Queer Poly Talk

Today as I sipped my half decaf coffee, I did the usual social media scroll, both habits I’m trying to break. However, for my groggy brain, it just is a comfortable mindless activity to partake in until I can get some healthier habits in place, and the caffeine still helps the slow and gradual awakening of my mind and energy. 

I came across a colleague’s post. It had multiple Pinterest-perfect family photos of herself with her husband, two boys, and pregnant belly, in the front of a grassy field of wildflowers and trees, wearing clothes in your typical autumn tones such as navy, orange, and white. One of the pictures showed a photo of her and her husband popping pink confetti, and another of their children wearing gifted t-shirts that read “big brother.” I read a caption announcing that another baby was on the way, and this time it’s going to be a girl. They exclaim how they’re all very excited to welcome her into this house of boys, ending with the sentence “Hopefully she can keep up.” 

Hopefully she can keep up? HOPEFULLY SHE CAN KEEP UP?! Are you fucking kidding me?

First I was angry, then I was disappointed, and then I was very sad for her and her coming daughter. 

How is it we got this far, that this woman had become a doctor, a mother, worked full time healing and empowering women, posting pictures of her building custom furniture for her home on her own in whatever spare time she found, and yet still openly question if her daughter could keep up because she was a girl? HOW?

As a child, I remember spending hours running around the yard with the three neighbor boys. I often would run and they’d whine to stop. I would keep running, with the imagination of a grade schooler, picturing I was Black Beauty, or running to find a potion to cure someone, or being some sort of heroine coming to save the day. Sometimes I would climb higher in the trees because I thought it was fun and they thought it was scary. Never as a girl did I ever feel I “couldn’t keep up.” We just played, there was no gender issue. 

I do remember, however, why I became quiet and still. I would be rambunctious, often as much or even louder than the boys. As I grew older, I was told to hush, to be quiet, to sit, to be still. The boys were rarely told that. For some reason my defiance towards other conditioning wasn’t as resilient against this. When I was having fun and saw a sharp look or tone because of my behavior, I’d feel ashamed and unloved. I hated any confrontation, so I’d stop. When I was small and quiet they adored me. Neighbors offered to let me stay for dinner or have me stay over because I “was such a good kid, so quiet.” That was my value. They love you if you’re quiet and complacent. Even if you think otherwise, want to do otherwise, just do that and they’ll adore you. It was only safe to be that way alone, or with certain friends away from the adults. Now in my 40’s  I’m still finding my voice and I battle anxiety anytime I’m a little too loud or talk too much. I know why it’s there, but years of programming doesn’t come undone overnight.

Perhaps it was never that girls couldn’t keep up, but that we could prove that we were just as good, if not better, than the boys, and who is going to submit to a man later in life if she believes that? As the woman that posted herself exhibited, she has achieved so much, yet she’s still conditioned to believe that a little girl is less than her boys. I hope she is as truly happy as she looks in those photos, that she is authentic to herself, and that she didn’t choose her life simply to fulfill her duties as a woman and make everyone around her happy. It’s her journey, and I hold no judgment of her decisions, and in fact often I’m impressed and awestruck by everything she does. I do feel some sadness for her and her daughter though, because even after all that she’s accomplished, she still can make a sexist remark about her own daughter. I hope despite all that she can set an example of how intelligent, creative, and powerful a woman can be, and that it’s louder than the insidious and subtle jabs about being a girl. I hope her daughter never doubts that she can keep up simply because of her assigned gender.

Little kids pay attention. It may have been a small and seemingly funny side comment, but these small comments add up over time. I was hoping we were doing better, and we are, but we still have a long way to go to liberate the feminine from being equated to lesser, weaker, and quiet.