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| Lets play spot the girl child! |
I don’t really remember being
aware of being different from my brothers until I started school. Up until that
point, we played with the same toys, my brother and I wore the same matching
skirt and pant outfits, to ensure everyone else we were twins and I was the
girl one, and he was the boy one. Gender was the first marker I had after my
own name and “twin”. Everyone always told me how awful it must be for me,
having only brothers, being the lone girl in a pack of hellions. They didn’t
realize I didn’t conform to my gender expectations, and ruled my brothers’
lives with a lot of rough housing and carefully plotted schemes. I don’t think
my parents fully understood the downside of having a child with a wild
imagination until it was years too late to “forget” me at Ross.
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| 1995, or the year I convinced Andrew this guy was living in the bathroom. Oops. |
In Candace West and Don H.
Zimmermann’s “Doing Gender” delves into the world of gender norms and how they
align with sex, and sex category (the way one asserts a display of masculine or
feminine. “Sex categories suppose sex, but are not necessarily determined by
it.” I was born biologically female, and at an early age there are photos where
I’m dressed up in frilly pastel dresses. My father still reminisces about the
bow they used to Velcro to my head so they could tell my brother and I apart. By
the time I could dress myself, I was completely over dresses; they were
impractical, allowed cold air in, and I hated tights with a passion. It’s hard
to pilot the Millennium Falcon in a Daisy Kingdom dress. School changed
everything.
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| The most violent picture of a little girl I could find. Really. |
When I was 4, my brother and I
were in the same preschool. I was the dominant twin, a common theme in having
twins; one is always the dominant, bossy, and protective one. My parents feared
he’d never fend for himself, if I was always taking care of him. There was a
boy, the resident bully in school, Keith, who made fun of my brother for
playing with me, because I was a girl. He thought it said something about my
brother for lowering himself to play with me. I didn’t understand why this was
bad. All I understood was that Keith terrorized my brother, and thought I was
beneath him. I did what any rational, angry four year old would, and punched
Keith in the face. A recent study in the Department of Psychology at the
University of California found that while there are many studies done on
“conduct problems” with children, most studies fixate on little boys, so
relatively little is known about girls in comparison. “Compared to boys, who
exhibit higher rates of overt conduct problems (e.g., physical aggression and
bullying), girls are more prone to relational aggression and covert conduct
problems (e.g., spreading rumors, lying) which may differ in antecedents,
correlates, and outcomes… Longitudinal studies suggest that significant sex
differences in the rate and severity of conduct problems emerge around age 4,
when conduct problems in girls decline wheras conduct problems in boys increase
or show little change.” Time and time again, girls are encouraged from a young
age to internalize issues, while violence is encouraged in young boys, but
often it is attributed to a difference in sex instead of the way we are
socialized as children. My parents chose to combat my unladylike conduct with more
girly clothing, and babydolls, leaving me to bitterly covet denim jeans and a
Micromachines City Bus.
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| It opens up to be a WHOLE CITY and it should have been mine! |
Paige Schilt’s Stilettos, Sissy Boys, and the Limits of
Gender Neutral Parenting, Schilt states that to allow real gender
exploration, there needs to be more done than just allowing children to play
with “opposite gender” toys. Surrounding children with people who stimulate
their minds, and engage them in questions and conversations teaches them about
the many, many options they have to explore. “If we provide the tools, young
children are quite capable of sussing out inequalities and analyzing gendered
messages,” writes Schilt. The problem lies within our institutions reinforcing
differences as norms, determined by whatever genitals it can be safely assumed
exist in our pants. As girls are punished for scuffles, and boys are told not
to cry over hurt feelings, there is a constant barrage of information about
faillling into gender codes, to avoid humiliation and bullying. Around the time
I entered the school system, my mother felt it best we learn about prejudice
and class as well.
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| Overt racism I understood, but covert didn't come til years later. |
I didn’t learn what racism was for
a few years within the school system. As a spindly white girl in a white
community myself, I hadn’t ever been aware of racial differences. Few people I
knew had varying skin colors, and my biggest grasp of this was switching out
crayons for the different portraits I skillfully crafted. My mother was always
a reader, and sat us down one day to teach us another sneaky lesson using the
written word, about a little girl named Ruby Bridges. That was the first time I
knew anyone could be mean over another person’s skin color. I thought prejudice
was something in storybooks, that we’d already overcome, and in whatever part of
Vancouver where black people lived, I hoped no one was mean to them there. I
didn’t realize how privileged and sheltered things were until I was in fourth
grade, and I heard my friends talking about black people like they were
unicorns, wishing they could grow up and be black too, because everyone they
saw who was black could sing, dance, play basketball, and was probably on TV, too.
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| Evidently the suburbians I knew were not alone. |
“On average, children watch 3-5 hours of
television per day. Therefore, television has often been referred to as a
“window on the world”… While older children and adults are more skeptical about
the media content, young children are likely to view media content as a glimpse
of reality, and thus they are more likely to be influenced by it.” (Vittrup,
2011).
It’s not so unbelievable to think I might have developed how
I saw people of color as different. I didn’t consciously realize until recently
that I latched on to children of color at my mother’s church, thinking already
they were infinitely cooler than I could ever hope to be. I learned to be white
by following the plethora of examples set before me, on the 73% of television
on air, in my home and family, and within the school and church institutions I
spent most of my formative years in. When I was teased for having almond,
“asian” eyes (or “chink eyes” as someone so lovingly bestowed upon me), my
mother spent years telling me if I just wore silver or gray eyeshadow that they would appear
bigger and rounder. I know how to be white because not being white has been
marketed to me as something to avoid, or something to play up to look more
“exotic” when I was modeling. It’s never enough to just be, if you don’t fall into
an obvious category.
