Raising Boys and Girls

I imagine this will be the first of many posts as I sort out what it means to be raising a boy.  At five months, other than the fact that he has a penis (and a penis with a "defect," no less), Tiny Boy might as well be Tiny Girl.  He's a baby.

Except that I am ridiculously aware that I call him Little Boy, not his actual name, much of the time.  I also call him a whole host of other nicknames, as I do LG, which bugs her.  Button.  Monkey.  Doodle.  I think the Little Boy thing is an extension of the nicknames I called him in utero, when really all he was was a baby with a sex; I had no idea what he would look like, act like, etc.

So a couple weeks ago, Tiny Boy held hands with the granddaughter of my mother's best friend, who has known me since birth.  He cooed at this two-month-old and batted his ridiculously long eyelashes.  My aunt made some crack about how he's her boyfriend, which is obviously a fantasy about my mother's grandson and her granddaughter.  Then she proceeded to say how he's obviously a boy, while the other baby is so obviously a girl.  To which I replied, I think if I dressed him up in all pink you wouldn't know the difference.

Now, even as a teacher of gender studies, I don't dress Tiny Boy in things that are obviously for girls.  Nor do I like to dress him in clothes that are obviously for boys (really I could do without all those pseudo sports onesies and all that crap with trucks on it).  I haven't rejected blue for him, but when I shop, I get as much gender-neutral stuff as I can.  I did the same with LG.

But at some point--and I know from LG it happens right around age 3-4--he's going to be inundated with gendered messages and start coming up with his own.  LG was convinced at that age that wearing a solid color--even pink--was for boys.  She got over that, and now blue is her favorite color.  She also calls herself a tomboy, which freaked me out.  I pressed her on it.  I asked her what that meant.  She told me it meant she acted like a boy.  I said, what does that mean?  She couldn't explain it.  She has so internalized that girls do certain things and boys do other things that she can't even explain what those things are.  Have I mentioned I teach gender studies?  That the kid does not own barbies and has never seen a Disney princess movie?

I do wonder how Tiny Boy will express his boyness, if he'll do stereotypically boy things because that's who he is.  But damn am I going to try really hard to let him see the possibilities that the world offers him outside the Boy box, just as I tried really hard to let LG see the possibilities outside the Girl box.  And clearly she has, if she does things--and even if she can't name them I know what they are--that are "boyish."  Only I really wish she could just say she likes to run and climb and hang out with the guys, instead of calling herself a derogatory name.

And now I'm going to rescue my son from his babysitter, which is the subject of another post.