How To Talk To Babies About Gender Theory
BABY: dont want u
want daddy
ME: GENDER IS A SPECTRUM OF BEHAVIORS NOT A FIXED IDENTITY
STOP DENYING MY AGENCY
BABY: want juice
ME: I’M GONNA READ JUDITH BUTLER TO YOU AGAIN
BABY: [nurses]
ME: you realize youre literally consuming me
BABY: [nurses]
ME: wow
its like de Beauvoir never even wrote The Second Sex
[leans over baby’s crib]
ME: DON’T YOU DARE DEVELOP ALONG FREUDIAN STAGES
BABY: [sleeps]
ME: ARE YOU IGNORING MY REGULATIVE DISCOURSES
BABY: [sleeps]
ME: wow
have you queered anything today
BABY: [cries]
ME: hey
HEY
we have talked about this
BABY: [cries]
ME: what is the function of the imaginary primordial enclosure formed by the imago of the mother’s body
you know this
i know you know this
ME: i dont care how you express your future sexuality
but dont you dare bring a post-structuralist into this house
BABY: [chortles]
ME: THIS IS SERIOUS
ME: IS GENDER A PERFORMANCE OR A CONSTRUCT
PUT DOWN THAT BUNNY AND ANSWER ME
ME: [holding car keys] okay, Baby
show me the difference between the symbol and the archetype
BABY: [claps]
ME: come on
what’s being displaced here
BABY: want fahh
want fahhh
ME: who wants fahh?
BABY: want fahh
ME: Is it I?
Are you learning the function of the I?
Are you ready for Lacan’s mirror stage?
BABY: want fahhh
ME: I didn’t think so
BABY: [eats a Cheerio]
ME: WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO REALIZE
THAT ‘THE REAL’ IS NOT NECESSARILY COEXISTENT WITH REALITY
BABY: [hands me ‘Are You My Mother’]
ME: DO YOU WANT ME TO READ THIS TO YOU
OR ARE YOU FINALLY READY TO CRITICALLY INTERROGATE THE TEXT
BABY: book
[Image via Wikimedia Commons]
Tags: advice, babies, feminism, gender theory, humor, parenting, raising a family
Related Posts
How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA: Follow-Up
Loco Parentis: Saying I’m Sorry
Trapped in the Stairwell: My Birth Story
Loco Parentis: On Having Baby Number Two
Inspirational Quotes from Acclaimed Relationship Expert Niccolò Machiavelli
How To Impress The Good-Looking Butches At Your Local Pet Supply Store
Mallory. <3
3 years later ME: Yeah, just go watch Sophia the First on TV. And some Doc McStuffins. That'll balance it out.
"OR ARE YOU FINALLY READY TO CRITICALLY INTERROGATE THE TEXT"
I wish I babysat.
Mallory there is something wrong with this post– when I click on it, I get a header type thing at the top of my screen that makes it seem like i'm logged in as you on some sort of editor account
Shit. I see it. Thanks Riot
Yeah I have this too
Yes, I'm getting that too!
WE FIXED IT HOORAYYY
But the header was calling me Mallory. I felt so powerful!
I know right?
"had my wish come true," I thought. "did the blood magicks work?"
I looked down, but alas, I was still me
What if we had a coup on The Toast and nobody came?
Thank goodness for this. I might have a baby someday and this answers so many of my questions. I will paste it into the front cover of my Penelope Leach book.
Yes. I am impressed and mystified by any parents who manage to keep their infants alive and not abandoned in the woods, but there is still part of me that is convinced if someone ever gave me the care of a child I would raise it to be perfectly enlightened on all difficult topics. This article shall be my guide.
Well I wasn't going to have a baby but maybe I will now just so I can make use of all those things I learned in college.
I ask again, WHEN IS THE PARENTING BOOK COMING OUT
I only have a couple years until the baby shower invites start rolling in, and this is literally the only thing I'd want to give as a gift.
Until then, Go The Fuck To Sleep is a half-decent alternative.
Have you heard Morgan Freeman read the audio of that? I often replay it when I need a blast of joy.
I'm pretty sure my mother used to whisper me to sleep with feminist theory, so this seems legit.
Will this work on puppies as well?
IDK, but it works on cats. Might be because they're already all about gender being a spectrum rather than a binary.
You've been spying at my house haven't you Mallory. HAVEN'T YOU?! LOOK AT ME.
I saw the title before the author, and was hoping this was a collaborative effort with the two of you.
It is one of my favorite things in life to speak to babies as if they were fully-functioning adults. But only after I coo at them nonsensically, so I guess things even out.
wow
have you queered anything today
I haven't queered anything today so I am officially more useless than a baby.
Okay, can someone tell me what queer means as a verb? I'm guessing it means being deviant/acting against the norms of society?
