11/14/2022 0 Comments Can a girl be a playerOf course, that's often not the parent's fault, but parents contribute more often than many would like to admit – to both the victims and the bullies. Gay kids have suicide, depression and victimization rates that are significantly higher than their straight counterparts. At best you end up with a kid who's also a homophobe and a bully at worst your child believes he's unlovable because of who he is, and lives with the attendant psychological and emotional scars. Parental intervention in normal explorative play that shames a kid for gender non-conformity sends a very clear message that certain behaviors and identities aren't OK. She'll know you'll be her biggest advocate in a world that is notoriously cruel to anyone who's different – whether that means gay, transgender, gender non-conforming or simply a boy who wants to wear nail polish or a girl who wants to play football. But positive parental actions that affirm your child's individuality and identity can mean that your kid comes to you with questions. No amount of parental intervention will make a gay kid straight or change the identity of a trans kid. The best ally any kid can have as their identity takes shape is an involved, accepting and loving parent. Others still are confused about their sexuality. But some do, and many of the kids who grow up to be gay or trans will point to cross-gender play as an early indicator, for them, of their sexuality and identity. It should go without saying that the majority of kids who play dress-up in gender non-conforming ways don't grow up to be gay or transgender. It's kids who are hurt, confused and alienated from their parents. The result of harsh gender policing isn't upstanding masculine sons and submissive feminine daughters. After he refused to take the skirt off one day, his dad cut it off of him and burned it in the back yard. When I was a kid, I had a male friend who loved to dress up in women's clothes – in particular, his sister's gold lame skirt. The dad in question isn't an unusual tyrant parents across the US punish their sons for playing dress-up, painting their nails, wanting to grow their hair long, or engaging in other activities that the parent deems "feminine".Ĭhristian parenting manuals instruct parents to quash any sort of play that involves identifying as a gender other than the one the child was assigned at birth. Dad makes the kid remove the shoes, then punishes the kid when he gets hysterical – all over donning a pair of ballet flats. That parental anxiety was highlighted this week in a Dear Prudence column in Slate, where a mom wrote in concerned about her husband's over-reaction to their son's penchant for playing dress-up in mom's shoes. Katie may be a tomboy because she likes to climb trees, but if Kevin likes to wear dresses? He's a sissy, he's not acting like a boy, and he might be gay. And that freaks out some parents, especially when the rule-breaker is their son. Of course they soak up our cultural gender norms and respond accordingly, and even the most feminist parent can attest that it's impossible to keep a daughter totally protected from Disney Princess mania or a son entirely away from war and gun play.īut as influenced as kids may be by the culture outside their front doors, they're still newbies to the whole gender role thing, which means they break the rules more often than adults. Kids, though, are natural gender-transgressors. Most progressive parents these days will buy their daughters building blocks or sign her up for a sports team, but they're a lot less likely to get their son a baby doll or sign him up for ballet. The boy/girl divide gets even more pronounced as kids get older, but there's more of a stigma for boys who cross it than for girls. There's the yellow aisle of gender-neutral toys and apparel, but show up to a baby shower with a pink onesie for a male baby and see what kind of looks you get (believe me, I was tempted, but given that there was a baby of each gender it wouldn't have been quite as effective). It's parents who buy into the binary, and the rest of us who are thoroughly uncomfortable when they don't. Babies have no idea what they're even wearing and just need to be kept warm. Gendering kids starts immediately after birth, when we wrap a baby in a pink blanket or a blue one. I ended up buying burp cloths and bibs printed with zigzags – one yellow and one grey. She agreed, and said they had one yellow outfit, but then said that nearly everyone who comes in demands the gender color-coding. It's a little weird how all the clothes are pink for girls and blue for boys, isn't it?
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