gender enforcement

[metaphortunate]

Things the baby has ostensibly done recently to cause people to say "Wow, you've really got a boy there, haven't you?"

1) Opened kitchen drawer, flung out piece of tupperware
2) Climbed up slide at playground

Things I believe the baby has ACTUALLY done recently to cause people to say "Wow, you've really got a boy there, haven't you?"

Received a short haircut.

Reason for hypothesis

Previous to the haircut, the most common question upon meeting him was "Boy or girl?"

Alternate hypothesis

Perhaps the haircut has caused him to behave in a more masculine fashion?

Evidence supporting alternate hypothesis

None. Baby behavior has not noticeably changed.

Evidence supporting initial hypothesis

People are extremely good at finding patterns and then noticing evidence to support those patterns and discarding evidence that does not.

Conclusion

GRRARGH PEOPLE WHY YOU GOTTA BE LIKE THAT.

Comments

[were_duck]

People are the WORST >:(

I appreciate your dedication to science, here.

[brooksmoses]

One of my favorite early stories of my beloved ex lilairen's child was of her climbing up the slide backwards (with a little help from Mama).

So there.

[metaphortunate]

Hee. That's probably coming soon!

[thistleingrey]

Gah. My daughter (now nearly two) has been climbing up slides for several months. She's mostly stopped flinging storage containers around, and mostly because she now understands short chats about how glass breaks. Everyone on bus/train continues to think she's a boy because I dress her in clothes like mine and because her hair hasn't grown much since my one attempt to even out the wispy bits.

Which is to say, fistbump.

Insidiousness: we were looking at little wall calendars at Staples, and she pointed out the little cat. Which little cat? Not the photos of actual kittens playing, but Hello fucking Kitty. It's the first time she's seen Hello Kitty, AFAIK.

[amaebi]

Children really respond to cartoons. When my son did, I remembered how much more interesting I always thought cartoons than live footage, when I was small.

[thistleingrey]

Hmm, true--for me it was Tom and Jerry. Hadn't thought about it that way; thank you!

[metaphortunate]

OMG my jealousy of a baby who now understands short chats. *___* Someday, maybe!

No, in honesty I know he's understanding more and more. It's pretty awesome. He doesn't always listen, though.

One thing that I found was fascinating is that cartoon shorthand for animals is culturally specific. My friend's wife is Chinese and she was pregnant when I was as well and we were looking at baby clothes & stuff and it turned out she couldn't tell what the hell the cartoon animals were on the clothes. She'd be like, "...a bear?" and Mr. E and I and my friend would be all "No, see, the ears are on the side of the head! It's a monkey, OBVIOUSLY." And she was all, "If you say so. Side ears = monkey over here, riiiiiight." It is now astonishing to me that babies pick up on cartoon abstractions of animals as amazingly fast as they do.

[thistleingrey]

My daughter doesn't always listen, either--clearly, both kids are human. :) Poor impulse control is part of this age, too. Today's Exhibit A is my finger, bitten while I was trying gently to detach a book at bedtime.

Totally. We have one Korean board book courtesy of my mother; the chibi illustrations still baffle darkforge a bit, though he knows the story (retold in English).

[pantryslut]

The sheer inanity of "wow, you've really got a boy there, don't you?" is preventing me from getting more grumpy on your behalf. That's a pretty inept conversation-starter, there.

Caretakers used to hover around April and Simone whenever they both looked girly and insisted on, say, climbing the curved bars at the playground. It's gotten a bit better as they've gotten older, thankfully.

[metaphortunate]

One of them was a friend of mine *sigh*. Totally decent guy, not a gender enforcer mostly, and yet. Sometimes these things sneak out of us when we're not thinking.

[merielle]

Patriarchy: you're soaking in it.

[wild_irises]

Wow, you've really got a baby there!

[metaphortunate]

I totally have a baby! \o/

[norah]

\o/ \o/ A healthy developmentally appropriate baby! \o/ \o/

QUICK HIDE ALL THE THINGS BEFORE IT DUMPS THEM OUT.

[kate_nepveu]

My anecdata is also that people impose adult-heterocentric hairstyle expectations on babies. Which is stupid.

[tiger_spot]

I have found it really interesting how I respond to my two-month-old's hair depending on what she's wearing. Little denim dress? Cute punky pixie cut, totally a girl! Collared suit with airplanes? Same as brooksmoses's haircut, totally a boy!

It's all just the hair she was born with, which seems to be growing at about the same rate her head is, but subconscious expectations lead to some weirdly different interpretations.

Random strangers seem to split about 50/50 between asking whether she's a girl or a boy and just going ahead and assuming she's a boy. I am kind of looking forward to when she grows into some of the pink stuff we have so I can deliberately pair it with extra-boyish things and see what happens then.

[kate_nepveu]

I had one person ask me, in a very offended tone of voice, why SteelyKid was wearing blue if she wasn't a boy.

The best part is that she wasn't actually wearing blue. She just wasn't in head-to-toe pink.

[ironed_orchid]

OMFG.

This is one of the reasons that none of the things I am knitting for new nephew have either pink or blue in them.

[metaphortunate]

Time to deploy the Eyebrow of Disdain and then the cut direct!

[khedron]

Yeah, we've had that before too. They even assumed that our daughter was a boy because the *car seat* was blue. The frickin' car seat.

