Essay rec

[cereta]

For those of you who have not seen it yet, a fabulous essay rec via rubynye:

Dear daughter-

You should know that you are hated.

...

The world hates you. You are considered the worst thing to be compared to. Throw like a girl. Talk like a girl. Cry like a girl. God forbid we ever be girls.

My favorite bit:

I also think of someone who suffers

Comments

[cheez_ball]

It's taken my whole life to reconcile this whole "girlie things are bad" with who I am and how I was raised by a gender-hating mother. My mother really, truly hated everything to do with the female gender, which made puberty and adolescence awful.

I think what swayed my mind the most was an image from someone's essay of a young girl dressed up like her favorite princess while rough housing and getting bruises on her knee. There's nothing wrong with being girlie and everything else. Or nothing else. Or not even girlie. There's so many variations on expression of being a person I won't limit them by my lack of imagination.

[aliaras]

The princess thing was what I did! Well, mostly -- I had dolls and played house, except instead of a usual house it was the castle at the trading post between two powerful nations that me and my sister oversaw. And our dolls would go out and beat things up. That, or it was the neatest submarine ever.

The racial implications of some of our games, though...yeesh. :-/ (mostly lots of appropriating the hell out of native american stuff, running an imperialist nation...although to be fair, our neighbors *were* evil)

[nrrrdy_grrrl]

You guys. xo

[browngirl]

*beams* Yeah. Helping take care of the lovely redhead in my icon has been an education in the multifaceted ways to be female, to be oneself. Knowing her, and your daughter through you, and all the other girls in my life including the one I used to be, I had to signal boost that excellent essays.

[geeklite]

I hope you don't mind a random LJ friend-of-a-friend commenting that your redhead is quite cute in that pic.

[rubynye]

*beams* Thank you. I'll tell her Mom. :)

[mickeym]

I wanted more choices for Matthew. I had to work to convince his father that it was OKAY to get Matthew a Playskool kitchen and a vacuum cleaner. That his boy wouldn't lose any 'boy points' for having a couple of dolls to play with, along with the stuffed animals and dump trucks.

A couple of his favorite movies are the so-called 'chick-flicks': Dirty Dancing and Hairspray.

I hate the way "like a girl" has crept into even my speech, if I don't stop and think about it. It's incredibly pervasive and insulting :( What a mess.

[geeklite]

I always try to make sure I don't push childthing toward the "boy" coloured things because *I* like them better.

Today we went to Babies'R'Us because his 2-year-old self just had a growth spurt and needed new shoes. He really *really* wanted me to buy him a pink sunhat, complete with large fabric flower - at least that was what I gathered by the way he grabbed it and clutched it to his chest pushing away all other hats on the shelf. Sadly, because my kid has an enormously fat head, even the biggest size (5T) was too small for him, so no pink hat for him :( I would have totally bought it for him if it had fit him though.

I did get some filthy looks from other parents though, so I let him wear it around for a few minutes until we put it back.