Moms are Sexist

I asked if I could blog about this experience today because it didn't happen to me, unless "by proxy" counts. I was given the go-ahead by my husband, M, to put this out there for the world (or the tiny slice that reads MoR anyway) to read and I just realized that I am actually...angry. Fortunately, not too angry to write now, but a few hours ago, as I was thinking about what happened to him today, I can safely say I've never chopped shallots or basil more finely in my life.

First, some background. We live in a diverse neighborhood with loads of young children, most of whom we only catch fleeting glimpses of. The parents of the kids A's age don't tend to take their tots outside, no matter what the season, and those who we have encountered have unfortunately not spoken English or wanted to talk. So, A has no local friends. This is, I might note, part of the reason we're trying to pursue day care again this year. She's highly social and would only benefit at this point by being around children her age during the day. But I digress.

M started taking A to the Malden Library's Toddler Story Time and Sing-Along on most Tuesdays, each week. We thought that it would be great to get her out, get him out and maybe everyone involved could meet someone. M isn't a big socializer, but he's opened up a lot in the last year especially (he blames or thanks both myself and A depending on the day), so each time he's gone, I've been disappointed to hear that he wasn't really able to talk to the other parents there.

Today though...he stayed after while A played on with some of the kids and, to my amazement, approached a group of moms about a playgroup being organized. He was telling me this on the phone on my way home from work and finally blurted out, "Moms are sexist!"

He had been turned away from the playgroup because it was a mom's only affair. No boyz allowed.

I was stunned. Well...no, I tell a lie. I was really disappointed. I was disappointed because I suspect it took some doing for him to talk to them to begin with and because A lost out on a potential play date with other kids simply by virtue of her father being her caregiver. I was disappointed because there are 10,002 Mom Cafe type groups in this area, but apparently, local moms need to create more.

As if to reinforce my own thoughts on this subject, A chose tonight to be her Catastrophic Meltdown Over Everything Night. The one person who finally calmed her? Daddy.

Then I cried. I cried because her father is her go-to-guy when she needs comfort, but these women can't believe that men can be that person. I cried because I've had it up to here with the double standard we inflict on ourselves. I cried because it was just one of those nights where I felt totally impotent as a parent and a mother and a wife.

After that, I got angry again. I'd like to channel that anger into something productive though. I'm considering promoting the idea that an all inclusive playgroup, for all stay at home parents and working S/Os should be formed. Meetup.com is OK, but I want something better. Thoughts?

Boys and Girls

I couldn't help myself. I read this post yesterday in Child Caring from Barbara Meltz's Mailbag and the first thought I had was of Blur's song, "Boys and Girls"... "Girls who are boys/who like boys to be girls/who boys like their girls/who do girls like their boys..."

And I really wanted to scream at a couple of the comments that warn this woman that her 5-year old girl is definitely a transgendered, female-to-male child and that she should get her child to counseling NOW.

This kid is 5. When I was 5, I wanted to be a Coca-Cola truck driver, an apple tree (so sayeth my best childhood friend and I have no reson not to believe her), a spy, an astronaut, an actress aaaand...an infantry soldier or tank driver. I also, for the record, wanted to marry my best friend who was, and still is, quite female. You see, we decided that it would be the best way to ensure that we'd never be separated and we'd have the added bonus of being able to live together!

For the record, we came to this conclusion after our parents shattered out plans to dig tunnels connecting our houses so that we could visit whenever we wanted - and of course, stay up all night together. Marriage just seemed the natural solution after the work order request was rejected by both sets of Mom and Dad.

When I was 5, I hated dresses. I played equally with GI Joe and Barbie. I climbed trees, rode my bike, got grass stains on my knees, threw a football or Frisbee out back with my father who, by the way, assured me that I had a quarterback's throwing arm, make no mistake! I also taste tested leaves and mud, dug up and dissected worms (someone made the mistake of telling me that a worm cut in half would regenerate. I know, now, that my own personal hell after death will involve lots of worm halves somehow) and my hair was perpetually tangled and dirty.

I don't have any memory of clearly wanting to be a boy, anatomically especially, but I liked boy things and much preferred them to girl things. I still do - give me a gun and a motorcycle over a mani/pedi night and I'm happy as a pig in...well...yeah... But at age 5 or thereabouts, I never really gave it any thought. There was stuff I liked (tanks!) and stuff I hated (dresses!). Add to that the fact that neither of my parents encouraged or discouraged any particular gender "appropriate" pursuit of happiness at that age and what you had was a child with vague notions that she wasn't like other girls, but not really caring too much beyond that.

