Gender

As of today, we're at week 30 of our pregnancy. This is pretty exciting stuff, hence my feeling compelled to share this little factoid.

We've elected not to find out the gender. Because for some reason, to my sensibilities at least, that almost seems like cheating. And anyway. So long as our baby's healthy, happy, we'll be happy. We really don't mind too much if it's a boy or girl.

What continually surprises me though, is the astonished  reaction of certain friends and family, certain nearest and dearest, to this decision to keep the gender under wraps.

"How will you buy clothes for them?" They demand.

First time I heard this, I found the question somewhat bemusing. What on earth were they actually driving at?

"Doesn't the stork arrange all that?" Was the witty deflection I opted for (after a moment's deliberation).

"You'll have to buy everything in yellow. Yellow! Ewww," was the eventual clarification, however.

But seriously, now. Even if one insists on anally prescribing the blue is only for boys and pink is only for girls dictum (though I see no compelling reason why), doesn't that still leave almost the entire spectrum available re infant sartorial choices? Pink, in fact, is not even part of the spectrum. It's not even really a colour (and anyway, who actually looks good in pink? Really?).

So really, even if you are, say, avoiding blue for your infant daughter (if you don't I'm sure she'll remember and be scarred for life), pink for your son, either way you've still got a choice of at least six of the seven major spectral colours. And then there's grey, black, white, brown. And if you feel these last colours don't sound cute enough--my sisters have bought a medium-grey fullbody 0-3 months jumpsuit apparently designed to transform your child into a little furry bear a la whats-his-face in Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. This, I can assure you, is pretty much pure cuteness incarnate. It has ears and paw pads and a little nubbin tail and everything. I'm tempted to see if they come in adult sizes.

But anyway. Point is, I'm more than a little taken aback by the fervency of certain individuals' insistence on hyper-genderising one's child from birth. Personally, if my daughter (hypothetical) wanted to become an auto-mechanic, or my son (hypothetical) wanted to become a florist, in either case I would be delighted. Those sound like excellent trades to bring into the family fold (flowers in particular can be so expensive these days).

This is not to, say, deny normative sexual dimorphism. And the social realities of such. This is not to willfully ignore the realities of masculine and feminine culture our child will encounter at pre-school, school school, everywhere really. Indeed I think it's probably quite advisable, in terms of good psychosocial adjustment, to be conversant with said masculine/feminine culture: I mean, I wouldn't advocate sending my son (hypothetical) to school in a floral summer dress. Not because I think there's anything wrong with him (hypothetically) wearing such garb, per se. I'd just rather he didn't get the living shit teased out of him because of it. You know? I tend to think that's a fairly normal parental response.


INTERPOLATION: Thanks for bearing with me so far, by the way (assuming you have). I know I should've probably got to the crux of my argument/position a lot sooner, given that this is the world of the interwebs and no one likes reading more than, say, 200 words a pop unless there's a particularly good reason. I'll deliver the goods soon, I swear.


I've recently gotten a couple (a couple! More like a million billion!) of books on parenting. You know. Because it seems like a reasonable idea to be somewhat prepared, doesn't it. Two in particular that I seem to have had recommend to me countless times, by countless people, are Raising Boys, and Raising Girls.

From the back of Raising Boys, the tagline:

Parents and teachers will find this a breakthrough book which changes their outlook on boys for the better, forever.

Compelling stuff.

On the back of Raising Girls, the tagline:

An Essential Book for Mothers and Daughters.

For Mothers and Daughters. I wasn't aware, due to the accident of my having grown a penis in utero, that I had apparently nothing significant to contribute as a parent to the upbringing of my daughter (hypothetical).

And when was this book actually published, one asks? The fifties? The Victorian era? Surely.

Not even close. 1998. 1998! Needless to say, the contributors are all women. Doubtless someone, somewhere, probably thought this was a blow par-excellence in the war for gender equality. Take that, the Patriarchy!

Anyway, the truly damning thing here is, Raising Girls has not explicitly been aimed solely at a feminine/maternal market. Apparently, this gender-limited application is treated instead as implicit, obvious. That's what's unforgivable.

So yeah. My point (at last) is this: for better or worse, there will always be a predominantly binary perception of gender in our society. Sure. Normative physiological sexual dimorphism is far too salient and influential for this not to be the case. Now, in some cases, conforming to established gender ideals is plainly stupid (yellow baby clothes thing). In some cases, it's probably a useful means for social adaption (not sending your boy to public school in floral dresses), and good relationship skills, good psychosocial adjustment, are usually quite handy--or so I'm told. In other cases, they're plainly toxic (e.g the implicit assumption of the authors/publishers/whoever of Raising Girls).

Absolutist generalisations from either extreme of gender debates are thus, to my mind, frankly worthless.

N.B. one-eyed ideologues on both sides of the gender debate, take note: I challenge you to find any proof that choir-preaching, pathetic appeal and other forms of demagoguery ever really achieved any sort of useful long-term social change. Other than perhaps eliciting an ego-stroking feelgood huzzah! from your own camp. Consider instead the advantages of rational, reasonable debate, an assessment of different gender issues individually, issue by issue, context by context.

Come on. Why not.

Hugs and Kisses,

J.

DISCLAIMER: the above constitutes positions entirely my own opinion and thus also are (frankly) probably quite worthless

Oh, and beware: some explicit language, above. If there's an official way to tag this with a mature content warning, I can't seem to find it.