Wed 7 Mar 2007
Queering his Childhood
Posted by Kwynne under Parenting 202
(just a quick note: this post was not inspired by Art’s recent post. I hesitate to post this as I feel it covers similar ground, but I think there may be a few other angles to discuss.)
So tell me…
Are you, as a lesbian parent/queer parent and parent to be less invested in normative gender roles?
I ask this question as a few days ago, I was an invited speaker on a session about lesbians planning to have kids. My partner and I talked about our baby and our road through conception, pregnancy and now parenting.
As the last speaker was finishing up, she was asked if she was sad that she was parenting boys (she had 2). She said she wasn’t, and mentioned how many lesbians with sons feel guilty about not having daughters. She suggested that we should mourn the fact that we don’t have daughters and just be happy to raise our sons.
So then I said, “And hey, maybe you will raise a femme boy!”
After that comment the room got silent. Those with kids said, “Well..” and then trailed off. Folks fidgeted in their seats. An uncomfortable silence followed. And then we moved on.
In the comments on gender-specific clothing in Art’s post, some folks mentioned that they wouldn’t put a boy in pink. Some mentioned the fear of being judged as a lesbian parent and that wildly disobeying gender normative rules would make it seem that they were using children to push the “homosexual agenda”.
So, am I naive and ridiculous? Am I setting myself up for something when I insist on pushing that homosexual agenda and playing around with normative gender/sexuality? (And I’m not just talking about clothes here - I often let people call our son “she” and make no moves to correct them, or when folks say that he will have all the “ladies” I make sure to add “and all the guys as well!”).
Am I going to have to eat my clueless parenting words and prepare myself for the gender police to straighten me out (pun intended)? Or is there really a hope to queer his childhood? (and let me be clear, I will be fine if Dre decides to be ultra masculine and heterosexual, but I would at least want my child to have the option to feel comfortable presenting his gender and sexual identity any way he desires).
What do you all think? Are you, as a lesbian/queer parent/parent to be less invested in normative gender roles? Or are the forces of society just too great?
(ps - I’m not sure why I can’t get spaces between my paragraphs, I apologize for the nasty formatting).
March 8th, 2007 at 10:49 am
We are pretty committed to pushing the same “homosexual agenda” on our children because, dammit, it’s the right thing to do. Those gender roles are fucked up for everyone. Why perpetrate it? Our kids are going to have to face non-normative gender roles all the time because of the adult peer group we run in. Our kids will need to be able to understand that one of their mom’s has chosen a male name, and frequently passes as a guy, but is still a woman. We purposely have people in our life who are gender queer who we intend to be involved with our kids. If the gender policy come calling, I think we are well prepared and I bet y’all are as well.
I just don’t have an assimilationist attitude. I don’t think that passing as straight, acting out our “proper” gender roles as parents and enforcing them with our kids is the right thing to do to help society change. I love the super femmy men in our lives. Our first KD choice was a super femmy gay man - we joked with him that he could be the one to teach our kids about femininity, cause we sure don’t push ourselves into the box anywhere near as much as he does.
And I know that people will say that it will be harder for our kids because of this and I say that that is bullshit. I was bullied cause I was poor. I was bullied cause my dad is a labor union activist. I was bullied cause we were involved in political activism and I talked about it at school. I am fine today, I am strong and I know what I think and feel because I was encouraged to not run with the pack if I didn’t want to, that sometimes, the pack is wrong - I don’t think our kids will “suffer” anymore than other kids do for whatever reason their peers can find to torture them.
We’ll be fine with whatever gender roles our kids choose, and we’ll move with them if they change, and we’ll probably challenge them about it cause we believe it is important to do so.
March 8th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
I wondered where this post went the other day…
We don’t “push” anything on Charlie. He happened to wear a pink flowered nightgown the night we brought him home, because it was what we had and it felt right in our “getting over” not having a girl.
My son loves trucks and trains. He loves to make anything go zoom zoom. He also adores shoes and sparkly things and cooking and he can walk better in high heels at 19 months than I ever could. He has diapers that are purple and pink and red and blue with bugs and frogs and butterflies.
He is who he is, he has no gender or sexuality at this point. He’s a child, and he’s going to be exactly the person he wants and needs to be despite our influence. He has long hair and frequently gets mistaken for a girl. Sometimes I correct people, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes they ask if he’s a boy or girl and I’ve told more than one person that we’re assuming boy but nothing is certain yet. If someone says he’ll be a ladies man, I point out that he might go after boys, and that’s fine with us.
If he grows up to be macho, good for him. If he grows up to be femmy, good for him. As long as he grows up a decent person who loves his family and is kind to animals and old ladies, I don’t care about anything else. He’s my child, and i love him regardless. And since love and universal acceptance is at the core of the homosexual agenda, I certainly am queering his childhood.
