Mom, can I borrow your red pumps?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/m...o-wants-to-wear-a-dress.html?pagewanted=1&hpw

If this had been me, my father would have beaten it out of me, or killed me trying.

Focus: What if your son was a pink boy?

 

I understand. I get it. We believe that as a society we must recognize and embrace everyone else's differences. It's OK; who are we to judge? I get all of that.

But, how do you sleep at night as a parent knowing that by not curbing this behavior you have doomed your son to a childhood of being hung from the coat racks by his thong?

 

I don't really know what I would do. On on hand I want my boys to be themselves. But it's also hard to know I would be sending either one of them out to be relentlessly fucked with. I would like to think that I would be supportive while explaining that wearing a dress out in public was going to make their lives a lot harder.

As non-p.c. it is of me to say, I really hope it is a situation I never find myself in.

 

Fuck politically correct, as a parent you have a responsibility to assist your child in being part of society. I respect that there are legitimate gender identity issues that kids face, but expecting the world to conform to what may be a passing phase seems ridiculous. This kid is being set up, in a way, to suffer at the hands of his peers.

 

There is a line, and here is where it gets crossed.

Although I admire parents that give their kids freedom to "feel how they feel", if your son is pissed at you because you don't want him to wear a dress to school and get his ass kicked, then he just has to fucking deal with it. This isn't about a child expressing themself. It's about saving their ass from 24-7 cruelty at the hands of others. You know what? Sometimes you have to wear a mask around others for your own personal greater good. Every single one of us do that by being friendly to others at our jobs every single fucking day. Close your eyes and Imagine how long your emplyment would last if you spoke your mind to every single person the crossed paths with you at work. You would be filling a carboard box with your shit faster than you could say "Jimmy The Greek".

Children. Don't. Know. SHIT. And obviously these parents don't know what will happen to these children if they let them dress up in drag at school. They will be picked on beyond human comprehension. I mean, they will hang themselves from the soccer goal posts within a month-- that's how bad. Kids are sociopaths that prey on the different and insecure to draw the attention away from their OWN flaws, and his would be the lowest hanging fruit that they could find.

If your child is gay, or transgendered, or any other alternative sexuality by all means support thier feelings. They didn't choose to feel that way. However, you also know better than them. When I was a kid, I wanted to wear my sombrero to school every day without shame because I liked it. My parents stopped me from doing this because (1) I'm not Mexican (2) I looked like a fucking psychotic idiot and most importantly (3) The other kids at school would never EVER let me hear the end of it. That sort of protection should be applied with the topic article of this thread.

 

Just playing devil's advocate here but, what's the difference between telling a kid, "you can't wear a dress to school" and "When you're at school nobody needs to know you're gay so tighten up that wrist nancy boy!" I mean both would for sure save them a lot of grief from their peers but somehow one seems a lot more acceptable to do than the other.

 

It's no different than saying, "You can't wear your Optimus Prime Halloween costume to school." You can let your kids do what they want to a certain point, but when you're a parent, you have to draw the line somewhere. It's not a bad thing to teach them that it doesn't pay to look like a freak show in public.

 

I'm just going to toss in this little bit, just imagine the bullying claims these kids and their parents are going to bring up. After those, what kind of nonsense rules will be put into action to combat the bullying of gender-neutral kids and kids in general. Second, third, fourth order effects will be huge in these areas.
From a want for your child to be a special snowflake, you have failed him as a parent and set him up for failure.

Moving, seriously?

God, I'm thankful my parents had backbones and raised me the right way so we never had to deal with this shit.

 

Admittedly, I fall into the "everyone has a right to be left the fuck alone" category.

Bottom line- I'd far rather have a happy, well-adjusted homosexual child than a maladjusted straight one. If that means allowing my kid to dress up as a princess or a cowboy in order to establish his or her sexual identity, so be it. However, there are consequences to those actions. Kids and adults can be cruel and that has to be addressed with your kid. Maybe that means role-playing certain situations or tempering the places that the kid blurs gender lines. I don't know. I would imagine a lot of this is a take it as it comes scenario.

I think I draw the line at gender-swapping to the point where parents are referring to their boys as girls and vice versa. Like or not, you're born with a gender and that's the one you'll have to own up to until you're old enough to do something about it, and even then you're going to struggle with official documents, employment and complications that stretch far beyond wearing a dress that outlines your dick. I have read about parents who abandon pretty much all gender-based pronouns with their kids and I don't see how this can help anybody at all. Sorry, sweetheart, you're a girl, even if you have learned how to stand up when you piss.

