Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. Here's this week's!
Last week, a Toronto couple hit international news with their experiment in child-rearing. They have decided to raise their latest baby to be genderless.
That’s right: they are not announcing whether their child is a boy or a girl, so that this information doesn’t affect how people treat the baby, and the baby’s natural inclinations will be encouraged.
Pardon me while I jump off the bandwagon. Sure, it’s wonderful to accept your child no matter how they turn out, but there’s a world of difference between acceptance and denial of identity. If you don’t let your child think of himself as “a little boy” or herself as “a little girl”, then are you not saying there’s something fundamentally wrong with who they really are?
When my daughter Katie was a year and a half old, someone presented us with a summer white frilly dress. All winter it hung in her closet, out of reach. Yet several times a day she would wander into her room and try to reach for that dress, the only frilly thing she owned. She thought it was beautiful, even before her second birthday.
But let’s say she hadn’t liked frilly dresses. Let’s say instead that she had preferred to play with trucks. Would that mean that she was, by gender, a boy? Absolutely not. I have a dear friend who loves to hunt and likes household repairs, but she also looks amazing in an evening gown—and she knows it. As a child, she grew up with all brothers and she loved doing boy things. But she was also very glad that she was a girl. The urge to tackle a brother did not override her femininity.
That’s because not all gender is socially constructed. Study after study has shown that there are legitimate differences between the sexes. Women, for instance, have much more discreet hearing. A mother can identify her child’s cry when that child is with a whole bunch of other children, whereas a father often finds all the sounds overwhelming. That’s one of the reasons, for instance, that ADD boys have more trouble in school than ADD girls. Boys find all the noises distracting, whereas girls have an easier time filtering them out.
Or take risk-taking. Boys are naturally inclined to be more risk-takers than girls are. Obviously there are exceptions, but insurance adjusters will tell you that it is boys who are naturally more dangerous. We are not interchangeable. If you tell a boy who likes to play dress-up that he is naturally a girl, you’re letting one preference override the plethora of other indicators that makes him a boy. And that’s wrong.
Yet that doesn’t stop some from wanting to create a “genderless society”, which I think is often an unspoken effort to attack masculinity. In Sociology, we were taught that every parent should give little boys dolls so that they would learn to be nurturing and thus not grow up to be soldiers. And in stories where parents try such experiments, it’s typically the masculine that is discouraged. Little boys are encouraged to paint their nails, while no one minds if a little girl plays with a truck. Girls are allowed to be masculine, but boys aren’t. Even in this family, the genderless baby has an older brother, now two, whose long, braided hair gives the distinct impression that he is a she.
I have no problem with boys wrestling, or playing rough, or wanting to catapult things into their backyards. I also have no problem with a boy who would rather sit in his room and read. But I do have a problem with telling any of these boys that they’re not allowed to think of themselves as boys. We are who we are, and much of that is innate. Let’s not use children as our political experiments. Let’s let them be who they were born to be, and that includes letting them be a little girl or a little boy.
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I've written a lot on this blog about how we women often disparage men, and that's a bad thing. I've talked about how we have to let men be men, accept that their different, and understand that just because we see the world a certain way, it doesn't mean that we're right and they're stupid. It just means that we have different viewpoints. And that's okay.
In fact, I'm quite passionate about this. I've written many columns in my seven years as a columnist explaining why I think male bashing is so dangerous. It makes men feel inferior, pushes them out of the family, and contributes to the marginalization of true masculinity in our society.
So I feel a little chagrined today, because I received an email after my last column accusing me of doing just that. In that column, I wrote that men are capable of thinking about nothing, and women aren't. This is often a point of contention in a marriage.
But I went on to say that women are jealous of this brain feature and so continually try to find ways to think about nothing, to no avail. So we may berate them for it, but we also wish we could do it, every now and then.
Here's my question: was I male bashing? I don't think I was. First, I was talking about something which is a fact. Women have more connections in their brains than men do, which is why we recover from strokes more easily. We can't turn off our thoughts as much. Men can.
I was also using an analogy from a best-selling book whose purpose is to explain gender differences so that we can see that neither side is right; we're only different. I thought I was taking the same approach.
Finally, my impression was that I was, if anything, making fun of women, not men. I told how women thought about the stupidest things, and I outlined our quest to be like men. So I don't think it was male bashing.
