I'm going through the archives
of Raising My Boychick and have come across a fabulous post (no doubt, one of MANY). This one is On Feminism and Male Bashing.
I am particularly enamoured with her response to this comment: "Thus my daughter has the puppy and zebra costumes as well as the cute dresses. It's all about "and" rather than "or". :)"
Response:I guess my response to your comment is: would you dress your son in cute dresses as well? I have yet to meet many who would say yes, and the reason is that we still have not escaped misogyny, even if we have somewhat enhanced women's array of choices.
To explain: society has decided that to a certain extent, females are allowed to imitate males, but never vice versa. Thus, we dress our girls in blue, but not our boys in pink; our girls in jeans, but not our boys in dresses; we give our girls "boy" names like Ashley and Chris and Cameron, but once taken over by "the girls", they cease being used for boys (how many once-female names can you think of that are now used only for men? I can't think of any, but I can name a dozen of the reverse off the top of my head).
This reflects the male-is-good, female-is-bad belief of larger society; of course it is right that women would want to be like men, but never the reverse. Witness the number of full-time working mothers, and the scarcity of the full-time stay at home father, even among those for whom breastfeeding isn't an issue.
So it's great that your daughter has puppy as well as princess clothes, it really is. :) But it doesn't mean misogyny is dead yet.
It was definitely a "Hey, YEAH!" moment reading this. I got really defensive recently when N's dad saw that A was wearing training pants that were lavender. He said, slightly aghast, "Those look like girl's pants." I said nothing. I was tongue-tied. And now I know better how I might respond to such commentary. At least I was able to correct my mother last December, when she claimed that it was a "Whoops" that A was wearing a shirt with pink letters spelling FEMINIST. Told her straight-up that there was no Whoops here. Boys and men can be feminists, too. She was thoughtful for a moment and said, while nodding, "Huh. I guess so."
Now that the Smallest is starting to pick out his clothes, I will endeavour to let him pick out more clothes when we go shopping. To be honest, I have no idea if he likes pink and purple or flowers or frills or hearts. He likes some stripes and he LOVES blue. But I don't know if that's an actual preference or if he prefers it because most of his clothing is blue (2nd-hand boy clothing from family friends... not the model of unisex, lemme tell ya.).
So much to learn. So much to experience.
I am particularly enamoured with her response to this comment: "Thus my daughter has the puppy and zebra costumes as well as the cute dresses. It's all about "and" rather than "or". :)"
Response:I guess my response to your comment is: would you dress your son in cute dresses as well? I have yet to meet many who would say yes, and the reason is that we still have not escaped misogyny, even if we have somewhat enhanced women's array of choices.
To explain: society has decided that to a certain extent, females are allowed to imitate males, but never vice versa. Thus, we dress our girls in blue, but not our boys in pink; our girls in jeans, but not our boys in dresses; we give our girls "boy" names like Ashley and Chris and Cameron, but once taken over by "the girls", they cease being used for boys (how many once-female names can you think of that are now used only for men? I can't think of any, but I can name a dozen of the reverse off the top of my head).
This reflects the male-is-good, female-is-bad belief of larger society; of course it is right that women would want to be like men, but never the reverse. Witness the number of full-time working mothers, and the scarcity of the full-time stay at home father, even among those for whom breastfeeding isn't an issue.
So it's great that your daughter has puppy as well as princess clothes, it really is. :) But it doesn't mean misogyny is dead yet.
It was definitely a "Hey, YEAH!" moment reading this. I got really defensive recently when N's dad saw that A was wearing training pants that were lavender. He said, slightly aghast, "Those look like girl's pants." I said nothing. I was tongue-tied. And now I know better how I might respond to such commentary. At least I was able to correct my mother last December, when she claimed that it was a "Whoops" that A was wearing a shirt with pink letters spelling FEMINIST. Told her straight-up that there was no Whoops here. Boys and men can be feminists, too. She was thoughtful for a moment and said, while nodding, "Huh. I guess so."
Now that the Smallest is starting to pick out his clothes, I will endeavour to let him pick out more clothes when we go shopping. To be honest, I have no idea if he likes pink and purple or flowers or frills or hearts. He likes some stripes and he LOVES blue. But I don't know if that's an actual preference or if he prefers it because most of his clothing is blue (2nd-hand boy clothing from family friends... not the model of unisex, lemme tell ya.).
So much to learn. So much to experience.