Gender Schmender
Mar. 24th, 2011 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matrilI had another topic in mind for my next post, but that'll wait for later. I need to ramble on for a bit about something that (shockingly!!) I take very personally.
Since it seems like everyone I know is pregnant lately, I've been seeing a lot of excitement about ultrasounds and baby's genders in people's Facebook statuses and such. Now, I don't want to be a hypocrite - I was plenty excited to see the ultrasounds for my children, and plenty excited to find out the gender. But I get all squirmy and unhappy when people express a strong preference for one gender or the other (and it's usually girls - to make up for years of girl-bashing, apparently). It's also maddening when they make broad generalizations like a girl will be so fun to dress up (in spite of the fact that all babies are squishy-faced, helpless things with flailing limbs and feet that can't keep socks on for more than a minute at the time - and indistinguishable in terms of gender unless you look inside the diaper) or a boy will be ever so active and hard to handle (as if all girls are unfailingly quiet and demure from birth onward). Your baby will be your baby, an individual defined by so many, many more things than gender.
So why do we focus on gender? Well, the most obvious reason is that, barring extremely obvious birth defects, it's the only thing we can find out before birth. And it's fun to have the news ahead of time, to have something concrete to visualize. It's just the over-visualizing, the over-generalizing, that bugs me. Parenthood is one series of surprises after another. It's human nature to try to settle on something sure and solid, but let me tell you - knowing which gender your child will be guarantees pretty much nothing.
I know why this irks me so disproportionately, of course. Autism, the default reason for anything that makes me cranky. :P Gender is a pretty frivolous thing to fuss about when your child has severe developmental delays. Also, I get fired up about arbitrary gender roles - pink for girls and blue for boys? Pfft. My nephew's favorite color is pink, and good for him. Boys are rough and tumble and girls are quiet and nurturing? Double pfft. Some are one way, some are another, and some are something else altogether. Emma is a girl, sure, but she's also a budding mathematician, a world-builder, and a breathless chatterbox. Ryan has enough energy for five children, but he's also a ridiculously enthusiastic cuddler, and he loves dress-up as much as Emma. Luke's traits are tricky to disentangle from his autism, but he's definitely very affectionate, and given to long periods of introspection (while watching/making things spin) interspersed with bounding hyperactivity. Yes, I have two boys and a girl, but mostly, I have Luke, Emma and Ryan. My older sister and I, fifteen months apart, were close enough in personality and temperament (though I was the meaner one) that when our little brother came along, my parents figured all the differences sprang from him being a boy instead of a girl. Then our little sister was born and squashed that theory by being different from everyone. :)
I nearly drowned in a sea of pink at Emma's baby shower. It took all my willpower not to be snarky about it. Baby girls are not cuter than baby boys. My children, in fact, were pretty much identical as babies. What, are we seriously afraid a bit of pink and lace is going to turn our little boys gay? That's just insanity, in more ways than one. Sometimes I wish we could just go back to dressing all babies in long frilly white dresses.
Since it seems like everyone I know is pregnant lately, I've been seeing a lot of excitement about ultrasounds and baby's genders in people's Facebook statuses and such. Now, I don't want to be a hypocrite - I was plenty excited to see the ultrasounds for my children, and plenty excited to find out the gender. But I get all squirmy and unhappy when people express a strong preference for one gender or the other (and it's usually girls - to make up for years of girl-bashing, apparently). It's also maddening when they make broad generalizations like a girl will be so fun to dress up (in spite of the fact that all babies are squishy-faced, helpless things with flailing limbs and feet that can't keep socks on for more than a minute at the time - and indistinguishable in terms of gender unless you look inside the diaper) or a boy will be ever so active and hard to handle (as if all girls are unfailingly quiet and demure from birth onward). Your baby will be your baby, an individual defined by so many, many more things than gender.
So why do we focus on gender? Well, the most obvious reason is that, barring extremely obvious birth defects, it's the only thing we can find out before birth. And it's fun to have the news ahead of time, to have something concrete to visualize. It's just the over-visualizing, the over-generalizing, that bugs me. Parenthood is one series of surprises after another. It's human nature to try to settle on something sure and solid, but let me tell you - knowing which gender your child will be guarantees pretty much nothing.
I know why this irks me so disproportionately, of course. Autism, the default reason for anything that makes me cranky. :P Gender is a pretty frivolous thing to fuss about when your child has severe developmental delays. Also, I get fired up about arbitrary gender roles - pink for girls and blue for boys? Pfft. My nephew's favorite color is pink, and good for him. Boys are rough and tumble and girls are quiet and nurturing? Double pfft. Some are one way, some are another, and some are something else altogether. Emma is a girl, sure, but she's also a budding mathematician, a world-builder, and a breathless chatterbox. Ryan has enough energy for five children, but he's also a ridiculously enthusiastic cuddler, and he loves dress-up as much as Emma. Luke's traits are tricky to disentangle from his autism, but he's definitely very affectionate, and given to long periods of introspection (while watching/making things spin) interspersed with bounding hyperactivity. Yes, I have two boys and a girl, but mostly, I have Luke, Emma and Ryan. My older sister and I, fifteen months apart, were close enough in personality and temperament (though I was the meaner one) that when our little brother came along, my parents figured all the differences sprang from him being a boy instead of a girl. Then our little sister was born and squashed that theory by being different from everyone. :)
I nearly drowned in a sea of pink at Emma's baby shower. It took all my willpower not to be snarky about it. Baby girls are not cuter than baby boys. My children, in fact, were pretty much identical as babies. What, are we seriously afraid a bit of pink and lace is going to turn our little boys gay? That's just insanity, in more ways than one. Sometimes I wish we could just go back to dressing all babies in long frilly white dresses.
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no subject
Date: 2011-03-26 06:28 pm (UTC)It's just when people try to extend the implications of gender anywhere beyond the basic pronoun distinction that I want to pull my hair out....