Attack of The Gender Norms..or...A New Hope?
This time a young girl by the name of Katie Goldman, a first grader and avid Star Wars fan in the Chicago area was being teased at school by the boys in her class because she loves Star Wars and carries a Star Wars backpack and water bottle to school about it. Her mother, heartbroken to see her daughters spirit broken by the need to fit in, encouraged her daughter to stick with what she loves and tried to help her deal with the realities of being different. Then, like nerdyapplebottom, the mother of the boy in the Daphne costume, and all great stay at home blogger/parents...*cough*...Carrie Goldman took it to the net in her blog, Portrait of an Adoption.
O.k...I admit that she had me hooked by being a Star Wars fan. Being a rabid fan myself, its always an automatic win for me. However, her love of Star Wars wasn't the only thing that Katie had come to realise was different about her. At first grade she had also come to the realisation that not all kids wore glasses or were adopted. That's alot to absorb when the biggest event of your day is usually discovering what your mom packed in your lunch..or arguing with the kids on the playground about which Star Wars character is the coolest.
At summer's end, Katie and I went to Target to pick out her backpack, lunchbox and water bottle for the new school year. After great deliberation, she chose a Star Wars water bottle to match her Star Wars backpack.Katie's mom describes that her heart sank and pushed a little harder to get at what might be behind her daughters sudden need to ditch her love for Star Wars:
Katie loves Star Wars, and she was very excited about her new items. For the first few months of school, she proudly filled her water bottle herself and helped me pack her lunch each morning.
But a week ago, as we were packing her lunch, Katie said, "My Star Wars water bottle is too small. It doesn't hold enough water. Can I take a different one?" She searched through the cupboard until she found a pink water bottle and said, "I'll bring this."
I was perplexed. "Katie, that water bottle is no bigger than your Star Wars one. I think it is actually smaller."
"It's fine, I'll just take it," she insisted.
I kept pushing the issue, because it didn't make sense to me. Suddenly, Katie burst into tears.
She wailed, "The first grade boys are teasing me at lunch because I have a Star Wars water bottle. They say it's only for boys. Every day they make fun of me for drinking out of it. I want them to stop, so I'll just bring a pink water bottle."
"Katie, it is okay to be different. Not all girls need to drink out of pink water bottles," I told her.Yes, it is how it starts...but I hope she never loses the courage to be what makes her unique. I hope my own children never lose that spark that makes them special.
"I don't want to be too different," Katie lamented. "I'm already different. Nobody else in my class wears glasses or a patch, and nobody else was adopted. Now I'm even more different, because of my Star Wars water bottle."
I hugged her hard and felt my heart sink. Such a tender young age, and already she is embarrassed about the water bottle that brought her so much excitement and joy a few months ago.
Is this how it starts? Do kids find someone who does something differently and start to beat it out of her, first with words and sneers? Must my daughter conform to be accepted?
I admit that I understanding her moms heartbreak. I was bullied relentlessly and cruelly as a kid...not simple name calling but the chained to a tree while others looked on and laughed kind of bullied. Its a subject that is s hot button for me. When my husband and I adopted out two children, the fact that they may suffer the cruel mistreatment of others was a major thing to think about. My son has some physical development issues that affect the way that he looks and speaks. He is also adopted and has two dads. Bullying was a very real possibility for Daniel. And so it has been. Not so much for having two dads or for being adopted...but mostly for the Daniels health issues and the scarring he had received from the many surgeries he has had to endure. That has hurt my heart the most...like the day when he was five and standing in front of the bathroom mirror staring at his scars because the kids at school had said something mean. He asked me "Dad...when are the doctors going to take this off?" It broke my heart and was the toughest thing in the world to try and explain to him at the age of five. Fortunately, Daniel is a tough kid and a true survivor.
I don't know what it is about humans that needs to put every one in a box in order to feel safe in the world...and in fact...once boxed, we find ever smaller and more precise boxes to put ourselves in. Then we start weeding out the boxes we don't like/understand. For me this issue hits home because of the loss of my friend Carina..who was transgendered and transitioning from male to female. It blows my mind how much discomfort people feel about transitioning...how much violence and utter dehumanization the transgendered community suffers astounds and sickens me. What is it about the blurring of the lines between male and female that arouses in us such fear? When people approach that grey line in which it is no longer possible to distinguish the masculine from the feminine we treat them as if they are no longer relatable to us and on many occasions...no longer human. All for merely feeling like a gender they were not born into. It's mind boggling.
When a boy innocently wears a female costume he is automatically accused of being gay. A little girl loves Star Wars and she is shunned. These are the first hints these kids receive that if you don't fit the mold ...we will cast you out. Each generation passes it to the next and none of us stop to ask ourselves why until something comes up that gives us a reason to.
I like to think of is like this...I imagine what I define as "myself" being slowly stripped away. At what point do I stop being me? You can take away my love of Star Wars and I will still be me. You can take away my home, my name, and my family and I will still have a "me". You can take away my memories and I will still wake up in the morning with a sense of a self. And finally...if you believe in any kind of afterlife...you can take away my body and with it my sense of gender, sexuality, etc..and I believe I will still have a sense of myself as an individual being. A blank slate...an essence. If all those things can be taken from me and I still find a "me"...than what am I?...I haven't answered that yet.
