alicat

this post is so them:

“One mother who insisted on supplying her daughter with tools rather than dolls finally gave up when she discovered the child undressing a hammer and singing it to sleep. ‘It must be hormonal,’ was the mother’s explanation. At least until someone asked who had been putting her daughter to bed.”

Parents should try their best to raise their children in a gender-neutral way! but it’s not going to make a dent to counter outside socialization unless the parents’ own behavior matches their words, and in most cases that’s not how it is. Children generalize their parents’ behaviors to represent what men and women are “like”. But a mother saying, “women don’t need to wear makeup” while herself wearing makeup isn’t going to convince her children that women don’t need to wear makeup, for example.

There was a study done where children were interviewed whose parents had evaluated themselves as encouraging their children to play with “opposite-gendered” toys, but despite their parents words, the children still played with “same-gendered” toys and believed their parents would have a problem with them playing with “opposite-gendered” toys (Freeman 2007). They know. Children are getting sooooo many more messages than their parents’ words.

Even if parents do everything right in this regard, if they both create a gender-neutral environment in the home and model gender-neutral behaviors themselves, it’s still only going to make up a small part of their children’s socialization. We are undermined constantly by children’s media, their peers, their teachers, other family members, literally the random people at the grocery store who comment on my son’s toenail polish! Gender is enforced everywhere. It’s inescapable in our society.

Even when it’s not enforced by being specifically instructed or punished, gender is commented on! It’s noted! And even that matters. There’s another very famous study where an arbitrary role system was created to see if we can artificially model gender: preschoolers were randomly assigned to a Blue group or a Red group for a three-week period. They wore t-shirts to match their group. In one classroom, that’s all they did, it wasn’t mentioned again once they put on their t shirt. But in the other classroom, the color groups were used constantly- children had to line up according to their color, they had their cubbies decorated in blue or red, they were referred to by those labels (“good morning, Blues and Reds!”). And this grouping for three weeks was enough to change children’s views in the room where the groups were emphasized- the children grouped themselves into playgroups according to color, they wanted to play with toys they were told other Reds or Blues liked !! (this is Bern 1983 btw) And is this not how gender is treated in our society? Children are color-coded, their toys are color-coded, the fact that they are a boy or a girl is commented on CONSTANTLY, EVERYWHERE. Children come to the conclusion that there is something fundamentally different about boys and girls because so much emphasis is put on distinguishing them. It’s all so arbitrary! We don’t need gender! Like it would be laughable that our society is so artificially constructed if it weren’t so goddamn harmful

We did meet. Nineteen years ago. I was 8, you were 9. Outside the temple. The Wong boys were taunting me about my parents’ divorce. You beat the crap out of them. You were wearing a Kristy McNichol t-shirt, tan cords and a pageboy. You spilled your mom’s groceries. We scooped them into a bag. And then I kissed you…on the nose. And you ran.

I’ve talked about Hasan’s open misogyny before but no, it’s actually still not talked about enough that arguably the internet’s biggest leftist “influencer” openly dismisses misogyny and hates women. His attitude towards women alone should have gotten him ostracized from leftist spaces—spaces where people are regularly kicked out for using the wrong terminology or not going along with ridiculous, maximalist positions—but this is what happens when men on the left say feminism is, at best, a distraction from class politics, and at worst, the whining of bitch white Karens.