I am in awe of my daughter. Though I came through a typical fifties childhood and then stepped into a sixties consciousness raising women's group, my daughter has from the get-go been herself. We live in a gender-specific world: girls are encouraged to demurely shrink from adventure and risk, be quiet and polite; boys are encouraged to be adventurous, loud, athletic and to be protective of girls.
I had my daughter at forty-two and believed her dad and I could bring her up in an “open” manner. From the moment of conception I dearly wanted a girl. I wanted to pass on my journals, my growing-up-female experiences, my love of women's literature. When at the moment of her arrival her dad held her up and said, “It's a girl...I think,” little did I know this small being would be the one to redefine for her parents the meaning of that word “girl.”
Today it's called gender neutral parenting. Logging onto the Internet, I find scores of blogs and articles trying to assist socially aware, determined parents in raising their boys and girls beyond the stereotypes. But when we brought our baby home in 1989, all we knew was we wanted her not to be defined by gender. While dressed in blue, I held her in my arms as we entered a concert hall elevator. “Oh what an adorable boy,” the woman on my left cooed. As I dressed my toddler in brown overalls, I realize now, I was simply shifting her to the “other gender.”
Dress has been notoriously gender specific. As a preschooler, my daughter only wanted to wear dresses and tights. She refused jeans until one day I said, “These will be easier to play on the playground with.” Once in pants, my daughter has rarely turned back.
With toys and television, social media and peers spurting their continual influence, we weren't certain how to begin raising a daughter. We had dolls, stuffed animals, cars and trains; we had music, stories and time for jungle gyms and hiking. Our daughter took ballet classes and rock climbing; she was on soccer teams and took art classes.
I remember one summer when we had gotten our daughter involved in Ukrainian folk dancing. She came to me one practice and asked, “Why do the boys get to do the fun things like jumping and kicking?” She had noticed the girls were twirling and turning and not moving a whole lot. If her mother were braver she would have asked for kicking and jumping privileges for the girls. But this would have broken with a cultural tradition.
As new parents we made concessions. We wanted our child to fit in. But soon we learned to see our daughter simply as who she was. Having been raised in an extremely gender specific world, I fell for some of the stereotypes: I made frilly dresses for Christmas and dollhouse dolls for the playroom. I loved when she wanted longer hair and played dress up with jewelry and scarves. But I also loved when the boys visiting our house wore dresses too, played with her dollhouse and had longer hair. What became important was taking away the limitations for either gender. Unconsciously I found myself expanding the definitions of love and relationships. Around four my daughter asked me about love. “What does it mean to love someone, Mommy?” Without hesitation the following words poured out of my mouth: “To love means you really care about someone and you want to be with them. You can grow up and love a man like I have with your daddy or you can grow up and love a woman.” At the time this answer seemed so natural. Little did I know how appropriate it would turn out to be. Shortly before my daughter's fourteenth birthday, she sat me down on our couch and told me, “Mom, I think I am a Lesbian.” Again without skipping a beat I replied, “You've chosen the right parents.”
My daughter's “Queer-Identification” has pushed me to the next level of gender understanding. She currently prefers the word Queer over Lesbian but ideally would like no label. She has pointed out to me on several occasions that she is more than her sexuality. Her so openly and stubbornly being who she is, has encouraged her father and me to be who we are.
Her father does the cooking and grocery shopping; I do the gardening and schedule organizing. He does maintenance. I do cleaning. It's a mish-mash, sometimes fitting the gender stereotype, sometimes not. Sharing how gender specific her parents' upbringings were also gives our daughter perspective and can be a positive teaching tool: I had to wear skirts to high school and the vice principal made girls kneel down in the hallway to assure these skirts were the appropriate length; her dad wanted to participate in high school team sports but he didn't have the “masculine skills” and body image.
Joining PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Intersex and Transgenders) assisted me further with my own “growing up process.” Immediately I met Annie and Anita, who have been partners for over twenty-five years; then I got to know Robert and Scott, who also have been together nearly thirty years. Slowly I began to see that my Queer daughter could like her heterosexual classmates have it all: love, marriage and family. As a PFLAG mother I have come to understand that the LGBITQ desire for marriage equality encourages all of us to break free from the confining masculine/feminine paradigm. How lovely no matter what our sexual orientation to be able to dress as we please, act as we please, simply love as we please.
I am in awe of my daughter. She has come through being teased, called a boy and turned away from the girls' bathroom by her elementary school peers because she had short hair. She wanted dearly to be a boy, not only because in our society boys have privileges, but also because her attraction to girls would be deemed “normal.” Her interest in women's strength and independence, her non-interest in “dumbing down” or “dressing to impress” have made her feel eccentric. In high school she refused to be closeted allowing herself to appear in a story in our daily newspaper with her then-girlfriend.
We sit around the kitchen table and my daughter's face beams with the bright confidence of knowing and loving who she is, as she entertains her parents with further adventures from her recent high school camping trip. She has taught her parents more than she will ever know about the meaning of gender. “Gender is overrated,” she once quipped to me.
As parents we have struggled to push the handy girl/boy labels aside. If I could rewind the tape and go back to the moment of this daughter's birth, I would love to hear my husband say, “It's a remarkable human being.!”
© 2012
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