Left to my own devices then, I managed to get through a good chunk of my younger childhood before I really realized, mainly through my peers, that I was expected to act and dress a certain way that didn't necessarily jive with what I wanted. From that point forward, until I was almost 20, I have been accused by people of both sexes of being, in no particular order, a dyke, butch, a bitch (OK, I can agree with that one. Sometimes.) and a freak, along with some other, less printable insults.

A few years ago, someone told me that it was my short hair. If I let it grow, my problems would be resolved. Erm...no.

So that was me then - and me now. And somewhere out there, a woman is asking what to think and how to help her own little boy-girl. Which brings me into the archives over at Boston Moms to this piece talking about gender disappointment. It's a discussion about mothers who were devastated that their dreamt of, desired girl-babies turned out to be boys. One woman said that she still couldn't shop for friends who had girls because it makes her cry; another wrote a book, Altered Dreams: Living With Gender Disappointment.

I can say, with confidence, that I am truly grateful that I was not born a girl to any of these women - and that I am not their son(s) now. It makes me wonder how these women who wanted nothing more than little girls would deal with a little girl like the 5-year old who says she a boy...or with me when I was 5...or like my own dirt eatin', worm lovin', mud sittin; little girl. Would they treat such a little girl as if she were broken? Would they force her in to the little girl dreams that they had for her, all pink and lace or empowerment and hearing womyn roar?

I love both of my parents in a way that I can't even truly articulate for letting me be a boy and a girl and a tree and a soldier. And I love M for letting our own daughter just be who she is, not what she is. I have pictures of her sitting in a mud hole, waving a worm around. In the next picture, it's two worms because, well, when you wave a worm vigorously enough, it tends to er...ahem...break. Of course, to her, it only meant that she now had TWO WORMS!!! I look at those pictures, and the shots of her pet slug that she loved and played with and tried to give night night kisses to for a week before we released it back in to the dirt, and I wonder who - and what - she will decide to be when she grows up.

I don't want someone on either side of the fence telling her that she's broken. I don't want her to be forced to accept herself in any other way but the way she is. If she turns out to be a girl amongst girls, hopefully I'll get some good makeup tips. If she goes the other way, you'll see us on the trails together someday.

On a personal note, I learned, eventually, to walk and love the blurry line between genders (although my ex-husband used to accuse me, fairly regularly, of being a "total guy"). I have no desire to swap out my body for a man's, nor do I care in the least to be a woman as we're expected to be, whether pliant and demure, frilly and lace or feminist, empowered and in love with our vagina. Oh, sure, I toe the line of femininity and shave and pluck and wax and rearrange, but I hate it. Whenever I do it, I shake my mental fist at the sky and curse the accepted beauty standards for women. You can see it too. In pictures of me, the truest smile is when I'm filthy dirty, covered in cammo paint and mud and in my uniform.

Nevertheless, I love the boy-girl, girl-boy that I am. More than that, I love watching all babies and toddlers as they play, freely and unfettered, totally unaware that someday, their biological sex will impart accepted norms and standards unto them that may not be at all in line with how they really feel or are - as people.

As Blur sang at the end, "Always should be someone you really love...."

Teaching Our Daughters Gender Equality or Just Being Obstinate?

I love Mystery Memberships, don’t you? By that, I mean, I love it when I get e-mails welcoming me to organizations that I don’t recall joining…especially organizations that I wouldn’t join if I were asked to. Has this ever happened to you? Anyone? Bueller? No? Well, I’ll be.


It happened to me just this very morning. There it was, in my inbox, large as life…”Welcome, Phe! And thank you for joining She Serves – the connecting point for women of the VFW.” Um, huh? It’s true, I’m a member of the VFW. And it’s also true that I am a full-fledged member which means that the Veterans of Foreign Wars recognizes my service in a combat zone for a given period of time. But I don’t remember joining a sub-set of this organization exclusively for girls, no boys allowed.

I suspect that I know who might have signed me up for this – and if my suspicions are correct, I know that it was done with the best of intentions (I am, after all, my posts ONLY female member and have been for years), but you know what’s so often said about that road to hell and its paving stones…

So now, I have a dilemma. You see, I have a personal thing against all girls clubs, especially in the military. It stems from a lot of things, even some things that happened long before I ever enlisted. But there it is. It’s My Thing. For starters, I feel that the wearing o’ the uniform negates gender and that uniform wearers should be (and, in my world, are) judged on skill set and ability alone. Lord knows, the uniform wears me like a sack anyway no matter how fit or trim I may be (or not), so it’s not a stretch to say, “Is that a male or a female under all that gear?” Really though, who cares? I am here, with you, now. I’ve met and served alongside an equal number of men and women that have turned out to be useless – and another equal number of both that I wouldn’t trade for all of the tea in China. Er…if I drank Chinese Tea, anyway.

