PROGRESS: Parents everywhere are experiencing their own boy-girl storms in this time of examination about what the progression of what gender really means. SPM guest blogger Tara-Michelle Ziniuk has some observations.
Without qualifying this statement too much— I think of myself as a fairly gender-progressive person. When started planning to get pregnant I knew there was a whole new realm of dealing with society’s assumptions about gender ahead of me. When I decided on a donor, there were more than a few jokes about how there was no way I’d wind up with a boy baby. My donor, and friend, is a tough femme trans girl. I present quite feminine myself. Of course, there was no science behind this joke, it was just a playful thing between us.
Coming up on my second ultrasound I knew I wanted to find out sex of my baby-to-be. I worried my queer friends and community would judge this. What was the difference between preparing for a baby of one sex versus the other? Was I secretly harbouring tiny baseball jerseys and frilly canopy beds? Yes, actually— and I had every intention of offering my baby both.
I found out that my baby would probably be a girl. A friend exclaimed, “It’s an innie!” This was endearing, but other comments I received were less so.
My grandmother fumed: Why had she knit a white blanket when she could have made a pink one?!
A neighbour, pregnant with what she was told was probably a boy baby exclaimed that our kids could date.
And on it went…
Labour wings of hospitals keep tiny pink and blue striped hats in bulk, sized to warm the newest of newborn heads. This is the only time I’ve seen a pink and blue baby item. Once out of the hospital and in the world it is expected that babies (by which I mean parents) have moved towards one gender or the other (boy and girl that is, as genderqueer babies aren’t even on most peoples’ maps.) Yellow baby clothes come almost exclusively in newborn size. They all have duck patterns on them. Presumably, they’re intended for the people who don’t find out at the ultrasound appointment.
Really, 2011 and we’re talking about pink and blue? I was so sure we’d moved beyond that. And yet, in every retail store:
Baby boy clothes are blue, green, grey and brown. Baby girl clothes are pink. Only. And pastel pink at that. Baby boy clothes are plaid, khaki, button up and denim. Baby girl cloths have excessive, non-functional— and sometimes even dangerous— detailing. Satin bows sewn over buttons, ruffles at the bottom of pant legs, ribbons and sashes. Baby boys have sports, cars, bears, puppies, dinosaurs, robots, turtles and fish. Baby girl clothes have butterflies. And more butterflies. And sometimes human-like baby animals wearing pink diapers.
I gave my baby a classic “girl” name, and the traditionally male spelling of an effeminate unisex name as a middle name. I thought that would give her options. I joked that she could be a girl, or a fag. My queer friends were all over it. My straight neighbours fidgeted and looked away when I told them this.
I bought a red stroller. People assumed it was a hand-me-down or that I bought it in case my next kid was a boy.
I dressed the baby in a zip-up brown bear suit. She was referred to as “he” all fall by strangers. When she grew out of the brown suit, she wore a white bear suit the next size up and was instantly referred to as “she.” I bought her the cutest lumberjack jacket. The salesperson packaged it reluctantly saying, “Well I *guess* a girl can wear this….” No, she can not! She will spontaneously combust! WTF?! I joked that I was bringing new meaning to “baby dyke.” It didn’t go over well.
I took the baby out in a pink toque. She was referred to as my son. I added pink mittens as an experiment. Son, still. Apparently my baby was not read as a girl unless decked out in head-to-toe pink. At a dollar store the other day, my baby, in little jeans and an orange shirt, was called “he.” Sometimes I correct people, most times not. This time I did. The woman who had been commenting on my little boy apologized profusely, “Really, I’m so sorry, I hadn’t noticed the pink socks!” Before being ours, the pink socks had belonged to 2-year-old boy with lesbian moms, but that might have made this persons head explode.
Sometimes, for kicks, I’ll put a flower or headband on my mostly-bald infants head. It cracks me up. I never take her out of our apartment like this. Sometimes I snap cell phone shots, later to realize that many other moms do this to their babies in earnest.
There is some solace to be found. The other day I took my now-7-month-old to the park. A chatty kindergartner started up a conversation with me at the swing set. She’d been talking to me about my baby, using “he” as a pronoun for a while, when she asked me if the baby was a boy or girl. “A girl,” I told her. “Oh,” she paused for barely a second, rebuffered and kept chatting. “She’s really cute,” she said to me, before turning to the baby. “Aren’t you, Mister?”
- Tara Michelle Ziniuk
