Since the birth of my two daughters, I've been very aware of the socialized genderization of kids. I do think there is something besides anatomy that makes girls girls, and boys boys – something powerful and important. But it is all the extra stuff that worries me; the stuff that makes boys feel ashamed when they want to express emotion and the stuff that makes girls think they cannot achieve something. It is the same stuff that for generations and across the globe let men get paid more than women, made sons more desirable than daughters, and in general has given us a messed-up male dominated world. So I'm aware, for example, when Cyra (my daughter) is given a pencil with butterflies and Kian (her male cousin) is given a pencil with race cars. The fate of the world rests in the giving of pencils, and I alone seem to notice.
Cyra and Kian are very close in age, so watching them has been informative. They are like lab rats for my experiments on the socialized genderization of kids. Cute little lab rats. Kian was potty trained first, and Cyra watched in envy as he peed and pooped like a big kid. After she was potty trained too, Cyra was upset when we told her that she could not stand in front of the toilet and pee like Kian did. It just didn't work that way, but I loved that she assumed she could. And I love when we tell them to pick a DVD to watch and Kian always yells "I want to watch My Little Ponies" because there is no reason he shouldn't like such adorable little magic creatures. I love coming home from work and being told that throughout the day Cyra would pick up her bag and say, "Bye mom, I'm going to work." I love that for several months Kian's favorite pants were a pair of pastel orange ones that someone bought for Cyra but were too big.
Unfortunately, the experiment of Cyra and Kian's discovery of gender is impossible to control; there are forces of gender oppression that bare down on them relentlessly. And in my experience so far, the biggest culprit of force-fed genderization, is a grand parent. They seem so nice and docile, with their graying hair and generous eyes. But in practice they seem hell-bent on ensuring that our kids' world is every bit as male-dominated and messed up as their own. The tactics they employ could not be more insidious, gifts for holidays and birthdays and for nothing at all. Gifts that if I refuse, turn me, the hero, into the bad guy, a result the grandparents would love. But I won't play so easily into their wrinkly little hands. Instead, I choose the much more subtle approach of making snide and sarcastic comments about the "gifts" that make everyone feel uncomfortable.
"Here Cyra, I brought you a present" my mother in law said, trying to hold back the cackle.
"Yea!” said Cyra, "a baby."
"Yea" I said, "a blonde haired, blue eyed doll, dressed in pink from head to toe."
My mother in law explained, "the baby talks, and tells you when it is hungry, when it needs its diaper changed, and when it wants its blanket".
"Oh" said Cyra.
"Oh" I said, "so Cyra can learn how to take care of kids because that is all women are good for."
"Thank you grandma" said Cyra, and she cradled her little pink baby.
"Thanks grandma," I said, "I was afraid I was going to have to put this girl through college, but this baby should give her all the skills necessary for a successful life."
"Mama, I'm hungry mama,” said the pink doll, and Cyra put the plastic bottle to the plastic lips and bounced the baby like I do her little sister. The baby played a recorded drinking sound. My mother in law won the battle, but she would not win the war; I love my daughter too much to just surrender her to the shackles of gender oppression.
Cyra celebrated a birthday some time later, and my in-laws showed up with a quiver of new attacks on my daughter’s choice and destiny. There were the butterfly sandals, and pink outfits, a bottle of princess bubble bath and a set of dress-up high-heeled shoes. It was an all out assault, but I fearlessly countered each gift with a quip that was sure to simultaneously 1 - cause my daughter to question the assumptions upon which the gifts were based, 2 - inform my in-laws that I would not surrender my daughters their designs, and 3 - make everyone uncomfortable. I was flawless, but battling thousands of year’s gender oppression at a 2-year-old birthday party is no easy task. And, admittedly, I was not prepared for their final "gift".
Cyra unwrapped the box, and pulled out a fluffy battery powered hot pink puppy. The in-laws were more tactical than I thought. I could take the label of the princess bubble bath, I knew Cyra wouldn't really like the high-heeled shoes, and I could buy her other colored clothes to dilute the pink outfits. They must have known all this too. But what would I do about this puppy? It walked and moved its head up and down to create a "Yap!"; Cyra loved it. Thankfully so did Kian, but his salvation was not my worry. This toy was too cute, and too pink, and my in-laws must have known it was good one, because they looked at me victoriously as Cyra and Kian fought over whose turn it was to play with the hot pink puppy.
"What, they didn't have any brown dogs?" I quipped. It was a lame retort; no assumptions were questioned and no one was uncomfortable. I was losing my daughter to a puppy. A hot pink puppy that walked and yapped -- and was killing my daughter. I would have preferred if it breathed fire and had broken glass for fur. At least then others could see the danger that I saw, visions of Cyra dressed up like Paris Hilton flashed in my mind, but I was told to relax and we all watched Cyra forge the chains of her own bondage, one yap at a time.
