In this post I respond to the comments to Raising Children in Our Way-Past-Gender Society. I found them to be better building blocks in the conversation than my own first guest post.
I would like to note at the outset that I wrote in personal terms as an effective way to elicit commentary on the more general matters at play. I think that worked. It is worth noting that I won’t be having children any time soon. Much to your relief, I imagine. Nor was me, mikey meant to be the main thrust of my post, even as I (and commenters) asked where these tensions might exist within me. I simply hijacked the syntax of personality to talk about the social issues.
So what was I trying to say? Zuzu points out the analogy of athiest parents also sending their children to Hebrew school, and I think that gets to the heart of my concern as to gender. I had found that I was thinking about raising children, and that my instinct was that my children’s parents should be capable of serving as both Modern Woman and Man, Traditional Man and Woman – Athiest and Hebrew School – for them as to a large part of their gender-learning experience. Why? To, as Sailorman wrote, “expand” but not “prohibit” their social options.
The phrase “fluent in the language and practice of traditional gendered womanhood” was something that I originally intended to define in my original note. Instead, I accidentally clicked “publish,” and I now believe there was a hint of the divine in that. First, that is because I think there is something inherently challenging about defining that – a challenge in which I believe the conversation would have gotten bogged down. Second, based on the comments, I think there was generally a shared understanding of what I meant.
However, asking what would parents do to “serve as both Modern Woman and Man, Traditional Man and Woman – Athiest and Hebrew School” brings us right back to what being “fluent in the language and practice of traditional gendered womanhood” (or man) means. I again refuse to define it. Instead I will say more modestly that I believe there is a cluster of behaviors, practices, words that we – you, me, us – will associate with being a “traditional woman” (or man). {While we could spend time arguing what is in or out of the bounds of that cluster, I decline to here.} I hope that, for maximizing a child’s ability to be the self they want to be, that they would be lovingly exposed to the language and practice of an array of gender options.
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A number of the comments said that this is a bit overwrought. This idea includes: 1 modern pop culture and other people – friends, family, etc – will continue inundate people with traditional conceptions of gender; 2 that if I live the life I want, love the woman I want, and relax and let all of us live our lives, then any concern for children living their authentic lives will be moot. My response to 1 is: perhaps. My response to 2 is: I certainly think everyone should live the lives they want, and that I should love the woman I want, who should live the life she wants. I was thinking I should concern myself with parenting – even now.
AFM comments that the concept of “wife” is inherently problematic, and I link to the biography of one of my law school professors who agrees here.
I meant the phrase “way-past-gender society” to envelope those people – like myself – who consider concepts of gender skeptically. I adapted the phrase from this article about American Apparel – the context there was: “A young woman friend recently reported that [the Baby Rib Men’s Brief] is the perfect pair of underpants to put on when you “have your period or just want to climb into bed and vegetate.” It’s also cool in the our-generation-is-so-past-gender way that American Apparel “does” cool.”