Dressing a girl like a boy and then getting upset .....
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Anonymous
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Can someone out there please help me to understand this one: a dear friend of mine who is a lesbian and had a daughter through DI is upset that all the adults that her child meets and the kids in her child's school assume that her 8 year old daughter is a boy, YET, since the child was very little ( one or two years old) my friend has only bought her boys clothes, and cut her hair really short. My friend basically dresses her daughter the way that she herself dresses ( very butch) . Then she gets annoyed and says thing like , " see that person thought she was a boy too, "did you hear that, that guys just called her a he" etc.. To me, it seems that people are making a simple two second calculation based on visual clues and the need to pick a personal pronoun to put in a sentence " your daught... or your son.....simple as that. My friend is far more interested in pursuing that maybe her daughter is a boy inside and that people somehow sense this , hence "see, he thought she was a boy" . My friend says that those are the clothes her daughter wants to wear, but really I don't think a 18 month old chooses, the parent does and she even buys her boys underwear. WTF.
My gut tells me this is more about my friend, not her child. Anyone experienced with this ? |
Anonymous
| She will end up on lesbian row. |
Anonymous
Kidding right. Need I reiterate that I think being a lesbian is fine and dandy. People who meet her daughter on a play ground or on the bus and want to address her Mom have to choose a personal pronoun, " how old is she?" or "how old is he" . The child has a crew cut and is wearing jeans , a rocker t-shirt, high tops and a baseball cap. So, the stranger takes a safe bet " How old is he?" My friends reaction , " gosh that guy thinks she is a boy too, I wonder why" huh ??? Seems pretty obvious. Is there some reason my butch friend feels threatened by the idea of raising a female who just might not "score one for the team" one day( phrase my friend uses) . Seems she is way over thinkin it. Buy the child some purple cords, problem solved. |
Anonymous
Yes, because girls have to wear girl colors to be girly enough girls. 
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Anonymous
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I see your point, OP. If she was just dressing her kid in clothes that she liked, and not making a big deal about gender, then NBD. But to go out of her way to "gender" her daughter male, and then take people's snap judgements as some kind of prediction about who her daughter truly is...that's messed up.
Ideally, we should be letting kids embrace gender identity with no pressure, and it sounds like she has a lot of pressure for her kid to be first a tomboy, then a lesbian. Just as it would be wrong for a mom to insist that her daughter only wear lacy pink dresses, and to comment constantly on her daughter's beauty and femininity, to make a big about how everyone sees that her daughter is "really" a boy is trying to warp her kid's identity to fulfill her own needs. Give kids a balance. |
Anonymous
That wooshing sound? It's the point going over your head. |
Anonymous
for split second decisions yes. Tell her well you dress her like a boy- the next time she mentions it. she might get offended but she won't be able ot lie to herslef anymore. |
Anonymous
| OP, is this something that you could talk to your friend about? It sounds like she might need a reminder of how much she likely hated pressure to conform to gender norms - because that's what she's doing to her child. The child is young now, but later, these comments from her mom are going to start sounding like disapproval and judgment and I'm sure that's not the mom's intention. |
Anonymous
| she is trying to force her screwed up lifestyle on her offspring and is surprised by the results? |
Anonymous
Not the OP, but "screwed up lifestyle" is offensive. I don't agree with the way this mom is behaving, but I don't see it as any worse than any other parent forcing any other gender extremity on children. |
Anonymous
OP here. Yes, of course, the clothes don't make the woman( duh) , but we are not talking about a fully developed woman. We are talking about a flat chested little girl with a crew cut. Even the voice is neutral as this is a pre-pubescent child.( no clues there)Out in the world among strangers most will need to guess the right personal pronoun to use (he or she) with very little to go on and very little time: the visual cues are hair cut, clothes, etc. My question is : why would a parent take this as a sign that her daughter is gay when she has obviously set up all the visual cues herself. I am not gay , but have some gay friends and always assumed that they would be more open to and more defending of a child's right to be who they are because , I assume, it was difficult for them growing up in a time different than today to come out . I would assume anyone who went through that would want to support their child whoever they were and not project an identity onto them. After all, this is what most of my gay friends complained happened to them in their less than supportive homes as children. So, I am mystified as to why my friend seems to have a clear preference from day one, dressing her child a certain way and projecting on to her some gender identity conflict that , imho, does not exist apart from the way the child is being "set up" to appear as a boy to others. I have heard my friend use comments like "score one for the team"( lesbian team, I assume) and "breaders" used derogatively towards heteros by my friend and was surprised because, you know, thought gay people would be more open minded in general due to life experience . not less. But don't know. So, I pose the question to this forum assuming there are other two Mom couples out there who have some insight based on more personal experience than I could possibly have as I am not gay. Thanks |
Anonymous
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OP, I'm the 11:03 poster. For full disclosure, I'm a straight woman, married to a man, with a 20 month old daughter. I have a lot of gay friends, some with kids, some without.
