aspirations that their daughter will be the most beautiful girl in school? And let’s be really honest – how do you tell your husband you want to give your son a dollhouse, and how do you tell your wife you want to give your daughter a football? The thought would make most people’s skin crawl. I still think that aiming for gender neutrality (or less gender-related stress) is important, but I can tell you that I understand it may be difficult for most families.

I guess I’ve just tried to ignore the gender-specific talk from my friends about their children, how different it would be to raise a boy as opposed to a girl and vice versa (“I’ve been raising a boy for so long…I just don’t think I’d know how to raise a girl!”). I remember when I got a call from a colleague of mine who gave birth - I reported the news to the rest of my coworkers. “Is it a boy or a girl?” they asked, desperate for more information. I, however, had forgotten to ask. They were horrified: “How could you not ask?!”

I was actually kind of proud of myself. The sex wasn’t the biggest news to me – it was the fact that the child was born. And that makes me way cool. Right?

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swedish schoolkids

So I read a random blog post this week. I’m going to try to pick out a few of the more interesting questions it raises.

A magazine published by the main Teachers Union in Sweden recently suggested several ways preschool teachers can promote gender equality and sexual equality. No surprise, homophobes are intensely worried that their young children would be allowed to experiment and make up their own minds “force-fed lectures on gay sex by some sex freak from the Teachers’ Union.” Especially intriguing is the conservative concern that children need to be allowed to “play and discover entirely on their own,” without being indoctrinated and “forced to have an opinion on gay sex”—and that such proposals as the Teachers’ Union made are downright abusive of these defenseless children.

I especially love the limited (and privileged) understanding of society expressed in these statements. The notion that any children are ever allowed to “play and discover entirely on their own” is meaningless given the pervasiveness of media imagery and home life on which child’s play is modeled. What social progressives are, in fact, suggesting when they would seek deliberately to introduce children to new/alternative models for play (and thus for real life, if the play is enjoyed) is not to change something intrinsic in the children, but to expand the children’s repertoire of play and subsequent understanding of the surrounding world. It takes a lot to get over the indoctrination already in place through parenting, media influences, ignorance and fear.

Not speaking Swedish, sadly, I can’t go to the magazine and figure out the exact suggestions made by the Teachers’ Union (if such a magazine truly exists—who trusts the internet?). The blogger, however, describes existing actions in Stockholm kindergartens (again unsourced):

“In a kindergarten in Stockholm, the parents were encouraged by the preschool teachers - apparently ideological pioneers - to equip their sons with dresses and female first names. There are now weeks in some places when boys HAVE TO wear a dress.”

Now, I’ll admit it, this is a radical move. It’s also one that warms my heart, of course, as someone who strongly opposes a rigid gender system. At first, it sounds really disturbing to force a child (of any gender, even) to wear a dress. There’s a difference, too, between allowing and requiring. But think about it. Let’s ensure that this is not actually done as a requirement for boys, but for all schoolchildren, and you have a rather painless and interesting scenario: say part of a school uniform or dress code is that every Wednesday all children must wear trousers, and every Thursday all children must wear a skirt. The rest of the week they pick for themselves. Just imagine that for a while…..


The blogger reports alarm at similar trends throughout the country:

“The Swedish Consumers Association reacted angrily to a star-shaped, pink ice-cream because it represented gender-profiling. “Girlie, GB’s new ice pop, is pink and has make-up inside the stick. It says a lot about what GB thinks about girls and how they should be,” the association said in a statement. According to them, Sweden does not need more products that reinforce existing prejudices about sex roles, so they asked the producer to make the product less gender specific.”

Okay, okay, things are a little murky when we’re talking about requesting businesses change their marketing to avoid gender stereotypes. That’s getting toward censorship. But Anders Nelson (a researcher quoted by the blogger) does have a point that children, raised within gender structures invisible to them, will be susceptible to gender marketing. Parents can help encourage exploration of gender roles, but as long as that societal image is there, it will be very difficult for children to really gain independence of the gender structures. That’s where schools can be helpful, as they are grounds for academic and social learning. By increasing gender flexibility at school—even though it may mean introducing initially-uncomfortable conversations and play—the school ultimately seeks to free children from the power structures and biases of the society.

Some people, like our blogger, will always say “this has thus absolutely nothing to do with ‘tolerance or diversity.’ It’s done in order to break you down and to mold you into a new human being.”—after all, we are talking about giving people options to live differently from the status quo. But I say the two have everything to do with each other. The “old” human being is, on the whole, bigoted, privileged and ignorant. Why not remove the ignorance and privilege, and see if the prejudice remains?

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