{"id":3949,"date":"2012-03-02T09:00:07","date_gmt":"2012-03-02T14:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=3949"},"modified":"2012-03-02T09:00:07","modified_gmt":"2012-03-02T14:00:07","slug":"body-language-what-if-gender-isnt-on-your-radar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2012\/03\/02\/body-language-what-if-gender-isnt-on-your-radar\/","title":{"rendered":"BODY LANGUAGE: What if gender isn’t on your radar?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last weekend at the playground, a little boy around three years old approached my daughter Maybelle, who\u2019s also three.\u00a0 \u201cAre you a boy or a girl?\u201d he asked her.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t answer\u2014I suspect she wasn\u2019t sure how to process that question.\u00a0 And to tell the truth, neither was I.<\/p>\n

After a pause, I said, \u201cShe\u2019s a girl.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThen why is she wearing boys\u2019 clothes?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

This one I knew the answer to:\u00a0 \u201cEverybody can like Spiderman,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpiderman!\u201d Maybelle agreed enthusiastically.<\/p>\n

Maybelle\u2019s dad has begun commenting that when he picks Maybelle up at preschool, the kids are divided by gender on the playground.\u00a0 It\u2019s not that they\u2019re playing with different things, they just aren\u2019t all playing together.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho does Maybelle play with?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cShe doesn\u2019t seem to understand the way they\u2019re dividing.\u00a0 Nobody turns her away.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is one of the interesting things about having a kid with an intellectual disability:\u00a0 Maybelle doesn\u2019t really get gender.\u00a0 She calls her bed a \u201cbig girl bed,\u201d because that\u2019s the exciting billing we gave it when we made the transition from the crib, but \u201cgirl\u201d doesn\u2019t necessarily have any meaning to her.<\/p>\n

Her speech therapist occasionally asks her to identify pictures by gender:\u00a0 \u201cIs that a boy or a girl?\u201d\u00a0 And Maybelle doesn\u2019t know the answer.<\/p>\n

I have to say, I\u2019m glad that she doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 I recognize the argument that could be made here:\u00a0 gender is a central component of how our culture works.\u00a0 In order to be a person who functions in the world as it now operates, a person needs to understand the conventions of gender, the backpack of cultural expectations, needs to be able to use gendered pronouns appropriately and identify girls and boys, men and women.<\/p>\n

And yet part of what I do in my job is to try to destabilize all that stuff.\u00a0 I have a number of students who identify as trans, who are recognizing that they don\u2019t fit within the gender binary that\u2019s been taught to them from day one.\u00a0 I have a still larger number of students who may identify with a gender, but want that gender to be pretty significantly reworked.\u00a0 I identify with a gender, but I don\u2019t believe that there are only two genders, nor do I believe that anybody should be automatically consigned to one.<\/p>\n

\"Girls<\/a>Maybelle currently likes dinosaurs and big trucks.\u00a0 She\u2019s a tiny bit obsessed with The Sound of Music<\/em> and John Lee Hooker\u2019s song \u201cBoom Boom.\u201d\u00a0 She plays drums, and she does \u201cRing Around a Rosie\u201d with her baby doll.\u00a0 She rolls a stuffed octopus around the house in a stroller.\u00a0 One of her favorite items of clothing is her Spiderman sweatshirt.\u00a0 This sounds like a great collection of interests, one not at all constrained by binary gendered expectations.<\/p>\n

When people ask Maybelle, \u201cIs that a boy or a girl?\u201d or \u201cAre you a boy or a girl?\u201d, I think the correct answer might be, \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d\u00a0 Or maybe, \u201cWho cares?\u201d\u00a0 The fact that gender isn\u2019t intuitively obvious to her might be a benefit.\u00a0 She might have the opportunity not to have to unlearn the damaging, sexist stuff that my students, my colleagues, my friends, and I have to grapple with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend at the playground, a little boy around three years old approached my daughter Maybelle, who\u2019s also three.\u00a0 \u201cAre you a boy or a girl?\u201d he asked her.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t answer\u2014I suspect she wasn\u2019t sure how to process that question.\u00a0 And to tell the truth, neither was I. After a pause, I said, \u201cShe\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1919,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21097],"tags":[345,4374],"class_list":["post-3949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-body-language","tag-disability","tag-parenting"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1919"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}