March 8th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
also pushing the homosexual adgenda here…
when my son is old enough, he’ll express his gender/sexual identity through his own choices of clothing, mannerisms, activities etc. But as an infant and toddler, i have to make many of those choices for him.
My kid is queer by birth - a son to queer parents and part of a larger queer culture. So until he’s old enough to share his preference, he’ll wear pink and blue, dresses and pants and have a variety of toys and a wide range of gendered grown-ups in his life.
Homophobia is real and will touch him. Being closeted, or trying to make our family look as “straight” as possible (by dressing our son in blue, and assuming he’s going to be heterosexual) is one way to try to avoid that homophobia. But i worry that this strategy can also breed shame. It is only one tool, and I want to make sure he has a number of tools to choose from when he needs to protect himself from homophobia. I want him to trust his own desires enough to express them with confidence. I want him to know that he is part of a larger community (”My family is Queer, and boys *can* wear skirts thank-you-very-much”) I want him to see how other queers, kids of queers, and gender-variant people navigate so he can learn from them, and be prepared for common questions and reactions he may get from his peers.
Our kids are lucky to be born (or adopted or fostered) in a community which has a rich history of strength and resilience. I want for him to have full access to those resources which i think are a part of his heritage.
I want to both gift him with the “homosexual agenda” and invite him to contribute to the next rewrite — as soon as he figures out three-word sentences.
March 9th, 2007 at 11:04 am
We’re totally pushing back on the whole gender policing thing over here. And it started early.
I practically got into a knock-down, drag-out with a 20-something clerk at a store when I bought some purple rain boots (with pink piping, the horror!) for my son. He was TWO. He loved those boots. But oh my gosh you would have thought the world was coming to an end.
As the mother of a son with a sunny smile and deep, kissable dimples, I get more than my fair share of “He’s going to be a ladykiller,” which, okay, where to start… the killing part, the lady part, the fact that he’s WAY too young (even now at the ripe old age of 5 and a half) to be thinking about eventual romantic entanglements, but I DO say “Well, he’s a little young for that, and of course he may be leaving some boys in his wake as well,” or something like that.
The thing that I feel good about is that our rhetoric around families (that their one essential ingredient is love, and that they come in all kinds of configurations) is absolutely borne (sp?) out by his experience.
He knows adopted kids, kids with two moms, kids whose racial identity is different from that of their parents, kids with one parent, etc. etc. etc. He knows that grownups pick all kinds of folks for their sweeties, and that some people have many friends but not one sweetie to whom they are committed for some period of time. He knows about two-spirit people. He knows that there are people who disagree with our family’s definition of family. He knows that George Bush and his crew think that marriage should only be for one man and one woman.
He knows that matters of style are a personal choice… other people can have opinions, but his is the vote that counts. And he knows that purple is the color of kings.
For a fun recent picture of my kid decked out in all his fanciness, hop on over to But Wait, There’s More!
March 9th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
We planned to raise our kiddo on Free To Be You and Me. And we are, mostly, but we lean way more toward the status-quo than I expected.
Although our daughter has a non-gendered name and we initially planned to dress her gender-neutrally, when she showed up mostly-bald, we found that we hated when people called her a boy.
Gradually we started putting her in the pink outfits that friends and family gave us. And you know what? She’s damn cute in pink. And orange, and lime, and most of the other bright colors.
Once we let go of the pink phobia, we realized that we could pair cargo pants with a ‘girly’ shirt and end up with an awesome look. Girly, but with attitude.
Since we’re both pretty capable and handy around the house, she sees us do all sorts of things, from fixing the gutter to sewing.
She’s an amazing climber-monkey. Strong, smart, unafraid of a fight (yes, she tangles at school sometimes). And a great doll-mom. And an excellent cook.
And she proudly announced that she wants to be a firefighter/”big digger driver” when she grows up. We are bursting with pride.
But you know what? We’re not ‘making’ her this way. This is just who she is. And if she goes through a Barbie phase (please GOD no!), we’ll be supportive too.
April 22nd, 2007 at 6:58 am
We also are leaning more status-quo than I expected, especially for our boy.
Our girl at 3 years is following in the footsteps of her favorite, very feminine, aunt and refuses anything that isn’t “pretty” (the pink sparkly overalls I brought home as a compromise even got rejected!!) We try to encourage flexibility but also accept her wild skirty pink choices. (However, she wore all colors as a baby and got called boy with no offense taken and no correction offered.)
But along came our son, and I want him to wear gender-neutral clothing, which in this world makes him look “like a boy”, until he is old enough to express an opinion, at which time (if he loves purple boots) he will begin to learn the most central lesson of his (and anyone’s) life: his family will accept whomever he is, but the outside world may offer criticism.
He has lots of queer role models, male and female, and I believe when he is older, he can see that he may choose any spot on the gender spectrum that pleases him.