Night Shift Thought(s) from last night:

It makes me feel really uncomfortable when people with young children do the “She’s such a girl / He’s such a boy” thing just because their child seems to be drawn to things that, based on societal expectations based solely on the child’s assigned gender, that a girl or boy is “supposed” to like; they assume that if the child seems to gravitate to these societally gendered things without them consciously pushing them on the child that this some how makes these “gender norms” innate to girls or boys.

These parents don’t realize that even young children can be influenced by things other than their parents–other relatives have an impact, any media the child consumes (even media a parent may to realize a child is consuming), and the way that children’s toys are packaged and marketed in-store can have an influence.

Certainly many children conform to gender norms in their tastes. This doesn’t just hinge on gender, though–children have personalities and may like something just because they like it, not because it’s a “boy thing”/“girl thing” and happens to match their assigned gender.

Some kids may seem to like things because they have received the message–from anywhere in their environment, whether parents realize or not–that those things are what their assigned gender is *supposed* to like.

As a kid who got the message “girls are *supposed* to like x, y, z” and then made the mental jump to “…but I don’t like x, y, z…does that me bad at being a girl?” and decided that clearly I had been rejected by girlhood and thus ran in the direction of “eww, girls” for many years because I didn’t understand girls who–for whatever reason–did conform to gender norms in childhood play and other things and only in nearing adulthood learned to accept that not conforming didn’t mean I failed at being a girl/woman and that conforming didn’t mean that other girls/women automatically saw me as a failure…

Well…it hurts to hear parents describe their children that way, unspokenly also saying that societal gender roles/norms are just natural, just biology. It hurts because I remember being that girl who mainly liked “boy toys”; and now I’m a gender non-conforming woman who doesn’t really understand what it feels like to “feel like a woman” or anything but just “just…me”, but who very strongly feels a need to stand by women and girls, both those like me who don’t “fit” and those who do that I spent so many years resenting.

And I wonder what these “my child is *such* a/an [assigned gender], lol” would say if their child…*wasn’t* so apparently gender conforming. And I don’t know if I would really want to know the honest answer.

Kirkwallhellmouth does life

I think I like it better when, when I do observations, teachers don’t point me out and introduce me.

It cuts down on–as in, removes almost completely–students being incredulous about my gender. I wear slacks, a button-down, a sweater vest, and a blazer (today’s outfit was even actually all from the “women’s department”) when I observe. I have short hair. Other than earings, there’s nothing traditionally feminine about what I wear to observe. This is the sort of thing I will wear when I eventually get my degree and find a teaching position. Once I have the job, I may even occasionally wear a tie. Because i have some freaking glorious ties.

But anyway. I’d heard at least one incredulous in the first class the teacher I observed today introduced me in.

The last class she introduced me in, she did the very quick, very straight forward, “This is Ms. __, she’s from [uni] and she’s observing today.

From right across the room I hear an incredibly incredulous and loud enough for the rest of the class to hear (even it it may have been in a stage-whisper), ”She?!?“

Yes, she. My disinterest in and lack of adherence to traditionally feminine modes of dress does not preclude me from being female.

It hurt. And it’s part of why I wish there were more positive examples of masculine and non-traditionally feminine women in the media. Because these kids never see a woman who dresses like me with short hair and no make-up on TV. Not in a positive light, anyway.

And it makes me determined to work in a discussion of gender identity and gender presentation to my classes once I start teaching, because the fact that I don’t dress like a lot of my student’s other women teachers is probably going to be a thing, and I will do my best to address that, because my students deserve to be treated with honesty and they need to know clothes don’t determine gender.

I have discovered that it really makes me feel weird when people talk about their children when their children are super assigned-gender conforming.

Especially when they’re like, “My daughter is just so into pink and frills and dresses, and my son is just all into monster trucks. Like, I want to be all advanced and gender neutral, but that’s just what happens!”

But the implication they leave hanging in the air isn’t “But that’s just how my kids are.” They imply that that’s just how all kids are. That pink and frills for girls and rough-n-tumble and action figures and cars for boys are just innate differences.

It makes me feel really awkward, because I was always a pretty massive tomboy and my reaction as a child to gendered advertising was to run so far in the opposite direction of things labeled “girl” that I only learned to stop hating pink in my 20s. My mid-20s. And I have also had to realize and work through a good deal of internalized misogyny that was pretty firmly aimed at more feminine than me women because of that. Because that isn’t the kind of woman I am. I can’t manage that level of feminine presentation. I skew fairly masculine and feel most on top of the world in a suit and tie. And I’ve reached a point where I’m comfortable with that. Most of the time. Until things happen that shake my confidence even just slightly when it comes to how I dress and how I carry myself and what I like.

It doesn’t feel good.