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| Nostalgia at its most honest. |
Christianity and my mother taught
me about class. My father and mother were in their forties when they were
raising myself and the misfit group of children that constantly inhabited our
house. There are very few consecutive years where I don’t remember having some
kind of babysitting/parents-on-drugs/parent-sick sibling in my midst. My father
was starting his own business as an optometrist, and my mother’s shopping
habits meant a lot of coupon clipping and off-brand products, but until I was a
teenager I never knew what it was like to worry about food or shelter. My
grandmother helped my parents put us through a Christian school with children
on $80/week allowances, while I picked weeds in my parents’ back yard for a
penny per weed. I thought my $13.00 was going to buy me a Barbie, or possibly a
Mach 1 Mustang. My mother sent me
to school with extra school supplies we had picked out for the little boy who
came to school in the same holy t-shirt several days a week. I spent
my sixth grade year raising money for girls in brothels. But I never learned
about what any of that meant. I knew I didn’t wear designer brands so I wasn’t
rich, but my clothes were clean, so I wasn’t poor. My mother grew
up with cardboard in her shoes, and raised me to be so overly caring for
everyone else that I ignored warning signs on dangerous people who appeared to “just
be poor and misunderstood.” Christianity taught me that we are all equal, but
along the same lines as Animal Farm, some are more equal than other. Money
ultimately became the difference between suspension and a stern talking to with
new scoreboards in the gym. Money broke up the class system in 5th
grade, with girls and boys who never wore the same article of clothing twice
leading the system.
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| And more inclined to clothesline you in the throat, FYI. |
I learned to be a woman through the
class system, taking care of everyone ahead of myself. I had crippling social
anxiety as a result, and still cringe myself to sleep at night over
interactions that don’t result in me “doing enough” for other people. Class is
something that seems to be learned in tandem with gender. Girls who dominated
everyone in school had the wealthiest parents, and were listened to over boys
who came from average income backgrounds, in my experience. Privilege falls
onto a scale for master status, almost creating a point system to put everyone
in their respective groups in relation to the straight, able bodied, middle to
upper class, cis, white male. In a study, Adolescent
Health and Harassment Based on Discriminatory Bias, Brian W. Koenig et. al.
analyze a study that combines factors such as race/ethnicity, sexual
orientation, religion, and disabilities, as opposed to “general harassment.”
The study matched the findings of the CDC, that those were bullied with a bias
against who they are were more
likely to be depressed, more likely to be victims of past violence, and were
twice as likely to have contemplated or attempted to commit suicide (Koenig,
2012).
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| Who cares?! |
In conclusion, I’ve learned more
about gender, race, sexuality, and class in the last five weeks than what I’d
imagined I would. Even writing this paper, I’ve learned more about myself than
I thought I could. The critical knowledge of how to identify and “take pleasure
in gender” as Paige Schilt wrote, while still keeping the spectrum of gender
open is invaluable, and a constant learning process. I learned to be a woman
through the constant policing, I learned to be white through constant policing,
and I learned class under the guise of caring for others. I learned sexuality
through years of repression. Years of being told it was a disease to not be
straight, that it was something you catch from z100, from other queer people,
it wasn’t something I could have been born with. Heather Matarazzo’s As We Are mirrors my own experience with
coming to terms with my sexuality. It took meeting one queer, sex-positive person
to know that all the propaganda I’d heard couldn’t be true. Being 15 years old
and realizing that crush on Princess Jasmine I was still slightly harboring
wasn’t the end of my life was a huge realization that took years to process. As I’ve been in a closet, very out of a closet, and
in between, I’ve learned to shut the closet, walk out of the room, and just be.
It’s tempting sometimes to go back and hide; it’s easier to take the path of
least resistance. Family doesn’t pressure you to come out as gay on a regular
basis, and if my sexuality is already a topic of conversation men feel entitled to, it’s
more so as a queer woman. But the
path of least resistance would have me in a closet with blinders on, and I’m looking
for more than a glimpse of the world around us. I’m not four anymore, and it’s going to take more than a well-placed punch to the face to be the change I want to see.
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| Or not? |
Brian W. Koenig,
et al. "Adolescent Health And Harassment Based On Discriminatory
Bias."American Journal Of Public
Health 102.3 (2012): 493-495. Academic
Search Complete. Web.
Brigitte Vittrup,
et. al., “Exploring the Impact of Educational Television and Parent–Child
Discussions on Children's Racial Attitudes.” Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy Vol. 11. (2011):
82-104. Blackwell Publishing Inc.
Matarazzo,
Heather. "As We Are." The
HuffPost Gay Voices. The Huffington Post, 2011. Web.
Schilt, Paige.
"Stilettos, Sissy Boys and the Limits of ‘Gender Neutral’ Parenting." Queer Rock Love. Wordpress, 2012. Web.
Tung, Irene,
James J. Li, and Steve S. Lee. "Child Sex Moderates The Association
Between Negative Parenting And Childhood Conduct Problems." Aggressive Behavior 38.3 (2012):
239-251. Academic Search Complete.
Web.
West, Candace,
and Don H. Zimmerman. “Doing Gender.”
Gender and Society (1987): 125-151. Print.
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| A fulfilling career without a wage gap! |
Credits:
Family photo, 1997
MicroMachines (Now sells for 250.00-300.00 on ebay. Heartbreak all over again.)
Ruby Bridges Artwork