I had an English professor who would use it in a context of, "let's queer this analysis" and tbh I didn't ever really understand what she meant. But then she would talk about, like, ways the books/characters subverted gender binaries, or ways that characters might be secretly gay.
…..I did not love this professor. And I don't think that is what "queering" means (at least the "secretly gay" part). Sorry this has only probably made it more confusing for you!
Slashfic 201 can be a pretty brutal course, yeah
I always saw "queer" as a the subversion of heteronormativity and gender essentialism, and "queering" a text would find either these elements of subversion or ways to subvert it. Maybe queering IRL is actively trying to work against the heteronormative grain? That sounds a bit affected :/
But fun story: I had a friend I discussed a lot of TV shows/movies with, especially in context with fan communities. We used to watch TV and remark on the queerness within, and then high five and yell QUEERED! Potential example:
*Cap & Winter Soldier fighiting*
friend: this is super gay
me: QUEERED
*high five*
ugh it's kind of awful, it's like using "grow" as a verb as in "we need to grow our business" but JARGON-Y people fucking love it
Ooh. Can I digress to talk about verbs?? I'm not trying to be a jerk – I actually thing this is super fun and interesting.
The problem isn't that "grow" is used as a verb, but that it's used as a transitive verb with a direct object that is something other than hair or a garden (I'm growing carrots = fine; I'm growing my children/bank account/love of cats = not fine).
I'll digress with you, because I HATE "grow" as a transitive verb outside, as you say, hair and gardens. Even though consistency would suggest that it should either be entirely intransitive or entirely transitive, I don't care. There are other verbs that mean the same thing and are always transitive. Use those.
I've been fighting my inner grammarian in recent days, because language is descriptive, not prescriptive, and enforcing class boundaries via dialect leads to a world blah blah blah.
CANNOT stop hating people who use grow as a transitive verb when it isn't about dividing cells. Refuse to try.
yes, this, linguist brain fighting with prescriptivist brain. i compromise by congratulating myself whenever i manage to restrain my desire to correct people, and by avoiding that particular construction when i'm talking/writing and then being smug about it.
This thread brings me joy. I thought I was the only one who does this exact thing with this exact verb. Now every time I encounter it and want to rant about it, I will think on my sisterhood of anti-transitive-grow linguists, out there somewhere, sharing my burden, and find the strength to hold my tongue.
Oh thank god. I've finally found a home.
Yeah I think that queering a text means that you are subverting heteropatriarchy and/or gender norms in your analysis of it; queering your gender presentation can mean, for example, rockin' a skirt and a beard at the same time. That's my read on it!
riiiiiise like a phoeeeeeenix
<img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BnTdS7KCUAExxYx.jpg">
WWCWD?
I'm seriously considering getting that as a bracelet.
It means sodomizing the text, silly.
I am totally integrating this into my teaching strategies!
(I bet my evaluations will go WAY up.)
A+++++++
You're right, in a way! "Queering" as a verb can mean a lot of different things, depending on if you're approaching queer as an identity, or as a way of subverting norms more generally.
You can "queer" a text by locating queer sexual subtext, or by creating your own meta-text (as in, imagining a version of Bend It Like Beckham where "Coach Joe" fucks off and Keira Knightley and Parminder Nagra date each other). So in some ways "queering" media is basically like creating your own queer headcanon.
You can also queer a text by pointing out discourses/ideologies of heteronormativity and the gender binary and interrogating how they work or how they shape characterization, maybe even in ways the creator did not intend.
You can queer your gender presentation, as another commenter mentioned, by playing mix 'n match with gendered "looks" such as a beard and a skirt, or a suit and makeup.
You can queer pretty much anything by subverting "mainstream" understandings and intervening with the unexpected, the "perverse", the binary-defying. It can be a way of claiming agency in the consumption of media and images! (To not take them at face value but to imagine them differently, to see yourself and media not as separate, but as interacting forces)
I always associate it with 'queering the pitch' and the image I get is basically the heteropatriarchy in a old timey baseball outfit (just looks like some white dude, obvs) and right as he goes to pitch, some punk gay gender-fluid person runs up and bumps his elbow. Or maybe shouts something rude at him and startles him.
He still threw the ball, but it didn't go where he meant it to.
this article makes the 3 years I spent studying queer theory totally worth it
I regularly practice the critical interrogation of texts with my niece, now 16months old. The book "Dads" or some such collection of images of wholesome 80s yuppie masculinity is a favorite for practicing intersectional deconstruction. She responds to these archetypes of modern patriarchal pseudo-enlightenment by thumping their photographic faces and yelling "Duh! Duh! Duh!"
Wait until this baby turns 2 and starts telling this mom the differences between boys and girls. This mom's gonna lose her shit!!
"Your boyfriend has long hair. Boys aren't supposed to have long hair."
"But it's so pretty!"
