I was eight years old and on my way to climb the neighbor’s cherry
tree. The cherries were big, yellow and red and sweet as candy. I had my foot
on the first branch.
“You can’t climb up there,” the neighbor said, an old lady
probably born around 1910.
Confused I stopped, my brother and I had asked permission to
pick from her tree and she had said “yes”.
“Why not?”
“Because you are a girl. Come down from there!”
I stared in disbelief. Was she serious? She was, she even made my father tell me to
come down and I was called a word I didn’t know. “Obstinate” was the word and I
am not sure my father knew what it meant either. I was deeply hurt and
humiliated when I had to stand on the ground and watch my brother climb around
in the tree.
With a mother who refused to see her womanhood as a barrier,
I carried a strong sense that I could do anything boys could do. I could do
anything my brother did.
I am not afraid of mice or spiders. I love to work with my hands; spackle, hammer,
paint, dig in the dirt, chop wood, and skin a deer. The more physical, the
better. I still climb anything I can. I
have read comic books since I was a kid and I especially like Spiderman and
Wolverine. Everything my brother did.
I suck at sports in general;
to be honest sports don’t really interest me. I am very good at baking, cooking and making
preserves. And I cry at movies, a lot. I love little containers with sparkly eye
shadow, a new body lotion and to wear earrings. My brother, not so much.
For a long time I was a feminist for women. Boys, guys, men
step aside! You can take care of yourselves!
I would explode if someone called a woman a hooker or a
whore.
I would stomp my foot if someone told me I couldn’t do
something because I was a girl.
I would remark if someone expressed a typical feminine
stereotype and I did argue with both women and men.
If someone said, “Stop that feminist nonsense” or “Don’t
bring feminism into our relationship” or “Come on feminism is dead”, my eyes darkened
and I growled.
Then I became pregnant, carried a baby for nine months and
gave birth to a son. The meaning of womanhood changed and all of the sudden the
most important thing was to soothe that crying infant. When he cried, my
heart started to beat faster, my breasts
ache and I would do anything (read, walk half naked back and forth on the lawn
in the middle of the night, walk miles with the stroller and sleep with his
little body on top of mine) to stop that cry.
I have heard the same from many other mothers, but I have
also seen plenty of fathers who are the one who wakes in the middle of the night,
who hears the little whimpers, who would do anything.
I watch my son grow every day. He has changed from a crying
infant to a chubby toddler and now he is a little boy filled with imagination
and words. And now I am a feminist for his sake. Because being a feminist to me is to see the
person beyond the gender. To see that we are all different, not because we are
born with a vagina or a penis but because we are different people. Different
but not less.
And I dream of a world where my son never will have to hear:
“You can’t dance ballet! It is for girls!”
“Don’t cry! Boys don’t cry!”
“Pink is only for girls.”
“Don’t be such a girl. Don’t be such a pussy!”
“She deserved it the way she dresses.”
I want him to grow up with the notion that we are all equal.
We can all do what ever we want.
Our gender is no barrier.
He can like pink and princesses and hockey and ninjas.
He can bake and cook and fish and hunt.
He can climb trees and crochet.
He can become a nurse or a lumber jack.
I want him to know that girls and women are friends and not
only sex objects. I want a world where
he can grow up without being pressured by pornography or a false image of male sexuality.
I want him to grow into a man who will follow his heart’s desire,
whatever it might be, and never have to feel that he has to follow a norm. A
norm that is not true to his nature but created by old traditions and values.
Because we all lose when we can’t see past a person’s
gender.
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