{"id":788,"date":"2004-04-13T14:48:18","date_gmt":"2004-04-13T22:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/04\/13\/on-raising-a-sensitive-son\/"},"modified":"2004-04-13T14:48:18","modified_gmt":"2004-04-13T22:48:18","slug":"on-raising-a-sensitive-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=788","title":{"rendered":"On Raising a Sensitive Son"},"content":{"rendered":"
  • Check out this Salon <\/i>article <\/a>about the writer’s son, a gentle boy with no interest in sports (in contrast to his tomboy sister). In some ways – particular in his preference to playing make-believe on his own over sports with the boys – Matt reminds me of myself at his age.\n
    Liza pays about as much attention to gender expectations as she does to my entreaties to keep her braids out of her dinner plate. When she wrestles with the boys, no one perceives her behavior as a “problem.” So why should Matt have to toughen up? What’s wrong with being scared of violent battles? Our expectations of how boys should behave are as deeply rooted in our psyches as our expectations of wolves. Wolves, and boys, are not supposed to step out of character.<\/p>\n

    A friend asked if I’m scared my son will be gay. Right now, the question seems irrelevant. And right now, like any mother, I love my son in all his specialness. Like any mother, I just want him to feel accepted. I don’t want him to change; I want the world to change.<\/p><\/div>\n

    By the end of the article, it’s clear that Matt (who is seven) is taking small steps towards a socially-acceptable masculinity. But it’s hard to pull that off, and as he gets older the standards he’ll be expected to live up to will become more stringent, and the punishments for failure more brutal. The result, all too frequently, is to teach boys who don’t fit in to hold themselves in contempt. Frankly, if I were a parent of a sensitive, gentle boy, I’d seriously consider home-schooling.<\/p>\n

    Matt and boys like him are why sexists who talk about the need for boys to be correctly gender-socialized drive me up a fucking wall. They should all be beaten up, insulted, and isolated every day for five or six years until they can begin to understand the torture they want to condemn wimpy boys to.<\/p>\n

    Boys don’t need gender socialization – they need to be rescued <\/i>from gender socialization.<\/p>\n

    Via Ms Musings<\/a>, who has some good comments..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Check out this Salon article about the writer’s son, a gentle boy with no interest in sports (in contrast to his tomboy sister). In some ways – particular in his preference to playing make-believe on his own over sports with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism-sexism-etc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}