I Don't Think This is Going to Work Out

Have you ever met someone and known almost immediately that you weren't going to be able to have a meaningful relationship with them?

Today we went to the park to meet a couple of homeschooling families. One, we've hung out with before. The other, it was our first time meeting them.

The child we've played with before had upset Mal by screaming in his vicinity, which is a cardinal sin Malcolm cannot forgive. The girl's mom was talking to her, and the child referred to Mal as "she." The mom reminded her, "No, he's a boy. Remember? He just has long hair." The little girl tried to make sense of it, looking at the new mom's baby and saying, "That baby is a boy, too."

The baby's mom said, "No, she's a girl. See? She's wearing a bow on her head."

Well, dang. That... doesn't really help.

If you've been around for any amount of time, you know my feelings on the arbitrary and useless binary gender traits we assign to people. I think boys should be able to wear bows if they want (Mal certainly did when his bangs were growing out to "not bangs," because I couldn't find many hair clips that were... uh... manly??). And paint their nails. And have long hair. And girls should be able to -- well, here's one area in which girls actually have more freedom than boys. But they should be able to wear overalls and stay dirty and belch proudly, I guess. If that's what they want.

However, beyond that, even if you tend to be more "recent Western traditional," I want for you to think about something else for a minute. Here goes:

Strict binary gender expectations hurt EVERYONE.

If we assume that "female" = "feminine" and that it looks or acts like a certain thing, it has the potential to hurt people who cannot fit into that category, despite wanting it desperately and trying their best. Maybe a girl is too fat or too poor or maybe a woman has worked hard in a rough profession all of her life.

Virgie Tovar talks about being very confused about her gender growing up (and she's a SUPER "girly-girl") because the store didn't sell cute clothes in her size. I remember feeling like the clothes I had to buy were boy clothes because I was bigger, too. My choices were boy clothes or adult clothes, which were way too mature/business-casual for my 13-year-old self.

So if we insist that "feminine" means a dainty little thing with an adorable sundress, but then we only make sundresses up to a certain size, then it necessarily excludes big girls who might REALLY want a cute sundress to wear on their fat bodies.

If we insist that "feminine" means long hair (a nearby private Christian school dress code states that girls must have hair longer than their ears), then we heap shame and fear of rejection on girls who might have alopecia or trichotillimania or medically-caused hair loss. Or who might just want a Mohawk.

When I was a kid, I wasn't scared of bugs and I wasn't ticklish. Apparently, that's what girls did -- run screaming from boys with bugs, and shriek in delight at boys' poking their armpits -- and I felt VERY "other" because I wouldn't fake it. In my elementary-school brain, it clicked as that I was just too big and too hearty to be an actual girl. Boys didn't like me "like that." I wasn't "girly" enough.

Recently, there were some pictures in the media of a famous family whose older child has recently changed her name and gender identity. One comment I saw was, "He doesn't look even remotely like a girl. He's not fooling anyone."

Maybe you agree with this kind of thing?

But how can we demand that a person look exactly like the "norm" we have taught ourselves to expect or else be rejected? Can you see that when we impose those expectations on people whose gender identity doesn't match up with their biological sex, it ALSO harms then people who are cisgender and maybe just don't live up to those characteristics, either? Even if that's what they desperately want?

It would be so much easier for EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON EARTH if we'd agree to dispose of the superficial gender "clues" that so often steer us wrong.

We've come a long way toward this in my lifetime, but the fact that my son has to explain almost every single day of his life that he's a boy indicates that we have a long way to go.

And I think it would be extraordinarily challenging to have a friendship with someone who was dedicated to propping up the stereotype of "bow = girl."