"Boys aren't supposed to be pretty."
"And yet, darling, and yet."
My daughter's dad has long hair. So we got to totally skip that conversation.
I am still working on her about two guys kissing though. (Lesbians don't seem to be on her radar yet.) I never told her it was gross, so anyone who thinks we don't have compulsive heterosexuality in this culture, y'all come talk to me.
Blerg. I'm sorry we haven't made society a better place to raise a child.
(This sounds a little sarcastic when I read it. I am not being sarcastic! Society is phoning it in when it comes to training more humans! I am sorry about that!)
My friend's daughter was explaining to me and our darling, stylish, androgynous friend that grown-up ladies have long beautiful hair. I felt very guilty for my own long (more unbrushed and graying than beautiful) hair and settled for "Well, SOME grown up ladies have long beautiful hair but some ladies don't!" Children are haaaaaaaaaaaaaaard and they pick up on that shit so quickly!
NO kidding. I have never told my 2yo anything about "boys" vs "girls" except as a corrective- "Boys can have earrings, too. Anybody who wants earrings can have them." etc, but she insists on categorizing everything based on the crazy minute details she observes. She WILL NOT be convinced that both boy and girl friends can be called "buddies." It's heartening when I can see that the corrective explanations do take hold, though. The other day a neighbor kid said "It's a good thing we have my mom, or we wouldn't have anything to eat," and my daughter gave him a legitimate side-eye and muttered "Daddies can make food."
My favorite child is my friends' adorbs and sassy 3.5 year old, and she buck the gender norms on all sorts of shit. She also has two liberal parents who, when talking basic sex ed, are all "Most women and girls have vagina, but not all women and girls! Most men and boys have penises, but not all women and boys" But she's no fool. She lives in society and she KNOWS it's important who has a vagina or penis. So I'll be babysitting her, and we'll be at the park. Enter, 30 something man walking his dog. Toddler friend :Do you have a penis?
When we lived in California, my daughter came home from day care one day and asked where her other mommy was
They had read a book called something like "Molly has Two Mommies" and the kids all thought two mommies was a most excellent idea
They may be on to something.
I told my daughter that when she grew up she could have a husband or a wife. She thought about it for a second and announced, "I want a husband AND a wife."
I said, "Dream big, kiddo!"
I like, in moments like this, to think of a friend-of-the-family 7-year-old I had dinner with. At a buffet, in nowheresville Pennsylvania, announcing "I don't WANT a wife, I want a husband! From Africa! And we'll have children from everywhere!" . . . apparently said child's mom did not think this was buffet appropriate conversation, before I could get out my "good plan!"
.. it wasn't a bad plan.
I overheard my five year old telling her cousin "It's okay if a girl marries another girl. But I'm going to marry a boy. But if a boy wants to marry another boy, that's okay too. As long as they love each other" This is in a pretty conservative family of former Catholics that immigrated to the US and became evangelical for the most part, but a five year old doesn't know that. She just knows that people who love each other should get married.
My 5-year-old niece was apparently kissing her little "girlfriend" on the cheek at school. When other kids gave her shit for it she sternly told them that "Boys can kiss boys, and girls can kiss girls. Anyone can kiss anyone as long as they say it's ok to kiss them!"
Also, the first time she saw her girlfriend she said "See that girl? She will be my girlfriend and we will ride bikes and go to restaurants together. We will be VERY happy."
I hope they get married.
I worked at an after school program for a while and there was a kid with FOUR mommies. She bragged about it all the time and the other kids were super jealous.
I remember saying as a small child that I had three mommies. (Biological mother, grandmother, babysitter.) I was sternly rebuked by another four year old ("You can only have ONE mommy!"), but dammit, they were all my maternal figures, what was I supposed to call them?
omg some shitty anti-trans feminist twitter account just RT'ed this and was all excited and i'm like….you're not allowed to like my work, this baby is not making a comment on the immutability of gender, you assbutts
anti-trans feminists are not welcome in the lovely safe blanket created by the toast.
Should they arrive, we will turn our forms to ice, and our minds and hearts to crystal, and they shall not find comfort, nor shall they find food or water, but they will wither in our unblinking gaze.
i blocked their dumb asses
Or that works, too.
This is how I picture us
<img src="http://25.media.tumblr.com/b89ff1af02e42eccfeb4a8b0a989f78e/tumblr_mvz32sL7ZI1rkiy6bo1_500.gif"</img>
hahahaha whaaaaat
ASSBUTT
At dinner last night w/ extended family (I raised one of my children to adulthood! He gets a certificate to prove I'm good at parenting!) (I think that's how graduation works, right?)… ANYHOW, my 6yo niece is at her last day of Kindergarten.
She was telling us about her spelling test, which included words like, "the" "and" "he" "she" and so forth.
My spouse: "Okay, I want you to point at everyone at this table who's a boy and say "he."