I have found that integrating into the unit and bringing my unique skill set has served me far better than integrating into the unit and bringing my ovaries, breasts and a large helping of grrrl-power ever could. In doing so, I have also learned that the issues that may affect me actually affect all of us – that I am not a Special Snowflake by virtue of simply being myself or a woman. Yet, She Serves promises to provide me with friendships forged out of the metals of issues that are unique to me as a woman, suffered uniquely by other women – and done in the comfort of an environment I’ll find nowhere else. Because I’m a woman.

Let me make this clear: My experience was unique because of the time (immediately post-9/11) and the place and the mission I served. Any issues I may have had have long since been resolved thanks, in large part, to the camaraderie of the men and women I served alongside and the men of my VFW post who, afterwards, welcomed me with open arms and gave me a safe place to be. Should I deploy in the future I have no doubt that experience will prove equally as unique and present me with a new, unique set of issues – or maybe not – brought about by the experience itself, not my womanhood.

As you may be able to tell by now, I have little love of any group of people who claim Special Snowflake status simply by virtue of a few shared squishy bits of anatomy - or anything else for that matter.

But…BUT…I respect what they’re doing. I know that I am a minority among women when I deride such things. I know that many women haven’t had the same positive experiences I have upon return from their operations – for a variety of reasons. For that reason, I hope that this “sisterhood” serves those women well and supports them to the fullest although I wonder what is so different about them and their experiences that they can’t go through with all of their comrades in arms, regardless of gender…those who shared the experiences with them.

Now, I wonder how my attitude towards such things will affect my daughter down the line, once she realizes what being a “she” actually means. I already know that she’s going to have a different view of life than most of her peers. For one thing, unlike her little baby friends, when she falls down and hurts herself, her first instinct is to run past me, crying for “Dada” to tell him, through her tears, that she went, “Plop!” (NOTE: “plop” is her all purpose word for, “oops, I fell, tee hee” – for those inconsequential, non-pain causing falls; “I fell and it hurts!” - for the falls that cause pain; and of course, “Toss me on the pillows again it’ssomuchfun!!!”) I’ve noticed that most of the kids we know around her age tend to steer themselves towards their moms when they want comfort but usually, even if I get to her first, she’ll squirm away from me to go to her father.

There’s one gender role re-defined right off the bat. Dad is the primary care giver and therefore, the primary source of comfort.

Not being well versed myself in the need or desire for strictly female companionship, I wouldn’t even know how to begin explaining this Sisterhood concept to her or why I don’t like it on a personal level. My friends have been an equal mix of male and female over the years, friends because of the character and quality they embody. I’ve never done the “girls night out” thing and even shopping trips end up being mixed gender affairs.

I won’t say that I’ve never felt discriminated against because of my gender, but as someone whose life motto has been, “Walk softly and carry an H&K MP5 (Silenced)”, I’ve found that those who are naysayers of me, by virtue of my reproductive system, tend to be in the minority and, once they see what it is I can actually do, it’s simply not an issue. If it continues to be for them, they end of being of little to no consequence in my life and have yet to hold me back. Gnats that can be brushed aside.

These thoughts of mine are contrary to a great deal of what my fellow females of similar age and station believe and what our daughter is probably going to learn outside the home. I trust (read: hope against hope) that somehow, we’ll do well enough by her in the end to do what my parents managed to do (without apparently trying - gender was never even discussed as being a hindrance or something special) – raise a confident woman who only ever realized that she was supposed to be a Special Snowflake because of her gender when she left the home and was so informed by Outside Influences. I credit the strong maternal and matriarchal influences in my family for that.

In the meantime, I think I’ll just continue to resolve issues that are unique to myself, as a veteran, with all of the veterans who have shared experiences with me, regardless of how they look or whether or not they have a Tab A or a Slot B in their pants. If you were there with me, you know that didn’t matter then. Why should it suddenly matter now?

I suppose the other message I would hope our daughter eventually leaves home with is this: Don’t bloody well sign someone up for something without asking them how they feel about it beforehand. It’ll save someone a lot of trouble later when they try to tactfully explain that, eh heh, see, they don’t really want to be part of this and sorry, it’s just not their thing, er…erm…butgoodluckwithit, OK?

Rest assured, the next time I’m down at the post, someone’s getting the pleasure of having a nice little Sergeantly chat with me on that very subject.

What about you? Do you think that your gender has a prominent and direct impact on your experiences? Are you more comfortable in a same-gender setting? How do you talk about gender issues to your young kids?