Nailpolish is for girls!
D. found my nailpolish and asked if he could put some on. What fun for a child! So I said yes, but not now, because it was time for bed. "Can Joshua come to our house and play with the nailpolish with me?" he asked. Joshua is a little boy in his class. "Sure, if it's ok with Joshua's parents," I said.
Actually I would have loved for that to happen. I would have loved to see how another little boy would relate to that activity. And I would have loved to see my boy play a traditionally feminine activity- with another boy. I would have also like to see how Joshua's parents would react. But it never happened, because it took a few days to arrange Joshua's visit and by that time D. had forgotten. They played with other toys.
But yesterday he found it again. And I let him put it on. And wear it to school Friday morning.
When we got to school, there were 2 little girls in flouncy dresses drawing pictures at the table. D. moved to join them, when one of the little girls challenged him "Nailpolish is for girl! Why are you wearing nailpolish?"
"Because he feels like it!" Said the teacher. The teachers response was accepted, D. joined the little girls drawing pictures, and I went on my merry way. When I picked him up, I held myself back from asking about it. I'm not going to make a bigger deal out of it than they.
Cutting and pasting a comment from gender critical dad, actually from a couple of weeks ago:
ReplyDeleteBefore I say anything, please do remember I am not an expert, I’m not any sort of childrearing expert or a psychologist. My views are based on my experience as the father of a teenage girl who first decided she was lesbian and then transgender. The only people who made sense to me were the radical feminists and Lesbians of https://www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical and people like 4th Wave, Rebecca Reilly-Cooper and so on.
Your situation sounds terrifying. There’s so much stuff in media and so many people telling us that we must go along with whatever a child says. I’m sure you’ve read the “better a happy daughter than a dead son” message, times.
I remember a little form my first few weeks at school. I was a weedy kid in glasses, shy, no good at football and fighting. I preferred to play with the girls, the boys just wanted to fight, the girls played singing and skipping games. It took me a few weeks and a few kickings from the boys to realise this was not an acceptable state of affairs. I had no clue about what made us different from the girls, they were just a different gang and I preferred their company.
Kids pick up all sorts of weird idea’s. I’m sure even at your sons tender age, some well-meaning idiot has thoughtfully explained how sometimes girls are born in boys bodies, but the doctors can fix it for them. Your kid likes stuff that some people consider to be for girls. Frozen is a great film, it has themes of friendship that few ‘boys films’ do. The world our kids live in is much more gendered than ours. Kids are strange little buggers and grownups love to impose their ideas on them.
Later on when I was 12, I was the first boy in my school to choose cookery instead of woodwork. I did it because I hated woodwork with a passion and as a 13 year old just entering puberty, the thought of an hour alone with a class full of girls appealed to my baser instincts. I’m sure the teachers and my parents worried that I was gay, nowadays I’m equally sure I would have been bombarded with trans propaganda.
I hope your boy can carry on being a lovely, slightly strange little boy. Just like I was. He might be gay, he might be straight. I just hope he can understand that he can be a splendid boy, who love Frozen and rocks a sparkly dress.
Take care and stay strong for your boy
Gender Critical Dad.