Niece: "He. He. He. He."
My spouse: "What's so funny? I don't get the joke! Why are you laughing?"
The rest of the night was my niece laughing at my husband, sons, and father. It was the BEST.
I have a toddler and now every time he frustrates me I am just going to ask him if he's queered anything today, and then I will feel much better.
What about you, D? You queered anything today? ;)
This is perfect.
I'm just imagining all these being said in Archer's voice. Just cuz.
I hope all the responses you're imagining are coming from the wee baby Seamus.
You're the funniest writer I've ever read. Please become famous.
We're setting up the baby's room now (due in 7.5 weeks!) and I'm pretty sure what it really needs is an embroidered "gender is a spectrum of behaviors not a fixed identity." I'll even add some cute animals to the side.
Is there an Etsy store for this??
I would set this up — and embroider other Mallory/Toast-isms — in an instant if I didn't think it was probably morally unacceptable to make money off of Mallory et al.'s brain. Maybe if I donate half the profits to the site?
PAGING NICK PAVICH TO THE THREAD. Nick, can we have some lovingly hand-embroidered Toast Merch? Please please please?
I'm reliably ('reliably'?) informed that we are all from a post-structural generation so…. you might need to make peace with who that baby brings home.
Just PLEASE no narrative theatre. NOT UNDER MY ROOF.
My favorite fun is when they hit the mirror stage just as their only motor skill is going backward. Want! Want! as the mirror recedes at the end of the long hallway. Not that I've ever taken the baby and put it back in front of the full-length mirror to watch it happen again. Who? Me?
That's hilarious.
Erm. I mean, I'm sure it would have been hilarious, had it ever happened. Which it didn't. Of course.
You may be interested in this book: http://www.amazon.com/Experimenting-Babies-Amazin…
Um, I figured that was considered "gross motor skill development and socialization," so I do it all the time. While giggling, of course.
Theory aside, you have not lived until you've had to explain to six kids in the park, with another nanny present, that Baby E was has two mommies but she's not adopted, and then go on to talk about how babies get made, especially when it's not a mommy and a daddy.
Past job as a queer sex educator and present job as a babysitter come together in perfect harmony!
"When a mommy and a mommy and a turkey baster love one another very much…."
My kids and I are crying with laughter.
I talk to my children like this all the time.
Friend who also frequents The Toast tweeted at me and said "THIS IS PROOF THAT @MALLELIS LOVES US AND OUR DIFFICULTY WITH FINDING BABY CONVERSATION TOPICS."
Usually my interactions with babies consist of "Hey. Hey baby. Yeah, you. Baby. You're a baby." before someone takes a picture of me pretending to eat said baby.
My almost three year old daughter thinks there are three genders: little boys (all children and no I have idea where she got it from*), mummies (adult women) and daddies (adult men). I feel like I need to do something about this but when I try I get myself in a muddle of gender essentialism and then I think she'll probably have it beaten out of her in preschool so I don't need to do anything at all, except wait for the fallout.
*actually I think it's because I've always avoided saying little girls do this or little boys do that but the rest of the universe is so male-centric that she's just picked up the male as universal thing and run with it, despite all the female protagonist centric board books I've amassed since her birth. Sigh.
Mallory, you are a hero. I am going to print this and tack it up on my future child's bedroom wall.
Oh my goodness the pairing of the picture with the text is brilliance in itself.
OMG…This article is great.<img src="http://s04.flagcounter.com/count//kfoW/bg=FFFFFF/txt=000000/border=FFFFFF/columns=1/maxflags=1/viewers=P/labels=1/pageviews=0/flags=1/" height="1" width="1" />
MALLORY ORTBERG SOME DAY YOU WILL BE MY GIRLFRIEND
We have been telling our kids all along (not that the baby is old enough to understand it yet but the almost-5-year old is) that people have different 'diaper areas' but that boy and girl are something you decide, and you can if you want decide every day depending on what you feel like. So my daughter says she mostly likes being a girl, but all of her toys switch genders depending on her mood. She is very aware that she & I have the 'same style of diaper area' unlike her father & her little brother (who also share diaper-area styles) but she seems so far comfortable with the notion that this is just a physical feature. Sometimes she says 'But little brother is a BOY!' and I say 'Well, maybe, I don't think he's decided yet. And he can always change his mind.'
It has been an interesting ride so far and I am sure as she goes into kindergarten and stuff the social pressure will get larger, but I would really like to raise both my kids to be as genderqueer as possible. I am luckily in California (bay area) where this is much easier than it would be lots and lots of other places.
Oh and yes, 'diaper area' is a ridiculous term, but it is the one she picked. :-)
Oh my god, you are so awesome! Adopt me? Adopt us all?
Jesus Christ, I snorted with laughter for every one of these
Genius.