I do think I used humour (or at least tried to; you can be the judge of whether it was really funny). But I don't believe I was putting men down. I was just describing an honest difference between the genders.
So here's my question for you: was it male bashing? I'm open to being told it was. Maybe I need to be less flippant in my joking. And where is the line between joking and bashing? I do think we need to laugh at ourselves, and especially our relationships. And I think people learn better with humour. Most people honestly aren't aware of these gender differences, and when we explain them, it often improves a relationship.
Also, I don't think describing a difference means that you're bashing one side or the other. Women are more emotional; is it female bashing to say so? I don't think it is. There are differences. We need to see them.
Bashing, I think, is making fun of one gender and coming to the conclusion that this means that they're somehow inferior, or don't function as well. Pointing out differences, then, I don't think is bashing.
So help me out: how do I draw the line better? I'm very against male bashing, and I don't want to participate. But I also do want to be funny and help the general public understand some of these things (I think Christians are more in tune to gender differences than the public is, which is why I've been writing about it in my column, which is aimed at a general audience).
Leave a comment and help me out! Thanks so much! And enjoy your week!
Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a variety of newspapers. Here's this week's, just in time for Mother's Day!
Forget that Mars and Venus thing. I have found the definitive difference between the genders.
Or rather, my nephew found it.
It is a YouTube series appropriately called, "Is it a good idea to microwave this?" Now if you have to ask the question, you already know the answer. But these enterprising young males have built a microwave room, plastered with tin foil and a video camera, where they set things like Snow Globes, Twinkies, LED batteries, Xboxes, and more on high for a few minutes and then watch through a window to see what happens.
I would hazard a guess that 90% of their YouTube viewers are male. I admit to finding it rather mesmerizing watching the plasma sparks burst out of the batteries, and a snicker did escape my lips as the Snow Globe exploded, but I wouldn't have searched for them in the first place. But my nephew, all on his own, discovered these university-aged pyromaniacs. And when he showed my husband, Keith said, "Cool!" (Warning: some of their videos do have offensive language).
Males, I believe, are pre-programmed to like blowing stuff up. Women, on the other hand, like to talk about males who like to blow stuff up. My daughter said that if two university aged females were launching a YouTube channel, they'd probably turn it into a talk show rather than a combustible experience. And I think she's right.
But that doesn’t mean that women are inherently more peaceful than men. I’ve never bought that whole philosophy that “if women ruled the world, there would be no more wars.” Anyone who has ever hung around junior high school girls for any amount of time knows that girls can be every bit as mean as boys—and in fact can be far pettier.
While junior high girls may be intimidating, a mother protecting her brood is downright dangerous. When outsiders attack, we don’t offer to negotiate and sing Kum-ba-yah. We drag out the heavy artillery.
I think it’s because motherhood brings out new, overpowering emotions. When you become a mother, you make a decision to forever have your heart walk around outside your body, as author Elizabeth Stone said. You have very little direct influence over the most important part of your life.
Sure we can control our children when they’re young, but as they get older that control slowly fades. We can’t keep them from disappointments. We can’t save them when friends turn their backs, or when they fail at something they pursued fiercely, or when they get cut from the team. We can’t protect them when others gossip or badmouth or betray.
And that kind of hurt is worse, in many ways, than if it happened to you. We moms want our children to be happy, and when they’re not, we hurt, too.
In the midst of that hurt we have to be the ones to rise above it; we have to be the ones to teach our kids resiliency; to help them out of the funk; to help them not to give up, but to try again. We have to put aside our own pain to help them out of theirs. And it’s not easy.
As my own children have grown I have found parenting far less physically demanding but far more emotionally exhausting. We dream so much for our kids, and yet we need to let our children be free to pursue their own dreams on their own. That’s an awful lot to ask of a mother, and that’s why I think this Sunday all of us moms deserve a day where we are lauded, applauded, and hugged galore.
And some chocolate wouldn’t hurt, either. And no, it’s not a good idea to microwave that.
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Forget that Mars and Venus thing. I have found the definitive difference between the genders.
Or rather, my nephew found it.
It is a YouTube channel appropriately called, "Is it a good idea to microwave this?".