 

I think (maybe) you guys are underestimating some kids' peers. I can only speak from my own experience, but I have a 10 year old brother who is really into My Little Pony and the kids he goes to school with totally accept this. There was one kid who said "My Little Pony is for girls" and everyone ganged up on that kid for not enjoying the show. Then again, this could be because my little brother looks like he could kick some ass and his friends might be afraid to disagree with him.

 

What I love about this statement is that it implies that it isn't possible to be gay without conforming to the stereotypical gay behavior, like a man can't enjoy penis without also loving showtunes. In my mind, the straight counterpart to the camp gay is the douchebag brah-tastic frat guy. Both are more or less equally annoying and both represent a small but highly visible segment of the population.

Personally, I think it's more damaging for a kid to hear his/her parents tell them that everything they're doing is good and natural and acceptable, then go out in public and get bullied by their peers. Now, instead of the behavior, they might think the other kids don't like them. After all, mom and dad said that everything I'm doing is okay, so that can't be the reason. How is that more healthy? I wouldn't let my son go to school in a dress any sooner than I'd let him go to school in juggalo face paint. You can be into whatever you want to, but you're going to have to conform to society if you want to get through life. You think I like wearing a suit and tie to work when it's 105 degrees out in the summer?

 

I think of myself as somewhat socially liberal, but this is ridiculous. Parents need to be PARENTS. The definition of your job is to teach, to guide, and to protect your child. Oftentimes in doing that, you run the risk of hurting your child's feelings. Trust me when I say that your child will thank you in 20 years.

An example: When I was in middle school, boys getting a pierced ear was cool (at least where I lived). I asked my parents if I could get my ear pierced, and they said no. They said if the way I kept my room was any indication of how I would take care of my ear, it would get infected and I'd have problems. Fast forward a few years, and any desire to get an earring was gone out the window.

To this day, I'm grateful they said no.

These parents need to step up and say NO. No child can truly think for themselves before the end of their teen years, but rather, they parrot what they hear. If these kids want to adopt a different gender in their later teens, fine. They can have feminine habits, but keep them in clothing, hairstyles, and accessories that match gender. I had just as much fun jumping rope with the girls as I did playing basketball with the boys in elementary school, but no one ever called me a sissy or made fun of me. Hell, I get pedicures with my wife now, and I'm not ashamed of it (though I draw the line at toenail polish).

I do have issues with my parents (mostly my mom) about a lot of things, but I thank God every day that they kept a hard line. These parents need to do the same thing.

 

I would be proud of my kid for being so comfortable with himself, and putting a higher priority on being who he truly is rather than being too worried about what the other kids at school might think. Granted, I don't and won't ever live in a place where being gay is something that could put you in danger, and if I did I would likely be talking differently. But if the most he's going to face is the possibility of weird looks or verbal bullying, I think it would be less important to try and shield him from that when he's younger if he's going to be facing the same thing in the real world after school. I think the hardest part about being gay when you're in high school or younger is constantly trying to fend off any bullies by insisting that you're not gay so they'll maybe leave you alone, even though you know already that you're lying and hiding who you really are. Trust me, even if you're not going to school in a dress, people are going to know that you're gay or queer or whatever anyway, and are going to act on it if they want to. I can't imagine how much easier my gay friends' lives would be if their parents acknowledged and accepted them for who they were right from the start rather than ignoring it until they "came out" to everyone's feigned surprise after high school and then dealt with it from there.

And even if it's just a phase and they don't actually turn out to be queer, I wouldn't want to stifle or control that. One of the things I'm thankful for about my dad's parenting is that he let me go through all sorts of phases without too much intervention, including a lot of very gender-bendy stuff (although I agree with the article where it's a lot more accepted for girls to do that than guys). Of course I'm incredibly embarrassed by a lot of my clothing or identity choices as I was growing up, but that's part of figuring out who you are. I don't think anyone remembers or cares about the strange direction I was temporarily going in when I was in elementary school, and if I was ever bullied for any of those phases I don't remember it because it wasn't very important to me. I think it would be brave of a little boy to wonder if maybe he felt more like a girl and than actually acted on it. I find it kind of encouraging. Of course, I grew up in a school system where Republicans were much more frequent targets of bullying than gay kids, so I know that my view is a bit skewed and would not fit into a lot or maybe most of the rest of the country. But I'm assuming that, if I have kids, they'll be raised in a similar atmosphere. I'd much rather raise my kids with the values of "Fuck what everyone else thinks of you" (up to a point) than "But what will everyone else think?" I just think the latter would end up doing more harm than good in the long run.

