Sarah & Ian Hoffman

Building a culture of kindness. One book at a time.
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The Toy Question

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My friend Nancy was pissed off. She’d just been to McDonald’s to buy her child a Happy Meal, and a server had asked, “Is that for a boy or a girl?”

“Really?” Nancy asked me. “In this day and age, there are boys’ toys and girls’ toys? It just seems so archaic to me that toys are still designated one way and another.”

I was feeling the opposite when, a few weeks ago, we stopped for Happy Meals in a rural California town. The server asked, “Strawberry Shortcake or Star Wars?” Sam and Ruby picked Strawberry Shortcake; Sam gave his to Ruby, saying “I wanted the Star Wars, but it was a skateboard, and there are no skateboards in Star Wars.” You just never know what a kid is going to want.

Nancy was bothered that McDonald’s hands out gendered toys—and that they assume a boy would want a “boy” toy and a girl would want a “girl” toy. I don’t have a problem with toys being masculine or feminine. Most kids have some sort of gender expression—often it goes with their biological gender, but sometimes, as you know, it doesn’t. So why not let kids choose their toys based on their own gender expression, rather than their biological gender?

Being the agitator that I am, I emailed McDonald’s to ask what their corporate policy is on asking The Toy Question. Are employees instructed to say “Girl or boy?” or to refer to the toys by name? Because how they ask makes all the difference. I’ll let you know what their response is, but in the mean time, why don’t you email them too?

Today the world is abuzz about a French McDonald’s ad featuring a gay teenager and the tagline, “Come as you are.” McDonald’s, thank you. And if you start to ask The Toy Question right, even more kids will feel like they can come as they are.

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Let’s Make It Better

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By now you’ve probably heard of the It Gets Better Project, the new YouTube channel created by advice columnist Dan Savage. Savage launched the project to reach out to teenagers who are bullied at school for being perceived as gay (many people assume, sometimes correctly, that gender-nonconforming kids are gay). The site is a collection of videos by LGBT adults who survived school bullying and grew up to be happy, healthy adults.

I can’t watch any of the videos without crying, getting goosebumps, or wanting to jump up and change the world right this second. Individually and collectively, these snapshots of people moving from suffering to thriving are, simply, beautiful.

It’s painful that such beauty had to come in response to such suffering, that LGBT people have to pass through the ring of fire we call high school—and that some don’t make it to tell their stories. But if bullying and brutality and suicidal thoughts are the reality at this moment, if we can’t end bullying today, then the best thing we can do for kids suffering in school right now is to connect them with adults who can help. Adults who can say, because they have lived through it: it does get better.

So, subscribe to the It Gets Better Project. Check out the Make it Better project, and participate in their Week of Action, October 5-11, culminating on National Coming Out Day. Spread the word about the Trevor Project, a GLBT suicide prevention service. Ask your school to show films from Groundspark and The Youth and Gender Media Project. Check out First Comes Love, a documentary in production honoring same-sex couples. Donate to these projects, if you can. I just did.

In these ways—and there are so many more; please share your ideas by posting a comment below—we can help kids who are suffering right now. And then we can get to work changing the world for the kids who come next.

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September

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It’s been a terrible month for hope.

September 2010 saw the suicides of four teenage boys who were bullied for their perceived sexual orientation or gender expression: Tyler Clemente, 18; Billy Lucas, 15; Seth Walsh, 13; and Asher Brown, 13.

The online community that I belong to, made up of parents of gender non-conforming kids, has been reeling with a collective sense of loss, horror, and brokenheartedness. Gloria Iorillo (a courageous parent who I’ve written about before, pseudonymously), wrote:

It just breaks my heart thinking of those kids who felt they were hopeless, helpless, lost, with no other recourse but to take their lives, leaving their families and friends devastated.

We have a responsibility to break this cycle of hate and intolerance. The only way is by teaching our children not only tolerance but acceptance for those different from us, and by taking a stand for those kids who are struggling, letting them know they are not alone, they have us, to help them, protect them, and to fight intolerance whenever we encounter it.

Our mere existence is a form of activism. Every time our kids go out the door defying conventionalisms, every time we talk to someone about our experience with our non-conforming kids, we are pushing the envelope.

Our job—our responsibility—is to talk to people. Within the bounds of safety, we need to speak to our families, friends, neighbors, schools, synagogues, churches, the press. We’ve got to share our stories, our sons’ stories, our families’ stories.

By talking we can help people contemplate: what if my child were so bullied he felt the best thing to do was to take his own life? What if my child tortured another child to the point of driving them to suicide? What would I do if I were a child so brutally treated by my classmates?

Jews say of their dead, “May their memory be for a blessing.”  I have always loved the expression, the way it conveys both respect for the deceased and the hope that something good will come of their life, if not the terribleness of their passing.

May the memories of Tyler, Billy, Seth, and Asher be for a blessing.

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