If you have to ask the question, you know what the answer is already. But these enterprising young males have built a microwave room, plastered with tin foil and a video camera, where they set things like Snow Globes, Twinkies, LED batteries, iDogs, and more in their microwave and then watch through a window for several minutes to see what happens. Here's a taste (guaranteed your sons will love it):
Now I would hazard a guess that 90% of their YouTube viewers are male. I admit to finding it rather mesmerizing watching the plasma sparks burst out of the batteries, but I wouldn't have searched for them in the first place. But my nephew found them. And when he showed my husband, Keith said, "Cool!".
Males, I believe, are preprogrammed to like blowing stuff up. Women, on the other hand, like to talk about males who like to blow stuff up.
My daughter said that if two university aged females were going to start a YouTube channel, they'd probably make it into a talk show rather than a combustible experience. And I think she's right.
Men like explosions, car crashes, rockets, and MORE POWER. I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with that, even though we women may find it weird. That's how they're wired. And I think we should stop trying to tame them. Sure men need to be taught to show their softer side--or at least to try to figure out if they have one--but if men inately need to explode things, should we always be telling them to calm down?
Channel it into appropriate outlets, sure. But let's stop trying to tame our guys. They're guys. And we love 'em.
Over at the Gates of Vienna, they're talking about a rape of a Belgian woman by a group of Muslim men because she wasn't wearing a hijab. That's right. Muslims, who make up a huge proportion of Brussels, are now trying to impose their standards on women.
A 21 year old woman was pushed against an ATM machine in the Brussels South station by two young men and raped last week. According to the victim, at least three travelers passed by, but nobody tried to help her.
Around 9pm Lola arrived at the South station in a train from Waterloo. She walked over to an ATM when suddenly tow you men asked her in a threatening tone why she didn't wear a headscarf as she should.
"You must know: my daughter has blond hair and blue eyes, that is wholly not a North-African appearance. It was the way of those two men simply to intimidate her, so that it would be easier for them to then abuse her," says Marc, Lola's father.
The father later said:
"Nobody had the courage to save my daughter out of the clutches of the duo," continued father Marc with rage. "According to Lola nonetheless certainly three men passed by, but nobody even got ready to stop. At 9pm at this time of year it's still far from dark and the South Station is is certainly not yet abandoned. Why did everybody leave my daughter to her fate?"
And in the Muslim mentality, men's sexuality is the woman's fault. She is provoking him, which is why she needs to wear the hijab. It's exactly the opposite of Jesus, who put the blame right at men's feet and told them it was better to pluck out an eye than to lust.
Anyway, the discussion in the comments started off with the observation that Belgian women only had freedom because the Belgian men agreed. Now Muslim men have taken over, and the women don't have freedom anymore. What the women really need is for the Belgian men to stand up for them again and protect them.
The problem is that women have been complaining about men acting like men and doing anything chivalrous for so long that men now don't feel the need to.
So we can't rely on men anymore because we blame them when they act aggressive, or when they try to protect us, because we say they're being patronizing. It's fine to say that when you don't need protection, but now that we do, it's too late. Feminism has written his own demise. Do these women think that they're going to be free once Muslims are the majority demographically in Europe?
Anyway, here's a quotation from a commenter:
If you want heroes, you'd damn well better start rewarding men for acting like them instead of punishing every last bit of functionally aggressive male behavior. Learn how to respect men who will not tolerate the abuse of women. Overly protective? Yeah, just maybe. Paternalistic? Perhaps, to a fault. Chauvinistic? Nope, just chivalrous.
And another:
If you want an instinctual response, you must first create the conditions for instinctual response.
We have taught Western Men not to act for about 40 years, and now complain that we get exactly what we taught them.
Gare du Midi is not unique. Virginia Tech, and many other situations in the US come to mind.
I think that's exactly right. Do you remember Virginia Tech, when nobody fought back except an elderly Holocaust surviving professor, even when the guy was reloading? Throw your keys at him, throw your coffee at him, throw your chair at him! You're not going to end up any more dead than you would have had you just sat there.
It scares me. I grew up as a feminist, though I'm not one now. I grew to hate it when men thought that I needed doors held open for me, or my arm taken when we were walking on a street. Now I'm glad my husband is around to play protector. That's what he was meant to do.
Unfortunately, that breed is rapidly dying, because our society has killed true masculinity. It's scary, and it really saddens me.
About Me: I'm a Christian author of a bunch of books, and a frequent speaker to women's groups and marriage conferences. Best of all, I love homeschooling my daughters, Rebecca and Katie. And I love to knit. Preferably simultaneously.
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