Damn, but they teach us to police ourselves

I got this article from a link at Female Impersonator, and was horrified both at the article itself and at the abuse heaped upon the writer.

For those who don't have the time to read it, it's about how the author was horrified when she found out that her third child was a girl, because girls are complicated and messy and whiny and spoiled and like pink frilly things and generally suck. It's one of those things that is absolutely horrifying to read both because this child was unwanted solely because of her chromosome set (and what society has to say about it) and because said child will grow up someday, and fucking CNN published this, so she will probably end up reading it. It was unconscionable that this was written, and even moreso that it was published.

However, in reading it, I saw a victim. I saw a woman who had been coddled into thinking that, because she wasn't a "normal" girl, she was special enough to be cool like the guys just so long as she directed her cool-like-a-guy-ishness towards mocking, you know, her gender, instead of questioning *why the hell it is that guys are so much higher on the totem pole in the first place*. And she's worried about having a girl because that lowers her status there, because her daughter might just be feminine, and then she would have to be careful about being an asshole guy and scorning things that her daughter actually cares about.

I kind of see myself there, and I'm really sorry, because it looks like she might take this and teach the same thing to her daughter, even like Athena, who uses her brilliance and cleverness at war to uphold the patriarchal system on Olympus and in the world. It's a system where females are only useful if they either are a Proper Woman or One Of The Guys - if they are neither, they are Outside and only deserve derision.

It's heartbreaking. I know what it's like to be one of the guys, until you start pointing out that, hey, guys, you're kind of assholes. Then, all of a sudden, even though you're still using the same wit, the same intelligence, the same tone you always did, you are a hysterical bitch who can't take a joke.

I just had a friend, wonderful, progressive, smart, open-minded friend, of several years, from Xanga, unfriend me on Facebook because he made a comment on a Youtube video he posted that "this society has turned our women into vapid, drunken whores." I called him out on it, hard, said that the woman on the video (who was acting, well, drunken and overtly sexual) was doing what women are oftentimes told is cool to get male attention, that he was acting as if women's actions are always up for masculine approval (and that she apparently deserved his scorn since she was not satisfying *his* standards), and that what women do with their bodies, whether it's drinking, having sex, or whatever, is none of his godsdamned business, to approve or disapprove of. That was not his call to make, and these blanket statements (especially the patriarchal "our women" - what the fuck?!) that judged women's worth based on their conformity to his idea of what women should be (what? all just like him? nonsexual? sober? enlightened? What?) would have been bad enough from just some random asshole, but that, from him, they were especially disappointing because he should know better.

And he promptly unfriended me and chastised me on my wall, where we'd argued together on so many things - against torture, against the war, against suppression of gay rights, against so many things.

You can't even tell the progressive guys that women are people without them turning roundly on you to say, "You bitches can't take a damn joke! To hell with you!"

Yeah, I can understand where this lady's coming from, and it makes me sad for women, because damn, we have been trained to police ourselves far better than men can. I can understand why she is worried that she will have a feminine (re: less than human) daughter. I was a little worried about the same thing, too, when I found out I was having a girl. I've always, always had honorary guy status, and it's only been in the past year or so that I've taken that status out for a ride to see about convincing those guys who think I'm so cool that women are people, too, even if they aren't hot and/or one of the guys. It's gone poorly. However, it's worth it, because, rather than worry about having a daughter because of what she might be, I'd rather work to create a society where she can be whatever she is - feminine, boyish, genderqueer, straight, gay, bi, what-the-fuck-ever, because, whatever you're pregnant with, that is a person you are bringing into the world, first and foremost, and it's far more important to create an environment where they are welcome rather than force them to conform to whatever you expect.

By the by, my daughter, at two, shows many signs of being just like me - what I used to call tomboy princess, but would prefer to call tomboy femme at this point, because, for real, out of every image we present to our daughters in society, fuck princesses. She loves to dress up as a princess, and I tell her that she's a goddess pretending to be a princess, so, really, it's fun, but it's a downgrade. I like pink a lot more now. And she can be whatever the hell she wants to be when she's older, and right now she can rock it with her pretty-dress-and-boy-sandals wearing, Batman-face-painted self. She's fucking beautiful, and would be no matter what she is.


I hope this woman has come to the same realization herself.