I'm not going to say anything earth shattering. It's just been more than two months since my last post and I'm still trying to figure out why I'm writing and who my audience is. Since this blog is listed on my Facebook page now, I find myself wondering who might happen by.
Here's what's really been occupying my thoughts recently. I live in a small town with a greater community of good hearted people who are so committed to gender essentialism it's driving me batsh*t insane.
A story:
My 12 year old son just got his cast off (a minor hairline fracture in his wrist from a scooter accident). It was wonderful to hear that it was healed up just perfectly! As the cast came off, the nurse (who was a lovely woman, nice as can be and very good at her job) offered J a wet cloth to wipe off his arm (which had grown quite grungy over the last few weeks, natch). But as she turned back to the counter, she said offhandedly, "Oh, I know boys hate to wash off...I hand them the cloth and they look at it like, "What do I do with this?". I looked at J and thought about it for a minute, what it might be like to constantly hear observations by complete strangers, presented as "truth" that boys are "X" . If he isn't "X" (like, he actually DID want to wash his arm off...sort of desperately, and had been talking of nothing else for days) then he suddenly is presented with the idea that maybe he's not a REAL boy. His very gender must be earned by doing the proper things that boys are clearly observed to do. I don't think many people even REALIZE the degree of the gender essentialism they practice. Nor do they realize how shaming and damaging it can be. Once? No problem. Twice? Noticeable, but whatever. Daily??? It becomes a drum beat and my voice (of REASON AND SANITY) becomes more and more quiet when compared with the contrasting volume. Sorry for the rant. UGH. I just hate it.
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u got 2 sons? we got a daughter and a son. on the politics i "esssentially" agree. on the biology, we got stuff to talk about. cf Stephen Pinker (note to the uninitiated: i know about a lot of books but rarely read them. i am an aural learner primarily and read a lot of newspapers, magazines and web content. nonetheless, i maintain the right to cite books and authors as sources of info. go figure and so sue me!) ; }
ReplyDeleteOk, I have got to strongly disagree with you, Gary. It’s a very popular to believe that boys and girls as respective groups have character traits that are “essential” to each gender, but that is NOT borne out by the research done (meager as it is) and it’s not borne out by a simple consideration of the powerful soup of patriarchal conditioning in which we all live. We are given strong gender cues, rules to live by, and threats if those rules aren’t followed from the time a woman starts to show she’s pregnant. There may be some differences between the groups male and female that are observable in the brain, but the way those differences play out in our greater cultural landscape is HEAVILY influenced by our cultural constructs of gender. Try this link for some of what I’m talking about. A shorter version: John Gray is an idiot and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Here is another example of how gender essentialism works, in short form. Lastly, (b/c it took me 2 freaking hours and tons of help from Tim to be able to use HTML to embed my links and I'm going to need to devote a separate post to it) it is my studied opinion that evo. psych is completely full of shite and any scientist who claims otherwise has utterly lost my respect and interest. But, hey, I guess we may need to agree to disagree there. If nothing else, know this: I am SO TOTALLY EXCITED YOU COMMENTED ON MY BLOG!@!!11 :-) So, there's that. And I have 3 boys. Cuz 2 just wasn't enough to prove my eeevil feminist musings.
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