Only For Boys?

Recently, my son endured an incident where he was hit, excluded, and made fun of.  If you’re a parent, you know how watching that–and having to intervene on behalf of my bewildered, sobbing toddler–made me feel.  My attempts to discuss the incident with the other child’s parents were met with failure.  And, you know, I shouldn’t have been surprised: they were making fun of him, too.

Usually, in situations like this, the challenge is in convincing the other parents that their perfect, precious, wonderful child could have done such a thing.  Or so I’m led to believe, from discussing the issue with other parents.  We, personally, have never had to deal with bullying before in this house and so, up until this past week, my understanding had been purely academic and based on hearing about others’ experiences.  But it’s quite another kettle of fish altogether when the parents are there, and watching, and indeed participating.

It rocks your world.  I guess you–or at least I–have this foundational assumption tucked away somewhere that adults are better than that.  That adults protect children.  That adults can be counted on to know better and thus do better.  So when you see them laughing at your child, while he cries…?

There are higher order issues about how, by how we act, we teach our children to value others.  But the immediate concern, this time, was that my son likes “girl things.”  He’s a toddler and, yes, he does–if “girl things” is even a thing, and I think it’s not.  But more on that in a minute.  He, like most toddlers, loves Frozen.  He also loves Sheriff Callie and Sofia the First.  Which, I guess, according to some people, makes him gay and a loser and less worthy of respect than someone who does better at “being a boy.”

Let’s unpack that, shall we?

First of all, way to teach your child to be homophobic.  So what if he were gay?  Why is that supposed to be the worst thing?  And second, what, exactly, is so wrong about liking girls?  As equals?  As people?  Are we really hoping to teach our sons–gay or not–that being interested in women as something other than sex objects makes them less manly?  That “real” men aren’t interested in girls as heroes and leaders?  As individuals just as capable, and inspiring, as their male counterparts?

It should go without saying that whatever a child is into, that child doesn’t deserve to be bullied.  At all.  Ever.  For any reason.  And as parents, when our children act out, our response should never be to justify the bully’s behavior–in this case I was informed that my son “deserved it” for being weird, basically–but to emphasize that acting hurtfully is never the solution.  Either nobody deserves to be bullied, or everybody does.  Reinforcing the idea that it’s “okay sometimes”–like, for example, if someone seems gay to you or if they like the wrong thing–is reinforcing the idea that “good” people can hate.

My son can like whatever he wants, because he’s an authentic individual and I value that about him.

But you know, that all being said, I like that he likes “girl things.”  As a responsible parent, one of my goals is to raise him to view women as equals and to respect them as such.  And as a fiction writer, I maybe have a different perspective in that I’m aware of how recent an innovation these girl heroes are.  Growing up, I liked Simon and Aragorn and Rand al Thor and all the other protagonists in all the other fantasies I read–all of whom were male.  It never occurred to me that I wasn’t “supposed to” like them.  The alternative was Barbie.  And, you know, it never occurred to anyone else, either; if you liked fantasy, then that meant you liked boys and “boy stuff.”  So as a woman and a writer, I’m really psyched to see greater acceptance–however slowly it’s coming–of women as protagonists.  In anything.  Sheriff Callie?  Fine, I’ll take it.

The idea of “boy stuff” and “girl stuff” is increasingly antiquated.  If you like something, and you’re a boy, then it’s “boy stuff.”  One’s gender identity shouldn’t be based on conforming to some rigid, ultimately pointless definition of what a boy “should” be but on self-identifying as a boy.  I’m no less a girl, because I like cars and carpentry.

We live in a world where teenagers are killing themselves, because they despair of ever living up to these ridiculous standards.  Where people who think of themselves as good people castigate toddlers for admiring women rather than just ogling them as sex objects.  All of which is underpinned by the lingering–and horrid–idea that being a girl is somehow less, that wanting anything to do with girls except to subjugate them makes you somehow less and that who would want to be a girl, anyway.

So yeah, the next person who has a problem with my son can take it up with me.