I completely loved this article about raising kids who don't fit neatly into the boy-girl dicotomy. My kids appear to be solidly boy, but Ian doesn't fit neatly into the normal kid category, so I can totally relate to the struggles that the parents in the article faced.
Jonah has one or two friends that aren't typical boys in their interests or their mannerisms. They might become gay, but they might not. Jonah was never aware of their differences until recently, when other kids began making the horrible slurs and whispers about gay kids. We had the talk about being tolerant of differences and Jonah gets it totally, because he has a brother who is different.
There have been many outraged editorials about the Boy Scout's intolerance of homosexuality, but there are quite a few gender-differences among his fellow scouts. That's where the non-sporty kids go. It's also where the kids with ADHD and spectrum kids are hiding. There really is a gap between political rhetoric about the scouts and the reality.
Apt. 11d 
Our 10-year-old was running down the list of her interests, saying which was more of a girl thing and which was more of a boy thing. Then she got to math. “NOBODY likes math,” she said.
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There have been many outraged editorials about the Boy Scout’s intolerance of homosexuality, but there are quite a few gender-differences among his fellow scouts. That’s where the non-sporty kids go. It’s also where the kids with ADHD and spectrum kids are hiding.
It depends on where you are. A major (perhaps the main) reason why the boyscouts are so anti-homosexual is that their single biggest constituent is the Mormon Church, and the Mormons threatened to pull out of boyscouts if they accepted homosexuals. I don’t know if that’s the only reason, but it’s an important one. But, if your in an area with lots of Mormons, boyscouts mostly means all the Mormon kids, sporty or not, adhd or not, since it’s what Mormon boys do for youth group activities.
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They explained that Alex had recently become inconsolable about his parents’ ban on wearing dresses beyond dress-up time. . . . Even his movements ricochet between parodies of gender: on days he puts on a dress, he is graceful, almost dancerlike, and his sentences rise in pitch at the end.
I have no problem with people doing whatever they want. I have no problem with men wearing dresses. I have no problem with women wearing a suit and tie.
Where I get uncomfortable is when a person tells me that he wants to wear a dress because that’s more feminine and that’s what girls wear. What the heck? Everyone wears jeans and t-shirts to school. In 1954, girls wore dresses to class. Now, if you want to wear a skirt you have to double check to make sure it’s not a “gym” day, or a field trip, or whatever. Safer to just put her in a shirt and pants like everyone else. If you feel more girly, then pick the pink t-shirt.
When I see the Raggirls playing house, or building a tower of Legos, or studying their science kits, or writing, directing, and filming an updated version of “Cinderella” (eldest Raggirl’s self-assigned summer project), nobody is thinking whether it makes them more or less female or feminine or whatever. And when it is time to get dressed up “nice” and put on dresses and go to synogogue or something, let me tell you that nobody is getting more “graceful” or “dancerlike.” They are themselves in their dress clothes.
I read about how in the past homosexuality was defined as a mental disorder, and I think, “that’s crazy!” But then I see this and I ask, “Well, does he have a mental disorder or not. How do I tell?” Not that it is mentally disordered for a boy to want to wear a dress — but that he feels like he can’t take on some feminine characteristics without going whole hog. If you want to play with dolls, that is normal. If you can only play with dolls if you are wearing makeup and a dress, then maybe there’s a problem there, because little girls manage to act feminine in jeans every day without throwing a fit about it.
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A week or so ago, my 7-year-old boy was describing himself as a “tomgirl” because of his particular interests. (Insert noise of screeching record here.)
However, a lot of his less gender typical interests are due to his having a dominating big sister with LOTS of ideas. His sister spent the past year brainwashing him into doing a sewing camp, which he did this summer and liked.
I wonder how much playing at gender resembles other pretend play. Our 10-year-old spent much of her preschool career asking to be called Thomas (as in the Tank Engine) and refusing to wear any color but blue.
We hear of a lot from people who feel that they are women trapped in men’s bodies or vice versa. The funny thing is, though, that as a woman, I don’t know what it means to feel like a woman. I feel like me, and I happen to have a female body.
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From the article:
“So she and her husband signed up their gentle boy for karate and soccer and took him to psychoanalysis four times a week for years. He became sullen and angry. At 21, he told his parents he was gay. In time, she and her husband viewed their efforts as unwitting abuse.”
Psychoanalysis four times a week–that does sound abusive.
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Really interesting comment, Ragtime! I guess that no woman is really as over the top as a drag queen. We all pale in glamour and attitude to one of those ladies. They aspire for a supernatural feminity that doesn’t exist. I don’t know why these differently gendered boys don’t want to be like regular girls in jeans and old sneakers and prefer to be the perfect girl. I guess it’s like any pretending; it always goes to the extreme. Girls pretend to be fairies or princesses, not the chamber maid or the governess.
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Girls pretend to be fairies or princesses, not the chamber maid or the governess.
Absolutely. We went through a phases where I couldn’t walk into a room where there wasn’t a room with a single shoe sitting in the middle waiting for a prince to find it and put it on the one-shoed Raggirl. There were three different DVDs, with fights over whether we were watching “Cinderella with yellow hair” (the cartoon) “Cinderella with black hair” (Fairy Tale Theatre) or “Cinderella with Curly Hair” (live action Disney with Brandy). No one ever suggested a video from outside of the Cinderella genre.
Fortunately, without too much encouragement, they all outgrew those phases by kindergarten. But even if pre-school full-Disney-Princess mode, the “dress-up clothes” were for home, and nobody through a fit that they needed to be a fairy godmother in public.
Every feminist understands that wearing a dress doesn’t make you “more of a woman.” My girls all listened to “Free To Be You And Me” and understand that the Pretty Young Things all get eaten by tigers in the end.
The gender spectrum boy isn’t “dressing up,” in theory, he’s “expressing his true self.” Which is fine, but whatever that true self is, it is not female, because girls just don’t do that.
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I find it interesting you link Jonah’s acceptance of sexual differences with his experience of differently abled body. On an academic level, I’m finding that queer studies has so much to offer disability studies when it comes to discourses of the body. And then disability studies can offer these viewpoints to groups who would run away screaming from sexual differences but would embrace disability differences. Maybe disability can be a significant key in unlocking some of the barriers to acceptance. (sorry to geek out a little)
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