If my five year old daughter dressed up in a Spider Man costume for a preschool Halloween party and I put a photograph of her on my blog can you imagine that being controversial? What if I titled the post “My daughter is gay” as a retort to homophobic parents who didn’t approve of her being in a ‘boy’ costume? Can you imagine that post being contentious enough to receive forty-five thousand comments?
No, because even for girls, aspiring to some form of masculinity is not an insult. But if you are a boy, and you have yourself some masculinity, and yet you challenge it in any fashion? This is what can happen.
Do not fuck with masculinity. Because as I have noted before, masculinity is somehow essential, primary, instinctive and more valid than femininity, but simultaneously also dreadfully vulnerable to being watered-down and over-powered. Totally bizarre. Thanks patriarchy.
(Thanks to Tara for the link).
blue milk 
My son regularly wears my daughters princess costumes and fairy dress ups. But I am trans, so I guess that’s the least of the heresies I commit by existing.
I remember my sister and I dressing my brother up in dresses calling him by the feminism version of his name and my parents taking pictures.
Bonus of living in a hippy household.
I am the eldest of four, one sister two years younger and two brothers (twins) six years younger. My sister and I were horrified when the twins were born, horrified they were boys. After much discussion we agreed that we could accept one of them being a boy but the other would have to become a sister. The smaller twin was selected as the girl (despite being called Hugh) and was dressed by us in our hand-me-downs (dresses, skirts, flowery stuff) until he started preschool. He didn’t seem to mind and played diggers, trucks etc with his twin brother without incident. I think our parents didn’t stop/restrict us because they were exhausted. I don’t know if my brother remembers this, we have photos but it never seems to be talked about now.
I read the post early on, I had no idea it had that many comments. Its a post that helped me.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by blue milk, Jennifer Doherty. Jennifer Doherty said: Do not fuck with masculinity http://bit.ly/gmC0JC via @bluemilk […]
You’re welcome for the link. Did you happen to read some of those 40,000 comments? I read quite a few, but had to stop when I started reading comments from this one man who kept writing vile, ugly things about homosexuals and the parents who “don’t kill them”. It made me feel a sense of hopelessness that there are still people out there in this world like that. Pure poison.
[…] Forbes Caroline Howard called it a lesson in bad mommy blogging. But at Blue Milk another mother asks whether a girl dressing up as a male character would have attracted the same kind of attention. […]
Interesting story. And you’re absolutely right, it shouldn’t have been a story in the first place, and wouldn’t have been if it had been a girl. I really like the way the blogger made her points- especially the ninja comment, that was classic. Ta for sharing the links.
Do not screw with femininity
If my five year old son dressed up in a pretty princess costume for a preschool Halloween party and I put a photograph of him on my blog can you imagine that being controversial? What if I titled the post “My son is gay” as a retort to homophobic parents who didn’t approve of him being in a ‘Girl costume? Can you imagine that post being contentious enough to receive forty-five thousand comments?
No, because even for boys, aspiring to some form of femininity is not an insult do not screw with femininity as some have noted before, femininity is somehow essential, primary, instinctive and more valid than masculinity, but simultaneously also dreadfully vulnerable to being watered-down and over-powered. Totally bizarre. Thanks Men
Gosh, you’re making quite a point there joey. And your point is? That you didn’t read the links we’re all discussing here?
I… What?
That response made no sense, especially if you read the links in the original post, where someone did just what you, I can only suppose ‘sarcastically’, rewrote and were castigated for it.
Maybe I am missing the point in this reply, if so, I do apologise, but it seems like you are trying to show the original post is somehow false by inverting it and repeating it back, which is just… Baffling.
This is a very interesting point. I was recently as my son’s preschool nativity play and ALL the boys were dressed up as shepherds, and all the girls were angels. Well i say all, one girl was dressed as a shepherd. Some kind of mummy feminist anarchy. All i could think was “yeah, but would you make that statement if your child had been a boy?”. No mother would send her son to school in a dress….
M2M
When my son was in the nativity play at his preschool in Scotland, he did dress up as an angel (he didn’t want to be a shepherd). The school was fine with it, I was fine with it, and I never heard anyone make any negative comments about it. (Perhaps comments were made, but I never became aware of them). So, yeah, I sent my son to school in a dress.
I must say I am baffled by this, angels in the bible were male, not female. Gabriel, Michael etc. The story is from the bible. How is it transgressive for boys to play angels? Of course, once angels are male too, that means there is only one female character in the entire story, don’t get me started.
My brother’s now 9.5 (the half is very important!) and his school, which usually has a uniform, let the kids come in wearing their own clothes. He has a hand-me-down hoodie from one of my sister’s friends that he loves, pale green with a pale pink lining and pink drawstrings for the hood.
My mum told me that for this own-clothes-day, he (with her help) cut the pink laces off before wearing it. Her response was that the laces had been a bit manky anyway, and she was kind of pleased that he’d realised that wearing pink wasn’t a neutral thing.
I’m still not sure what I think to that.
[…] notions of undoing masculinity, it is because I recognise its dominance. It is because there is an onslaught of hyper-masculinity coming Cormac’s way. Cormac’s masculinity, or the […]
[…] P.S. (Other stuff I have written on this topic: 1, 2, 3, 4). […]
[…] finally get to a world where we don’t only have hyper-masculine and hyper-feminine clothing choices for little kids. Share this:StumbleUponEmailTwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like […]
I recently read (and wrote) about something related for my Masters – how colour (and particularly the colour pink) is gendered in culturally prescribed ways. Its fascinating but disturbing stuff – especially since a colour like pink is so newly attached to femininity (50 years tops) but has become so loaded with gendered meaning and is so rigidly linked with girls/femaleness etc. One could be forgiven for thinking that pink and girls has been linked for centuries the way marketers and manufacturers carry on.
In a disquieting contrast, masculinity is (mostly) defined as anything that isn’t feminine or female (cos something is wrong with femaleness right?). How often do we see young boys sporting long hair for instance? (Never in my neck of the woods).
Interestingly, research shows that fathers are much more likely than mothers to police and enforce the gender boundaries for boys – which in practice translates to determining what toys they play with, what clothes they wear and what activities that participate in. Hmm.
What does all this teach our boys about gender and especially about the female gender?? Not tolerance, appreciation and understanding that’s for sure.
(I could go on about this for hours but in the interests of brevity will stop here).