I think it's pretty normal parenting behavior to want your children to be like you. In my experience with the lesbian community (not super recent and not in this area), referring to straight people with kids as breeders is not uncommon and not always intended to be offensive. I don't see this mom's hopes for a gay child to be any different than a straight mom's hope for a straight child, and there are any number of ways that a parent can wish that without sounding like a jerk. I think that this is all NORMAL. I don't think that the way this mom is manifesting those wants is healthy for the child, though. I agree with you that it would be lovely if she was more open to her child figuring out her own identity and becoming who she wants to be, rather than who her mom wants her to be. I think that it's a little bit naive to assume that your friend is automatically more open to all lifestyle choices because hers is "alternative." I've met some lesbians who are militantly anti-man and some people of color who hate white people. Prejudice is everywhere. Being discriminated against does not preclude that you will discriminate against someone else, for something else, in the future, as sad as that is. |
Anonymous
Agree with that. But the OP's point is, I think, that when strangers meet a young child, they make gender assumptions based on clothes and haircut, for the simple reason that there's nothing else to go on. So the friend is acting irrationally by getting upset that strangers see her kid wearign a crew-cut and "boy's clothes" and think she's a boy. And she piggybacking on that her belief (hope) that the strangers "sense" that her daughter is gay daughter - some sort of advanced gaydar - when in reality, they think 5 yo + crewcut + jeans, sneakers and t-shirt = boy. (Perfectly reasonable, by the way.) The real question is whether the friend's issues - whatever they may be - are goinng to harm the kid. It's way too early to determine that, in my opinion. |
Anonymous
I don't know. Yes, I think OP's friend is ridiculous for getting so upset about people mistaking her kid for a boy. But assuming anyone's gender makes me a little squicky--the same way assuming race, age, or religion does--in this day and age, so I try not to do it. We like blue and people mistake DD for a boy all the time as she currently has NO hair. I don't say anything but I don't try to use the mistaken pronoun either and people generally are like, "Oh, sorry, I thought she was a boy," and I say, "No prob because it's really not." I do think it's important to recognize, though, that girls can wear all sorts of things, have all sorts of hairstyles and still be just as girly as the pretty pink princesses--that the inherent girlishness of a person shouldn't have a lot to do with outward appearances or how well they follow social norms for what is girly and what isn't--and same with boys. It's why I try to ask "How old is your child?" instead of "How old is your son/daughter?" Then the answering person usually gives you the correct pronoun in your answer and everybody moves on without an issue. |
Anonymous
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The girl is 8, right? My oldest is only 4, but already she is expressing a lot of opinions about what she wears (within the bounds of what I consider appropriate of course).
Seems like an 8 year old would be plenty old enough to ask for a pink shirt with flowers if she wanted one. Now if the mother is refusing to buy a pink shirt with flowers because it's too "girly", then that is the mother's problem. But maybe the girl is happy dressing that way. Either way, the mother shouldn't be getting upset at strangers initial reactions. |