None of what we fight over...or define ourselves over matters in the greatest scheme of things because none of them is really what we are at our core. We are poured into the circumstances of our lives like water taking the shape of the glass it is poured into and we let that shape define who we are. Then we get so afraid of those who's glass may be a different shape even though we are the same water.
Wearing one costume will not make a little boy into a girl. Loving Star Wars will not make Katie any less of a girl...and furthermore, changing a body from one gender to another will not eradicate the person inside it....maybe its time we got over it and started accepting ourselves and others as we are...to let ourselves be fully human, with all the messiness and grey areas...and all the amazing potential that will never fit in our neat little boxes.
I fully congratulate Katie on having the good taste and sensibility to love Star Wars. She will be in good company. Additionally, due to her mom's blogging, I know that ton's of support has flooded in to Katie from other fans and even a few official Star Wars personalities. All of which has given Katie absolute delight and encouraged her to wear her passion as a badge of honor. Her mom relays Katie's happy ending...
Wow! Katie is overjoyed by the comments coming in!!! My sweet first grade daughter has been sitting with me at the computer, reading aloud all the wonderful, supportive notes from readers, and her face is shining. Each night after dinner, we are going to sit together, and she is going to read several comments to me and her daddy. We are going to print the comments out and make a book for her to read whenever she feels the need. Today she wore a Star Wars shirt to school and said to me, "Tell the people about it!!!!" This is really restoring her self confidence. She did a jaunty little pirouette in her Star Wars shirt before school.
And all is as it should be.
Until next time dear readers....
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Christopher di Spirito
gaypersonsofcolor
hyblaean- Julie
Thomas Rogers
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Joan Walsh
Salon.com
Comments
I bought my niece dozens of star war toys when she was young, hoping she would share my love of the genre with me. She did for a while, but then she fell in love with barbies and I had no way to prevent this.....8(
As somebody who is aggressive and such, I wanted all my nieces and nephews to play with waterguns, footballs, toy soldiers and the like. Some did and some didn't and it had nothing to do with gender, but with personal choice. My one nephew didn't like the toy bow-and-arrow set I bought him. Instead, he turned the arrows into a microphone and the bow into a guitar and he ran around the house pretending he was Elvis. My other nephew hates sports, but he loves trucks and teddy bears.
It seems there are no gender-based rules when it comes to kids. The real key is to use toys in a way that can help develop the kids' emotional and social growth, teach them about the world, and hopefully, use them as tools to help them find out who they are and what they like and what they want to do with themselves.
Yes, this might be too much to expect from a 7 year old, but my wife is a scientist and she realized that this was what she wanted to be when she was 10 and had a toy microscope.
Just as toys can enable, they can enslave. Look at racial depictions in toys, gender-concepts that make girls think they need to be sex-object and not thinkers or leaders.
Much propaganda in toys.
Rated.
Why people refuse to accept your daughter as she is deeply saddens me.
To be ostricized by others for being different at such a young age is cruel.
When I was a tween, for example, I was told you can't play ball because it's a boys game.
When I was in high school, I was told I should take college courses enveloping the arts because boys score higher on tests and they're more likely to go on to becoming
I frequently write about women in sports, and athletic young women are confounded mercilessly by gender norms, especially those pertaining to body image, to the extent that they are reluctant to develop their bodies completely for their sport, though they are quite capable of doing so, fearing they will be thought too "manly" looking. This not only hampers athletic performance, but it also increases risk of injury (ACL injuries and concussions being two prominent examples).
Rated.
Lezlie
Kudos and R!!!
Kudos and R!!!
but yeah cyberspace can create new social constructs, new societies at its best. at its worse, cyberbullying can happen too. we have to really ask, why is bullying so common in American culture? I would suggest that maybe in other countries its not so prevalent. its the dark side of our overachiever/hypercompetitive [and yes aggressive] national psyche, I would argue. but the public/experts are still clueless on this. its our shadow side.
Here's a big up for Katie, and my son and countless other kids who have the courage to be who they are. For every voice that flips them shit about it, let us be the counter of voices that sing their praises and celebrate their fierce individuality.
A beautiful post which strikes a chord with me as I'm a new dad of twins, boy and girl, and I've been thinking a lot on how to be the best progressive dad possible while owning up to a fair amount of old-boy tastes and biases. But I second perdidochas comment-- at a certain point girl geeks (into Star Wars, comics, etc.) are golden, as far as the boy geeks are concerned. Teasing and cruelty among children has always existed, taking different forms at different ages. In adolescence a boy will get grief for liking Star Wars too much as well, if you remember the brouhaha over the "Star Wars" kid of the video that went viral a few years back. In the end, it's the individualists and the "different" who end up leaving a positive impression for each generation. Who looks back and fondly remembers the "straight" conformist kids?