Gender, children, and the deep, raging fury-flame that glows in my soul
So what you’re telling me, my beloved little boy, is that you are already displacing the cognitive load of knowing how to twine three pieces of hair together to your future wife.
Aw, girl. Me too.
Infuriating conversation with a boy-child, Part 1
“Hey bud, you should watch me braid your sister’s hair so you know how to do it when you’re grown and have kids.”
“Nah, I’ll have a mom.”
Pulse skips. “A mom?”
“I mean, I’ll have a wife. She’ll do that. I’ll go to work.”
Adrenaline creeps up. “Um, bud? I work.”
“Nooo, not like, at home. I’ll work in a building.”
My inner voice: So what you’re telling me, my deeply, deeply beloved little boy, is that you are already displacing the cognitive load of knowing how to twine three pieces of hair together to your future wife.
My real-world mouth: “Okayyyy. So what if your wife needs to go out of town? Like, next week, I’m going out of town for work; who’s going to do your sister’s hair?”
“Oh. Dad.”
“Yeah. Plus, don’t you want a special relationship with your kids? Won’t you want them running to you saying ‘Daddy, oh daddy, will you give us braids!’?”
“Huh. Ok, I’ll watch.”
I might barf. Barfing in progress. Word barf. Here it comes…
WHO the heck taught him this? Who taught him that men go to work while their mom-wifeys plait hair? His mom works full time. His dad cooks on the regular. His dad untangles his sister’s hair and necklaces and social problems. So what the bananas? How is this so ingrained?
Barfing complete. More to come. Xoxo.
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Infuriating conversation with a boy-child, Part 2.
“You’re so beautiful, baby.”
“Oh, I’m not buh-ful. Girls are buh-ful. Boys are … cool. If peoples are buh-ful, they girls. If they are cool, they boys!”
He’s pleased with himself for tidying his categories so smartly. I, meanwhile, have turned into a face with googly eyes and no chin because my jaw has dropped all the way into hell. I mentally slap myself sharply to pull it together.
“What… What…. Um…”
Another slap. Get it together, Brig. You must respond. This will not stand. Because FIRST of all, my boy babies are gorgeous and I’m going to call them beautiful all the livelong day and I actually might MURDER the first sexist racist who gets in my way and I’ll bet it was that FUCKING guy at the baseball field who had a bumper sticker on his car that said MOIST and the picture of boobs and I’ll bet he was talking to his nephew or some poor sweet little boy who stands no chance of growing up into a thoughtful man about the importance of being cool which, of course, only Y chromosomes are capable of and the importance of looking good which is in the purview of the Double Xs who, of course, shouldn’t BE anything other than, y’know, looked at, and my impressionable preschooler heard it…
…Or… it’s just his little 3- and 4-year-old friends at school who generally watch TV and read books and exist in our society….
I’m not sure how many minutes this took or if he was still paying attention by the time I came out of my blackout. But there he sat, still in his carseat, still smiling.
“So what about your friend Lucy. She’s cool, right?”
Bigger smile “Yeah. She’s the coolest.”
“So what about people who are beautiful and cool? Because Lucy is beautiful and cool and she’s a girl. And you’re beautiful and cool and you’re a boy. So how does that work?”
“Mommy, Lucy and I made a bug trap at school today.”
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Horrifying conversation with a girl-child. Act 3, in which the tragedy comes to a head.
“Mom, have you had any songs stuck in your head today?”
“Hmm. No, I don’t think so. Have you?”
“Yeah, I’ve had one stuck in my head all day.”
“Haha, that’s so annoying. What song?”
“Miles On It.”
Keep your voice neutral. Keep it neutral. Crap you’re choking on your coffee. “Where did you hear that song?”
“Kids at school were singing it.”
For those of you lucky enough not to have an immediate gag reaction thinking about a 9-year-old girl having that song stuck in her head, you must not be familiar with this unfortunate piece of art. In short, it’s about convincing a girl named – as far as I can tell – Girl to help break in a new truck “if you know what I mean.” (And yes, those are actual, literal lyrics. Like I said: art.)
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I’m not an angry person or a frequently word-nauseous one. But there’s a pilot light, and it keeps flicking into flame as I raise kids in our small Midwestern town. But don’t tell me you don’t see it too. It’s there in your big, diverse cities, your coastal enclaves, your everywhere. It’s on social media, and television commercials, and in children’s books. It’s in the way I show up and in the way you show up and now it’s coiling itself into our babies like parasites and if only I knew how, I would take this fiery rage born of being a parent and a woman and a feminist and a human fucking being who braids hair and works a job and is both cool and beautiful and does not care for creepy men suggesting “rides” in their creepy trucks with MOIST bumper stickers and I would use it to burn these insipid worms into powdery ashes where our boy children and girl children and all children in between would stomp and dance.
