On Gender Identity

So the other day, Hubby was loading D in the car and I was in the passenger seat. I heard the woman from the car next to us ask if D was a boy or a girl. Stephen politely responded and finished buckling D in. When he joined me in the driver's seat, I told him, "Man, I really hate it when people ask that." He asked me why because he didn't mind answering, so I thought about it. I didn't really mind answering either, but I knew it was something deeper. The issue is two-fold: the identity factor and the societal factor.

First of all, D looks like a boy. To me (and my friends and family) he has some distinctive boy features. But that isn't the issue. For the first question to be about his gender is to prioritize that over anything else. His being a boy is more important than his name or age. A more appropriate question might be "What is their name?" which will usually tell you if they are a boy or girl. And if it doesn't, what is so important about a stranger knowing the gender of my baby? Once that becomes an important identity factor, it can become easy to adhere to society's "rules" about that specific gender, which leads me to the second factor.

God dictates gender. Some of you may disagree and that is fine, but I believe that it is up to God to form us as He desires. He gave me a male baby, and he will always be a male. But society decides HOW that gender is defined (http://thebringitonmom.blogspot.com/2017/03/on-gender-stereotyping.html). If a girl is going through a phase when she likes race cars and playing baseball or whatever typical "boy" interests are, it doesn't mean she identifies as a boy; she is just a girl who likes race cars and baseball. If D decides he likes princesses and playing with my makeup, I'm not going to jump to the conclusion that he was supposed to have been born a girl, because God would have handled that. I will support him whether he wants to be a drummer, a football player, a broadway star, or a ballerina. I will tell him that boys can dance just as well as girls and girls can play baseball just as well as boys. If D is wearing his amber necklace and a bonnet, I am not dressing him like a girl. I hope Daxton never feels like  he can't do something because of how he was born. And he doesn't need to change; he is perfect how God made him. 

No person is going to tell him he can't do something because he is a boy, and if they do, well they will really regret it after talking to me. When I was younger, my family went on a camping trip with other families from our church. I was DEEP in my tomboy phase, climbing trees and running around with the boys. One of the dads was leading a hike, and I went along. When we got to the end, the tip of the mountain we were hiking, I was told I couldn't go all the way to the top because I was a girl. I was dumbfounded and still scarred to this day. Obviously, Dax will know he can't go in the girls bathroom, dressing room, etc., but anything society deems just for girls or just for boys will not be a thing in our home. I like dressing Dax in gender/color neutral clothing, and I definitely regret painting his room blue. I am so excited to see what truly interests him.

On Gender Stereotyping

Today, I put my boy in a bonnet. Most of us millennials don't see bonnets as being for one gender or another, but I know plenty of people who think I shouldn't have bought my boy a bonnet or that its weird. For some reason, society has turned bonnets into a "girl thing", even though all babies used to wear bonnets decades ago. I don't want there to be anything my boy shouldn't do because it's a "girl thing". I will be just as thrilled if my son wants to pursue a career in fashion or ballroom dancing as I would if he wants to pursue baseball. This doesn't mean I am going to purposely do something to my son just because I don't want him to be too attached to one gender; I wouldn't go out of my way to put him in a lavender onesie or wear flowers on his head. And I do see him as my son; I don't want to raise him to be gender neutral, because I believe in the beauty of each gender as designed by God. If I see a cute onesie that has a gender specific saying (i.e. "Daddy's Little Girl), I will definitely not dress him in that, no matter how cute I think it is. I also will not dress him in super stereotyped boy onesies either (i.e. "Chicks dig me," or "Built tough like Daddy", with few exceptions). My philosophy is to raise him away from societal gender "norms" so that he will not feel constrained.

Growing up, my "favorite color" was pink. I am 100% sure the reason for this is because it is my mom's favorite color (reason being when I found out my Nana's favorite color was green, I quickly changed my favorite color to green as well...I was very impressionable). My mom is a girly girl through and through. She went through her tomboy phase growing up, but she loved (yeah right, still loves) lace and pink and frills and wants a fluffy white cat with a pink bow named Fifi or something like that. Like I said, I was very impressionable, so I was also quite the girly girl. I would request the color pink for whatever I could and I loved to wear dresses. Suddenly, around 4th grade, I entered my tomboy phase. I will shamefully admit to the following fashion crimes: Pepe Jeans, pants with multiple zippers to change lengths, terribly generic eight-year-old graphic tees. I begged my mom to let me cut my hair (which she didn't until 7th grade and I should have listened to her and never cut it) so that I could have a more "tomboy" look. I am so thankful my parents didn't fully embrace this stage of my life. If my mom got rid of all my dresses, bought me Converse instead of jellies, and let me cut my hair, I definitely could have felt she was encouraging me into boy-like behaviors. As I said twice now, I was impressionable. If at anytime my parents would have encouraged something stereotypically boyish, I would have continued down that road. Instead, they did both. I had the Converse AND the jellies. I had my dresses, and unfortunately, I had my 3-tier pants. She didn't try to conform me. They never said, "You're a girl so you have to wear a dress," or "You're a girl so you can't have Wheelies". DISCLAIMER: My mom did like to dress us up, especially for holidays, but she made sure we knew it was because it was something she wanted and not something we were supposed to want to do.

My husband is a sweet man, but a man through and through. When I found out we were having a boy, I immediately began to buy and look for clothes. We knew he would be born at the end of November, so I knew I would have to get him his first Christmas outfit. I wanted to get him a smock, and Stephen very adamantly did not want his son wearing a dress. Not only are smocks a very Southern thing, they also make some specifically for boys. When we were looking for an outfit to bring Daxton home in, his only stipulation was that it not look "too girly". Update: Daxton did not wear a smock for Christmas, in large part because I never got around to ordering him one, but he does have one for Easter! I want to make sure that as Daxton gets older, he doesn't see pink as a color he shouldn't wear or bonnets as something for girls. I want him to be open to everything. I want him to go through style phases and do the preppy thing, do the skater thing, do the athlete thing (gym shorts, tall socks, nike sandals) so that he will find himself without rethinking who he truly is.