[thistleingrey]

Wow.

[metaphortunate]

We don't go to effort to dress the Junebug as a boy, but we do go to a small amount of effort not to dress him as a girl, because people get so embarrassed when they get it wrong. Seriously, more apologies than I can deal with. It clearly hurts them in their souls to have accidentally misgendered him, to the point where I would now consider it almost rude to dress him in pink as long as I continue to call him a boy.

[(Anonymous)]

I worry about that when it comes to modifying my own gender presentation. :-/

[metaphortunate]

Oh no, I wouldn't. When you're an adult, people take it out on you, not themselves, so it's really up to you if you're okay with that.

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

Really? I would've thought that the "it" they're taking out on you is still "them being embarrassed," so that there's still the question of how I feel about that on top of the question of whether I want to deal with the fallout.

[metaphortunate]

With kids, I feel like people get put in the position of feeling like they've insulted a kid. Which, whether or not I think it's an insult, clearly makes them feel bad. When I as an adult have caused people to be confused about my own gender, they don't seem to feel bad about themselves, they seem to get angry with me. I feel more okay about deciding that I can accept people being angry with me than about deciding that I can accept making people think they've hurt a kid's or a mama's feelings (note again: kid don't care. Mama don't care. People don't know, though.)

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

Ack, that was me.

[tiger_spot]

I've heard that people get much more embarrassed about accidentally calling boys girls than they do about accidentally calling girls boys. Certainly no-one has seemed particularly upset about getting Morgan wrong so far. On the other hand, she hasn't been out all that much, so perhaps we just haven't met the terribly embarrassed people yet.

[metaphortunate]

Oh yes, calling a boy a girl is a much worse insult than calling a girl a boy. Heck, that's only an insult in certain contexts, but it's never not insulting to call a boy a girl. #rage

[norah]

Oh, I used to just say thank you and move on. I mean, why correct? I guess if you talk to them for a while it comes out, though.

[metaphortunate]

Yeah, I only correct if it looks like the exchange is going to go on for a couple of sentences. At bus stops & such, though, we're going to be there for a while.

[metaphortunate]

Yeah, I'd like to see what kind of haircut I ended up with if I insisted on screaming and thrashing about as much as possible while I was getting it cut!

[kate_nepveu]

Oh dear.

(I used to cut SteelyKid's bangs in her sleep. Sneak in, catch the bits in my hand. Same as with nails.)

Also, the rate at which children become _less_ bald has nothing to do with the ways adults become _more_ bald, which many people seem to think.

[metaphortunate]

Huh - actually, the Junebug was born with what looked like a classic receding hairline, and in his case, it was an encroaching hairline!

[wordweaverlynn]

Let his hair grow long, let him display ordinary baby interest in people's faces, and watch to see how many fools exclaim, "Oh, what a little flirt!"

[kodi]

People who know his gender accuse my 15-month-old son of being a flirt all the time, though - often enough that it never occurred to me to consider whether there are gender connotations associated with the term.

[ironed_orchid]

When I was caring for a two year old girl who had a short hair cut and was usually dressed in pants and shirts everyone assumed that:

1. She was a boy

2. I was her mother

2.a. Even when her father who looks like her was standing right there.

Short hair was very practical at that age, for many of the same reasons I find it practical to wear my own hair short now.

[tam_nonlinear]

I am amazingly tired and stupid from it at present, and somehow confused you with someone else on my friendslist, and therefore read your post in utter confusion, because the person I was confusing you with is a) still pregnant b) expecting a girl. I wondered how the fetus was managing all that physical activity, and assumed this was all meant metaphorically. Although the parts about imposing gendered readings still made perfect sense. Then I reread to clear up my confusion. Maybe everyone else in the world just needs more sleep too, because they still seem confused.

Now I'm going to get some sleep. Finally.

[metaphortunate]

I second this motion, and will also go get some sleep soon! Yay, sleep for all!

[lovepeaceohana]

Oooooh, people. I still get, "Well, they're boys" from pretty much every corner - it's not quite "boys will be boys" but the message is practically the same as. And it's funny, because I only hear that when they are play-fighting, or being daring on the playground equipment, and not at all when they are enjoying storytime or showing off their My Little Pony gear.

[cahn]

ahahahaha. I have been in several conversations where the other person is all "Isn't it interesting how girls have this hardwired wanting to nurture dollies" and I have to point out Exhibit A, my daughter, who has no idea what to do with a doll; she'll sort of dangle it by a foot and look at you like "What do you expect me to do with this?" She likes trucks a lot, though!

That being said, when I was involved in watching about ten two-year-olds at once, it was actually true that the boys (AS A WHOLE) were more likely to pummel each other and manhandle the playground toys than the girls (AS A WHOLE) were, though both were equally likely to run around and get into trouble. But, um, even if the means might be slightly different, they are overlapping distributions, people! There were definitely some of the girls who were more interested in play-fighting than some of the boys, and some of the boys who were more interested in playing quietly with books than some of the girls. (Sometimes both, at different times, too.)

[jrtom]

My default reading of that sort of remark is "I am trying to make conversation and this seems like a pretty safe comment." It's right up there with comments to the effect that having all boys (which we do) must be "a handful", or "fun", or whatever. (Honestly, I'm pretty sure that four of any combination of genders would be all of those things, and moreover that people would be saying basically the same kinds of things if they were all girls.)