The other day, I went to pick up the 3 year old at "school" (that's what he calls it). It's really a daycare for middle income parents. Though the people I work for are high income earners, they refuse to spend the extra money to send their kid to a daycare with all white rich kids. So they sent him to this middle class daycare with good teachers, fun activities, and the 3 year old's 4 year old best friend, Gia - a little girl whose favorite color is pink. The daycare is predictable but nice, and it smells like poster paint and play dough. The routine to entering the classroom is very specific, and the 3 year old reminds me to follow it every time I pick him up after naptime: First, wash hands. Then, pack up his cot and blanket and stuffed Clifford (the big red dog). (For awhile he was bringing his friends' Hello Kitty into school for naptime, but eventually had to give it back with a sorrowful goodbye.) Then, we must say goodbye to everyone and he signs himself out. This is where it gets especially interesting. The nametags for the sign-in/out board are color-coded: Yellow for 'girls', green for 'boys'. He signs himself in and out of school every day.
Now, the other day, he was sitting on a stool in the bathroom with me while I was on the toilet. His eyes never creep down to my privates when I stand to pull up my pants, which I had always expected to eventually happen in the 2 years of him coming to the bathroom with me. Out of the blue, he decided to tell me that his 4 year old friend, Gia is a girl. "How do you know?", I asked him. "Because she sits. I'm a boy so I stand up." I probed, "Why, because you have a penis?" He responded, "Yes." I continued, "Does Gia have a penis?" "No," he answered, "She has a butt!" It was at that point I realized that he simply did not know what the word for vagina was, and perhaps had never really seen one up close, but had seen that neither I nor his mother have penises. So, I told him the word, vagina, unsure if vulva would have been better. I decided to continue with the coversation, "Is there any other difference between a 'boy' and a 'girl', or is that it?" "Boys are green and girls are yellow. That's it."
Interesting. So, after much thought, this is what I get from his daycare insight on gender. He is well aware that there are body parts that make him different from his friend, Gia. But it only has to do with going to the bathroom. The color-coded system at school that separates him from his best friend, Gia, is arbitrary to him. It is all just matter-of-fact, this separation of gender. He sees it every day but does not understand its significance. To him, it is as arbitrary as I believe it to be, but he knows it happens, and the the words, 'boy' and 'girl' are the reason for the different colors.
He really likes Gia's love of pink and purple and emulates anything she loves in his own life. The other day he came home with a bright pink and purple Dora backpack with sparkles all over it. He was so proud of it when he came home from the store and began wheeling it around the house and putting things inside.
He is lucky. Nobody has yet told him that he'll catch a lot of slack for liking something so apparently 'effeminate'. Perhaps on Tuesday when he brings it to school for the first time, a classmate will let him in on the news - that pink and purple sparkly backpacks are for 'girls'. Until that happens, I'm reveling in his queer nature. He is naive and carefree, and I love living through him in his less gendered world.
But some day he'll come home from school with the 'real' information about 'boys' and 'girls'. And he'll try it out on me, and I'll deny everything he says in a calm, assuring voice. And so will his mother, a sociologist, just not as adamantly as I will.
Gender socialization bridges the gap between the body and gender - a gap that simply cannot be bridged adequately. The two simply do not connect. Society creates the connection in such an arbitrary way as green and yellow nametags (better than blue and pink, I suppose). One child tells another the rules, then another, and another, and soon they catch on to the rules of gender, claiming they have to do with the green and yellow or pink and blue, without realizing how limiting they are. But if some day I plan on raising a child, I want hir to live with this sense of genderqueer-ed freedom, if only in the safety of our home. The conversation is complicated, and the work is hard, I am sure. As for now, I sit back and watch this 3 year old child change. I'm not his parent. I can only do so much to preserve what he has left of his queerness before it all slips away.
This why I watch children ages 1-3. They are proof that gender should be a choice, not a force.
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