CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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What Role Does Gender Need to Play in Your Children?

Thursday, April 23, 2009

this entry brought to you by against me, "up the cuts"


I was listening to a podcast that I liked called the Dork Forest, and in this episode, the host had a guest who was a Real Life Role Player. It's called "larping", and it is about the most ridiculous thing you could ever see, next to, say, furries having sex in costume. Google "LARP". Or don't. Please, please don't.

Anyway, this woman is Pagan, which right off the bat, I hate. I have grown so fucking annoyed with Wiccans and Pagans. Mostly because people don't tend to be born into Paganism. It is a personal choice, but it is a personal choice to be different for the sake of being different. Nobody's actual beliefs are that there are fairies and shit like that. You liked it because it was different, and chose to live that lifestyle because it is different, and go fuck yourself. So there's that. Basically, this mother is extremely liberal, in the way that dirty, filthy hippies are extremely liberal.

And she raises her children in costume. I am not kidding.

She lets her children wear whatever they want. Her boys dress like girls (complete with lipstick), and her girl wears boy clothes and has a Mohawk. Keep in mind her girl is in the first grade. Her Children are 8, 6, and 3.

And I have problems with that. I do think gender roles are artificial. Honestly. But I also think that there's a difference between letting your children be who they are and encouraging your children to be freaks.

Let me just give you an example. Kids worship their parents, and until they start forming an individual idea of who they are, they are naturally going to be inclined to imitate their parents. So, for example, my daughter is naturally going to be inclined to like Barack Obama, listen to rock music, and play video games. I have never put a controller in her hand. She picked it up first. With that said, of course she's going to want to play video games. She sees me sit down and enjoy myself for long periods of time while playing a game, how could she not want to try that? At school this past November they had a mock election, and she voted for Barack Obama, which makes sense, because we wear Barack Obama t-shirts and talk about politics a lot. But nobody told her to vote for Barack Obama, and I even corrected her a couple times when she would grow angry with the television when John McCain was on, "Honey, John McCain is a good man, and does his job well. We don't believe he should be president, but there are people out there who do." I tried to let her know that these are our opinions, and that other people have different opinions. But yeah, she's going to agree with our opinions because she's too young to develop her own.

So when your parents are hippies, I think they will be inclined to be hippies too. And honestly, I have no problem with that. I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with letting your little boys wear dresses if they so want to.

I do, however, see a problem with letting him go to school like that.

Again, there's a difference between my son putting on his sister's dress and grabbing a Barbie doll and having fun. Let him have fun. And it's different for me to buy him a doll just because he says he wants one, and letting him go to school dresses as a girl just because he says he wants to. My daughter says she wants to do all sorts of things that are gender-appropriate, and I turn her down on those things, too. I don't see why it would be wrong for me to turn her down on gender inappropriate things as well. For example, I don't like the idea of her getting earrings. My wife of course wants to get her earrings soon, which I understand because that's a thing mommies do, but I have told her repeatedly, I'm not entirely comfortable with that. And earrings are completely a gender-appropriate thing.

With all this said, I am a liberal guy, and I start to feel guilty when I take a strong stance on something and I can't necessarily explain how it hurts someone. I feel like I can explain how letting a little boy go to school with a dress on would hurt him, or how a giving a daughter a Mohawk would hurt her, but part of me, the guilty liberal side, wonders if there's just something stubborn and societal inside me. Maybe there's something in me that is just too masculine to let little boys dress up like little girls and go to school that way and let them get made fun of (which the mother addresses happens all the time-- she's going on Doctor Phil. The podcast said they taped in January, so it's probably aired by now), but I just can't bring myself to believe it's okay. I do feel bad for judging a parent on their parenting skills, but then I think, no, you know what? I am a parent now, and I do get to judge other parents and their parenting skills. I think that it's up to me, as a parent, to draw a line. Children are going to tease one another no matter what. That's no reason to paint a big target on a child. I wouldn't want my boy to dress like a girl and go to school that way and be made fun of, just because he had the fleeting child idea that he wanted to.

...But you know what? I really do feel that once I have a teenaged boy in high school, I could let him do essentially what he wanted, within reason, in terms of self expression. If my son really wanted to go to school dressed in drag on a non-Halloween day, fine. He has to buy the dress himself with his own money. I'm not buying him a dress for him to express himself. But on his own terms, I don't think I'd mind. Again, I think there's a difference between letting your kids be who they want to be, even if it is weird, and encouraging your kids to be weirdos.

Am I wrong about this?
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with love from CRS @ 1:03 PM 

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