I think I hated that puppy so much because it was a landmark blow. Gender oppression had sunk roots into my daughter and I knew it would never be completely gone after that. I mistreated the puppy every chance I got. I'd kick it when no one was looking, often extracting a little "Yap!" I pushed it down the stairs once. But Cyra still kept playing with it. The batteries soon ran out and were replaced. The hot pink puppy stopped walking a short time later, but it would still yap if you shook the body and made its head bob up and down. Cyra's interest waned, but the damage was done, and I still hated the puppy.
Cyra really hadn't been in to the puppy for a while, but a few months ago her interest in the hot pink puppy re-surfaced for a few days. She and I were playing on the ground in the living room and she brought the puppy over to play. I glared at that little devil toy, remembering all it represented and how much I hated it.
"Daddy, touch the puppy" Cyra said. She might as well have asked me to touch a hot coal with my lips, but I placed my hand on the dog’s head.
"Daddy, kiss the puppy" She said.
"No" I said. How quickly Cyra had succumbed to the traps and bondage laid out for her. Perhaps I overestimated her desire to be free; I'd have to try harder with my younger daughter.
"Daddy, kiss the puppy!" Cyra ordered again.
"Over my dead body" I replied.
"Daddy KISS THE PUPPY" She began to yell, and pushed the hot pink fur ball into my face. I didn't have the energy to explain to her, again, about the systems of oppression that she lived in and the careful path to freedom, so I faked a kiss in the direction of the puppy, just to get her off my back.
"Good" She said, and left the puppy in my hands.
It was in my hands, and the puppy was staring at me, with a devilish little grin. Teasing me, taunting me. "I won" it seemed to say with those glass eyes. I gave it a shake, it's head bobbed, and it yapped. I shook it again, a little harder, and it yapped louder, and louder.
"You are laughing at me, aren't you, hot pink puppy?" I shook it harder.
"Yap yap yap!" "You're sucker," it seemed to say, "and your daughters are suckers too."
I held it's body in one hand, and it's head in the other, forcing it's head to shake back and forth harder, every time eliciting a louder and louder yap.
"Yap YAP YAP!!"
Cyra looked at me blankly, was she confused? Was she scared? No, I was sure she understood the intense struggle that was happening right before her eyes. Her father was battling all the forces that want her to fail and to be second-class, embodied in a hot pink puppy. I would win, I knew it!
I shook and shook that puppy and began to feel my daughter’s spirit, on the verge of freedom, pleading me not to stop. The puppy’s yaps became even louder and more desperate. No longer did it mock me, but now begged for life. That devilish puppy even began to promise that it would leave Cyra and my family alone, and spare them the shackles of gender oppression.
But that puppy was a liar. It could not live. And in a rush of adrenaline that comes from protecting one's family, and with a furious and final yap, I broke that puppy's little neck.
I was sweating and panting. Exhausted after slaying the dragon that would destroy my daughters. I laid the puppy on the ground, it's head barely attached to the body by a tuft of hot pink fur. Mehrsa must have heard the commotion and then the sudden silence and walked in the living room.
"What happened?" She asked. I wondered where I should begin the explanation? Perhaps with my super-human intellect, or a discussion of forced genderization?
"Daddy broked my puppy!"
"What did you do?" demanded Mehrsa.
"Uh..." I stammered, my brain muddled by the cries of my daughter and the clinking of the chains that want to bind her. "It was pink,” I finally said.
Cyra began to sob, "Daddy shake and shake and shake him. My puppy's head is broked. Daddy broked my puppy."
Cyra looked at me with eyes of betrayal. Mehrsa looked at me like I was a nut.
"I…I didn't like that puppy" I said, as they left me sitting in the living room, in a pile of my own confusion and shame.
Luckily Mehrsa is pretty smart too, and remembered the scene in Dumb and Dumber when Lloyd sold Billy the blind kid his dead bird. She got a roll of tape and she and Cyra did a pretty good job of reattaching the hot pink puppy's head.
Cyra walked back over to me in the living room, "Look dad, I fix the puppy!"
Her grief had changed completely to smiles. Big beautiful smiles in the way only Cyra can smile, and it dawned on me that in the end my daughters were probably less likely to be oppressed by pink toys and princess bubble bath, than a dad who was taunted by and demonstrated rage toward their a hot pink puppy. Cyra liked the puppy, and if I liked Cyra, I would have to get over it.
"Daddy, do you love the puppy?" She asked.
"Yes," I said. "I love my Cyra."
1 comment:
Post a Comment