Right here’s my new rule of thumb: If one thing is smart to my six-year-old, it in all probability simply is smart.
Granted, my six-year-old nonetheless believes {that a} bearded man in a pink go well with flies a reindeer-powered sleigh world wide each Christmas to ship presents made by elves. However as he approaches first grade, his questions on Santa have gotten more and more logistical.
What number of miles is it across the Earth? How briskly does Santa’s sleigh fly? How does it maintain so many toys? Don’t the reindeer get drained?
As I cobble collectively solutions, questioning why dad and mom willingly entrap themselves in such intricate webs of lies, he seems to be at me quizzically, then shrugs his shoulders. Possibly the main points are just a little murky, however he’s nonetheless keen to just accept Santa as an emblem of benevolence as a result of benevolence is smart.
Greed, hatred, prejudice, alternatively — these don’t make sense.
Like all people, my son has skilled them in passing, however he can not perceive why a human being would select any or all the above as guiding rules by which to dwell one’s life.
Adults can level to societal elements to elucidate why some individuals cling so fiercely to greed, hatred, and prejudice — and the people who find themselves busy clinging can use their round loops of pseudo-logic to elucidate why their greed, hatred, and prejudice are justified.
However on the finish of the day, my six-year-old finds it bewildering. A jolly, benevolent individual with flying reindeer makes much more sense to him than a grasping, hateful individual with racial prejudices.
Why on the planet, he typically wonders aloud, would anybody dislike him simply because he has brown pores and skin? “I imply, I’m good at basketball and I’ve plenty of pals and I’m the perfect reader in my class,” he tells me with that singular six-year-old confidence. “I’m fairly superior, Mother.”
I could also be biased, however I’m inclined to agree.
Have you learnt what else is smart to my six-year-old?
One among his finest pals seems like a woman and a boy and desires to be known as “they.” The query for him isn’t a lot, Why? as it’s, Why not?
In the meantime, I spent years grappling with gender fluidity. At the same time as somebody who penned a controversial op-ed in my school newspaper, manner again in 2000, proposing that sexuality was a sliding scale, I had a tough time untangling gender from sexuality, and a good more durable time wrapping my thoughts round its probably fluid nature.
I might perceive, on an summary degree, how somebody may really feel they’d been born within the mistaken physique. However I nonetheless couldn’t cease seeing gender as binary, as an both/or. I couldn’t determine tips on how to reconcile nonbinary gender identities with my sturdy feminist views. How can we empower girls, I questioned, when the entire idea of “lady” was being referred to as into query?
My six-year-old isn’t nervous about any of this. If his classmate goes by “they,” he’ll name them “they.” He doesn’t notably care whether or not or not this classmate has a penis or a vagina. He simply is aware of that each of them have enjoyable taking part in Lava Monster and climbing up the pink slide at recess.
Some mornings earlier than college he tells me, “I really feel like a they at this time.” He usually thinks of himself as a boy, however he doesn’t thoughts making an attempt “they” on for measurement. He’s expressed curiosity in being a Boy Scout, similar to his daddy, however he desires to know if there’s a They Scouts he can be a part of as a substitute. That manner, all his pals can be a part of, too.
It makes me really feel just a little foolish. An idea that has challenged me and induced me a lot soul-searching is one thing my son simply accepts with a nod and a shrug.
To be truthful, I’ve many extra years of social conditioning to cope with, lots drilled into me concerning the immutable variations between women and men.
I got here of age at a time when the internationally bestselling ebook, Males Are from Mars, Ladies Are from Venus, graced practically each bookstore window.
Whereas growing our bodies of analysis are definitively discovering that women and men not solely originate from the identical planet but additionally have practically an identical brains, we proceed to socialize our youngsters to deal with gender distinction over gender fluidity — beginning with the colours of their swaddling blankets.
In fact, I’m not arguing that there are no variations between the female and male sexes, however my six-year-old baby is instructing me that there are far fewer variations than most of us have been led to consider. And, so lots of the variations we settle for as “innate” are literally foisted on us from the second we discover ourselves ejected from the womb.
It’s troublesome to investigate the water once we’re all swimming in it.
I’ve began to note when my kids are manifesting realized behaviors largely due to how rapidly they “unlearn” these behaviors in different social contexts. My 10-year-old daughter, for example, has been socialized at college to play with ladies her personal age. Correction: to hang around with ladies her personal age, as she incessantly jogs my memory that at age 10, she not “performs.”
However after college, she spends hours at a time with an eight-year-old boy up the road. Even when I’m not presupposed to name it “taking part in,” there’s no different phrase for the imaginative video games they concoct or the breathless shrieks they emit as they dart up and down our sidewalk.
Once more, there’s nothing mistaken along with her taking part in — excuse me, hanging out — with different 10-year-old ladies, however there’s additionally nothing mistaken with mixed-age, mixed-gender play. In truth, analysis reveals that it’s immensely good for our children, and most of them might use extra of it.
Exterior the social confines of college, kids are a lot much less choosy about who they spend time with. Certain, maybe they put up with less-than-ideal playmates for lack of “higher” choices. However I can even see how releasing it’s for my daughter to shed all of the social pressures and expectations that include being a 10-year-old lady.
If solely we might all discover the liberty to shed these pressures and expectations.
I do know it’s scary, to have a look at a defining factor of who we’re, one thing most of us have believed to be entrenched, and out of the blue discover it referred to as into query.
But it surely’s my kids who’ve helped me make a foundational psychological shift. As an alternative of worrying about tips on how to reconcile gender fluidity and feminism, I now acknowledge that gender fluidity is the longer term of feminism.
The extra we permit exploration throughout gender traces, beginning in early childhood, the much less possible our youngsters are to perpetuate poisonous masculinity or internalized misogyny. On the flip aspect, the extra we reinforce “immutable” gender variations, the much less possible our youngsters are to know tips on how to construct equitable partnerships or equitable workplaces as adults.
Variations themselves aren’t inherently “unhealthy.” Fairly the alternative, the truth is. They will enrich us and make us stronger. Gender fluidity doesn’t erase our variations; it merely posits that there’s no must codify them.
Nonetheless have questions? Simply ask a six-year-old. I’ve one who can be completely satisfied to deal with your issues.
Kerala Taylor is an award-winning author and co-owner of a worker-owned advertising and marketing company. Her weekly tales are devoted to interrupting notions of what it means to be a mom, lady, employee, and spouse. She writes on Medium and has not too long ago launched a Substack publication Mother, Interrupted.
This text was initially revealed at Medium. Reprinted with permission from the creator.
