Childrearing
Successes And (Mostly) Failures In Gender-Bending My Kid
Much easier said than done.
When it was time to find out the sex of our baby, we decided against it. This would be our first mandate as gender-bending parents. We figured if nobody, including us, knew the sex it would prevent everyone from intentionally or subliminally transmitting their gender based hopes, dreams and stereotypes through my belly.
Wrong.
Inexplicably, friends and family still lovingly whispered, shouted and rain danced nonsense at my stomach whenever they’d get the chance. It usually sounded something like, “Hey baby boy in there! Hurry up and come out so we can play ball!†SMDH.
Our next gender-bending challenge was clothing. As soon as our son was born, we were bombarded with utterly boring “boy clothesâ€. I had to lay down some rules. No sports! No “macho superhero’sâ€! And nothing with the words, “champâ€, “all star†or anything of the sort. I was really hard core about this. I planned to balance out all the blues and greens with lots of pinks and purples and was ready to go to war with anyone who had a problem with it.
Turns out, it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Even as a “progressive†parent, these binaries are still hard-wired within me and require some serious unlearning. I couldn’t fathom putting a dress on my son! If he asked for it, that’d be one thing. But doing so as a regular practice of gender bending? I wasn’t nearly as bold as I thought I was.