Sarah & Ian Hoffman

Building a culture of kindness. One book at a time.
Menu

Go Parenting! Now, go farther.

by

I recently read the article Could Your Child Be Gay? by Stephanie Dolgoff on Parenting magazine’s website. It made my heart sing…and sink.

Dolgoff—and therefore Parenting magazine, as mainstream a parenting rag as there ever was—showed concern for the wellbeing and outcome of pink and/or proto-gay boys. The piece went farther than I’ve ever seen this magazine go into complex and painful territory, including an interview with Matthew Shepard’s mother and a conversation about bullying-related child suicide. This willingness to have a conversation about some of the scariest stuff parents may ever face makes a tremendous difference for boys like my son Sam.

Along with my praise for Dolgoff and Parenting, I have to point out where the article falls short.

Dolgoff assumes that  four-year-olds  cannot read the social cues that tell children what boys and girls are “supposed” to do. Studies show that children as young as two are aware of gender roles (research that can be confirmed anecdotally in the Petri dish of any preschool).

It’s also unfortunate Dolgoff believes that because a child is gender-nonconforming, he or she will be gay. This assumption does a disservice to the gender-noncomforming kids who will be straight, as well as to the gender-normative children who will be gay.  Frankly, assuming anything about a child, from his sexuality to his profession to the religion he will abide as an adult, is unhelpful to everyone.

Finally, Dolgoff’s assertion that “No matter how much he continues to like fuchsia as he gets older, there’s a good chance his survival instinct will tell him it’s not worth getting his butt kicked at school,” is the kind of statement that reinforces the culture of bullying pink boys.  I just don’t think she would make that comment about a child going to school in a wheelchair, or a black child going to an all-white school.  We need to start talking about these conflicts using different language, language that doesn’t blame the victims–or force them to choose between their identity and their personal safety.

But big picture, I am pleased as punch to hear Parenting magazine ask its readers to consider whether their child is gay. The more we as a society have this conversation, however imperfect, the closer we are to accepting what was once utterly unacceptable.

Zee Utilikilt

by

Today I took Sam to the Apple store to look at a Star Wars video game he wants for his birthday. He was very excited, and sat down on the floor next to the software to review his options. He looked like he wanted to settle in for a while.

An Apple employee wearing a Utilikilt walked up to us. “She looks quite happy there,” he said of Sam, who wore a black Return of the Jedi t-shirt and olive-drab pants. Even to this man in a skirt, my long-haired boy looked like a girl. “He is definitely happy about Star Wars,” I replied.

I knew that I could avoid pronouns, as I have many times in the past: “Yup, Sam is definitely happy about Star Wars.” Today, I liked the idea of letting a stranger know that boys can have long hair (and I figured that we were pretty safe, given the Utilikilt and all). But I found myself thinking that life would be easier if pronouns were gender-neutral.

It seems unfortunate that we call every child a “he” or a “she.” Why should I have to reference what’s in my child’s underwear every time I reply to a store employee, order food in a restaurant, or talk to a parent at the park? And why should my son have to defend his right, as he has for so many years, to like the things he likes and look the way he wants to look? If he had no pronoun, no one could say that boys don’t wear pink.

There has been some debate about shifting to gender-neutral pronouns like “zee” in place of “he” and “she.” Changes to language are awkward and difficult to bring into mainstream acceptance; we’ve had a hard enough time moving from “fireman” and “stewardess” to “firefighter” and “flight attendant.” I know much of our world is not ready for boys who have long hair, let alone for invented pronouns meant to draw attention away from biological gender.

But then again, a few short years ago, Apple employees weren’t walking around  in Utilikilts.

Purim, Part 2

by

Karen, a mom from Sam’s school, emailed me after my recent blog post about our head of school dressing up as a woman for Purim last week. Karen’s son, Jacob—not a pink boy like Sam—dressed as a girl for Purim. Karen felt conflicted about the meaning and effect of cross-gender dress-up. Was it mocking? Was it funny? Was it educational? She wanted to be respectful, and worried that her son might offend kids like Sam.

I told Karen that, in my opinion, well-intended cross-gender dress-up is useful because it furthers the conversation about gender. That sometimes we simply dress up as things we are not—a bumblebee, a giant sponge, Frankenstein. And that sometimes we dress up as things we aspire to be—Superman, Queen Esther, a fairy princess. So I saw her third-grade son dressing as a girl as, if not a desire to be female, a benign expression of pretending to be someone different from his usual self.

Humor often relies on contrast. It’s funny when the head of Sam’s school dresses as a woman, because he is a masculine man. If Johnny Weir dressed up as a lumberjack, that would be funny too, because he’s usually so femme (it would also be a sassy retort to the Canadian Olympics commentators who said Weir should undergo gender testing.)

Above all, humor is situational; intention and audience matter. It’s certainly possible to be offensive if one tries. But Jacob was not dressing up as a girl to make fun of anyone. In fact, I think he served a useful purpose, as the head of school did, in making people momentarily aware of the gender behaviors so ingrained in us that they’re usually invisible.

But maybe I’m wrong. In an interesting post last week on Salon (which you should read for its commentary on the color pink and its plucky reference to “engorged ladybits”), author Kate Harding refers to “the enduring comedic value of a man in a dress.” Is the head of our school in a dress—or Jacob—making a mockery of women, or, more to the point of this blog, of feminine men and boys?

What do you think?