On Salon today, Mary Elizabeth Williams wrote about a mother's anti-homophobia rant that went viral. Her son's gender-bending Halloween costume outraged other parents -- so she penned an eloquent, moving responseAs the blogger herself says it, "If he wants to carry a purse, or marry a man, or paint fingernails with his best girlfriend, then ok. My job as his mother is not to stifle that man that he will be, but to help him along his way. Mine is not to dictate what is 'normal' and what is not, but to help him become a good person." And if you want to raise a good man, sometimes you've got to give him the freedom to be an adorable girl.
Read the rest of the story here.
What wonderful sentiments - the world would be a better place if we were all allowed to be we really are - masculine or feminine regardless of one's genetic sex - insrtead of being forced to conform to rigid gender roles. The mother in the article is truly enlightened.
ReplyDeleteI posted the article on my Facebook page.
ReplyDelete"My son is gay." She went on: "Or he’s not. I don’t care. He is still my son. And he is 5. And I am his mother. And if you have a problem with anything mentioned above, I don’t want to know you."
Right On!
All I can say is I agree with the mother. Let him grow up to be what he is going to be. We adults screw up enough children with our biases. My daughters have grown up into very nice women and their mother and I use a light guiding hand.
ReplyDeleteMichelle
What is the big deal of a boy wearing a Halloween costume dressed as a girl?
ReplyDelete"Her son's gender-bending Halloween costume outraged other parents" - this is typical "masculinity anxiety" at its worst.
For Halloween I was wearing a floral dress and wedge sandals with my fingernails and toenails painted, along with my natural longer hair while I was handing out candy to the kids. Nobody made a big deal about it.
I'm glad I am over the straitjacket of the "masculinity anxiety" that is pandemic to our society, and I can wear what I want as long as it's modest.
JohnH
Oh, I found out about the blog in question from a friend forwarding a link from one of his friends on my Facebook.
ReplyDeleteI too was so moved, I had to comment back. (I wish my mother was as accepting as this child's mother.) - Of course, I also linked off of my Facebook, and my own blog site.
The happiest part is, during this past Halloween weekend, on the day before, I was out and about at an anime/manga convention, wearing my favorite LBD, and everything else that went with it -- And no one freaked out at all. ^_^;