gen-dah! part 1...

  Ok.  So we all read the article this week about the poor family in Tdot who shared that they are raising their kid to be genderless, and we all know how that has gone for them.  The judgement has been raining down on their poor heads and everybody in the world is a better parent than those poor folks (even the ones who don't have kids).   The fact that their kid wrote a book about the GENDER EXPLORER makes them child abusers (where did he learn that nasty word "gender"?)  Yesterday, I read a book that my six year old nephew wrote about a soilder whose arms were ripped off his body by a bomb.  I am pretty sure that he is not abused or exposed to live fire arms and I am pretty sure that the GENDER EXPLORER is just fine too.  It's cool that these kids use art and books to make sense of the world around them.
So, we have two girls.  And we are trying to raise them to be feminists and to look at the world through feminists eyes.  We don't use that language with them, because that would make us abusive in the view of most of maintream culture, but we expose them to stuff like this:  when we grow up  and try to give them a whole range of experiences.  River has short hair, because it is easy, and cute and she has her whole life to worry about the trappings of being a lady.  The thing is, a lady is exactly what she wants to be.  On a recent trip to the ice cream store her outfit of choice was a party hat, fairy dress and a flowery pink sweater.  She loves pink.  She wants a ponytail.  We play Tilly and the Wall and she does fairy dancing.  She must wear a dress everyday.  And I have to let her.  I have swallow the voice that is rising up in me that wants to tell her to put on the damn jeans and run around outside.  She is teaching me that fairies in white dresses can still dig the garden and plant the seeds and chase the dog and climb the rocks.  I have to let her be her own gender explorer and explore her own truth.  It's killing me but at least it is killing me with style.

Yep, it's pink.

The girls rock downtown Wakefield.