 

I don't have time now to read the whole article and do a good job of writing up my thoughts, but for now I wanted to disagree with the consensus of this thread, and basically agree with VG. Quick thoughts for now are that the boy mentioned in the article is likely to be the target of bullying with or without a dress on. I just read the first couple of pages, but to have such strong gender issues at such a young age, who knows for sure, but it seems likely that the boy will be the odd duck in school/society, no matter what.

And to have such strong gender identity issues, at such a young age, to me, that indicates the kid's core being. I have a toddler now, toddlers are our Id. There's a lot of nurture influence going on, but toddlers are our first, and I guess for some folks, last, existence as our true selves. People can certainly change, but as a parent, no, I'm not going to try and contain what is clearly such a fundamental part of that child's self....be it wearing a dress, being an introvert or extrovert, being eccentric, etc. Esp since the behavior/identity in question does no harm to others.

The challenge then, as a parent, and I have a child about the same age as mentioend in the article, how do you empower them to be able to handle the sometimes horrible pressure of society? We've all probably seen or known the odd duck in school, the popular eccentric, that managed to survive just fine...that's my goal as a parent, to raise that child. The one with such confidence and self-posession and authenticity that they can survive without having to give up who they are.

And here's the thing for me: I'll reject those norms being enforced, the ones being mentioned by everyone here, and the people enforcing them, in a less than a second. As a parent, once you start ceding management of your child's behavior because of a group of people's values (children, in the cases being mentioned), you're buying into those values. I don't buy into a set of values that is so offended by a dude wearing a dress. And I don't buy into the group of people (schoolyard bullies) enforcing those values. Nope. The screaming group of jackals on the bus that bullied our school's only Hispanic kids into getting off the bus in the middle of nowhere? The ones that enforce some values but don't really care about my child's well-being? I'm going to let them play a major role in influencing my child's upbringing? Nope. They can fuck themselves. I understand that they're a placeholder for older versions of themselves, Mr and Mrs Smith of Suburban America, and.... those folks can also get bent. I might physically live in their box, but I'm lucky enough to know of other boxes and other worlds, and the fact that a boy wearing a dress is a silly thing to get offended by. Silly, petty, ultimately meaningless.

And I still don't really understand why gender is such strong identity in our culture. What does it really matter if a guy wears a dress? Biologically, ok, he might not go onto reproduce and help ensure our group's continuing survival, but what does it really matter?

I really hope Scootah comments on this thread too.

Anyway, this was supposed to be my placeholder comment, now it's maybe my main one, but appreciate the issue being raised...it got me thinking.

 

If Li'l Bandit came home and told me he wanted to start wearing dresses, I'd tell him that he could start doing that when he's 18, just like he'd have to wait til then to get his ear pierced.
Also, if his schools are anything like the ones I attended, a dress on a boy would violate the dress code. (heh heh, "dress" code...)

Would I like the fact that he's a nancy-boy at heart? No, but I'm sure I'd get over it eventually.

Now if he came home and told me that he wanted to be a police officer, I'd disown him.

 

It might be worth pointing out that social norms range include everything from polite table manners to how it isn't okay to kill kittens with a hammer. The only reason this topic even exists is that the norms involving LGBT issues are in a time of transition. Maybe someday people will look back on this period the way we look back on the times where interracial marriage was illegal. There's nothing wrong with violating social norms that you disagree with, so long as you are willing to face the consequences for spitting in societies eye. I don't think an eight year old is really capable of making that decision for themself, and I worry about just how many of the adults (doctors included) involved in that article might be putting their political agendas ahead of the well-being of the child.

Hell, what does an 8-year-old know about gender identity anyway? What difference is there between a little boy and a little girl besides how they pee and whatever qualities adults project onto them? Nearly all one-gender clothing is uncomfortable and impractical. I don't believe for a second that women would wear high heels if society didn't want them to.

 

I don't really like when things like this are championed as a success for LBGT rights or acceptance or whatever. I'm all for that, but this is just a kid playing around. He just happens to like wearing dresses. He's not the first boy to ever have done that, and he won't be the last.

The one thing I absolutely hate are the parents of 99% of these kids. The ones who write books and blogs and go on television and become "experts" at raising children who like different things. Yes, you really care about your kids. And by kids I mean yourself and who cares about your kids as long as you're on TV.

 

That's not what i'm trying to imply at all. I'm aware there's gay me nwho act no different than straight people other then their love of penisia. The point I was trying to make is, what if the kid was obviously gay? I'm aware not all gays act like that, but i'm also aware that there's a large number that do. So what I was asking was is there a difference between telling your son no to wear a dress to school even though he identifies as a girl (at least partially) and telling him to act more "straight" if he were gay?