Gender Coding Complicates Things.

It's been on my mind lately.

The other day I was stretched out on the bed, painting my nails. Shamus came in, plopped down next to me, and asked if I'd paint his nails too. He used to ask a lot when he was littler. Usually if I paint one he's satisfied, but this time after each nail he'd point out that I needed to do the next one. So I painted them all. Earlier that same day he was sitting on the stool next to the tub while I shaved my legs and told me when he grows up he wants to shave his legs too. And his beard. I don't find it at all strange or alarming. Why does this bother some people so much? Toddlers are so observant. They're taking in so much every day about gender and identity and themselves. It's like adolescence- Lots of experimentation and testing reactions. He spends all day every day with a woman who likes to do those things. Perfectly natural to mimic and emulate the things I do that he likes.

We went to Quickly later in the day. While in line, another kid (seven or eight maybe) nudged his mom and pointed out Shamus' nails. He wasn't negative or anything but Shamus looked at me very seriously and said, "I need you to take this off me right now". He seemed really anxious. He had been really proud of his nails and had me and his dad admire them repeatedly. Why did he suddenly become so self-conscious? I was about to go to school, so I told him I'd take them off later when I got home, but by the next day he'd forgotten about wanting it off. Now he seems perfectly happy about them again.

It reminded me of Chance at the same age. We were at the grocery store picking out new toothbrushes once and he immediately singled out this pink princess toothbrush. Why wouldn't I buy it for him? He loved it for like a month. Then one day he came home and told me we needed to throw it in the trash and that "pink is only for girls and princess too". Who knows what changed his mind about it. It was kind of a slope though, because after that, the playing with makeup stopped, dress-up become very one-track. Toy shopping inevitably leads to him telling me things like "Boys play with trucks and girls play with makeup" or "Boys aren't allowed to wear pink". Every time. I question why he thinks that but at five he still can't really explain it to me. I tell him pink is for everyone, just like trucks or Barbies, but he just gives me a wry look and shrugs and the topic changes. The older he gets, the more rigid these "rules" are becoming, and I wish it weren't so.

I'm hoping maybe I can keep Shamus back from that a little longer. It's hard to be boxed in like that. At three there are so many possibilities about who or what you can imagine being. I'm not forcing him to put on makeup or nail polish but I'm also NEVER going to make him put back the doll in favor of a monster truck. That just isn't me. I also don't think by letting him play the way he wants to play, I'm "making him gay". The key difference between parents who push the gender bullshit and then end up with gay children and the parents who teach their kids to be flexible and open-minded and then end up with gay children is, in what is only my humble opinion, that my kids are going to be a lot less likely to hate me someday or to be afraid to share who they really are with me.

If my kids are gay, or if one of them comes to the conclusion someday that they're really a girl trapped in a boy's body (something that sounds unimaginably difficult), I'm not going to love them any less and I can only hope that they can be secure about that. Love is an action.