Raise Our Babies Well.

 Over the last few weeks, I have heard the term “misogyny” more than any other specialized word in the English language. It has been all over the news, the internet , and of course Facebook. Misogyny: the hatred or dislike of women or girls. The word has come up more and more in the last few weeks because of a terrible crime in the US, but also the world. In the last month, there has been the kidnapping of hundreds of Nigerian girls, the stoning death of a pregnant Pakistani woman fighting for her right to marry for love, and the shooting of seven people in Santa Barbara by the now known Elliot Rodgers. What did all of these have in common? Hatred of women.
    I hate the word hate. It’s so strong and sounds so final. But I also think it perfectly describes all three incidents. Originally I didn’t think much about the connection. They were so horrific individually that it was hard to fathom that there was a connection. But there is, and since I now have a sweet, precious baby girl, I probably pay more attention than I used to.
   Elliot Rodgers left behind a manifesto detailing the way he had been treated, or actually not treated, by women. He trolled message boards and left videos detailing the ways he wanted to hurt people of the opposite sex. The woman who was stoned to death in Pakistan was in court at the time fighting for the right to remain married to her husband against her family’s wishes. The people who stoned her to death included her father, and the cousin the family had promised her to. And, of course, the Nigerian girls were swept into the woods and auctioned off into forced marriages, while the government sat back and watched for weeks. All of these things have so much in common, but the thing that stands out to me the most is that they all have parents. The men who committed these crimes were raised by women, mothers who I have no doubt adored them the way I adore my baby, who nursed them and watched them grow, comforted them when they fell, and packed lunches when they went to school. But I am convinced more and more that while we may not have been able to stop these events, flawed parenting certainly contributed to them.
   I am a part of a mommy message board that posts questions about everything from nursing, to what sunscreen to wear to when to switch to whole milk. There are also “rants” on these boards, that usually detail in-law problems, husband problems, school problems. I don’t normally respond to the rants, but occasionally read the responses. And then I noticed an alarming pattern. I noticed a lot of THIS going on within the messages:
“He’s all boy.”
“What do they expect me to do? He’s a typical boy.”
“He’s a boy- how would you respond?”
“He’s a boy.”
The messages mainly concerned things that happened at daycare or preschool, sometimes things that happened out and about (one was about a shopping experience in which the mother felt her son was justified in sitting on a display at a store) and sometimes plain frustrations with people who don’t understand that “they are boys”. The phrase “he’s a boy” was used to excuse: biting, hitting, talking back, smacking, not listening, inappropriate behavior in public, not helping to clean up.  Common husband problems included: playing video games or going out with friends instead of helping with babies, not helping out with housework, not being emotionally available. I never saw messages about husbands hitting or smacking (we call that abuse in the grown-up world) but did see plenty of posts about husbands who believed it was the wife’s place to clean the house and raise the children.  The responses were worse- they were often supportive of the behavior, saying that boys were just different, that people should be more understanding, that boys just don’t have the self control girls have. My question is, is that true? Or are we teaching them that they don’t have to have the self control girls have?    
      Then I started paying attention to how often I used the phrase. And found I was doing the same thing, excusing behavior based on gender. I was doing it in the classroom and I was doing it at home. Which is when I started thinking about this post. Because I DON’T have a boy. I have a girl. A girl who is going to grow up with the boys that are mentioned in these posts. And I NEVER, EVER want her to believe that because a playmate is a boy, he is allowed or expected to bite, hit, talk back, not help with chores or not listen to adults. And I think we can all work towards that.
    I started reading more about misogyny, about how we are raising girls in a “rape culture”, and realized that the people who are writing these articles aren’t crazy. They are right. When we tell a girl that something isn’t okay or appropriate, but we excuse a boy for doing it because of his gender, we are setting him up for a lifetime of believing that it is okay or appropriate. We are setting up our sweet little boys to think that it’s okay to settle something with fists instead of words, to disobey adults even at school or daycare, to move their mamas into second place. That girls can be treated as objects, and that they are deserving of whatever comes to them. Worse, we are setting up our girls to have to learn how to avoid the “wrong guys”, that they are going to have to work around boys instead of with them, that they will always have to be a little afraid.
   Of course there are religions that teach this, and sects of Christianity that preach women are not as good as men. And we aren’t able to fight all of them. But we are in a position to change the way people look at baby boys and baby girls. Are there differences? Of course there are- I’m not disputing that. What I’m disputing is excusing inexcusable behavior. Because that inexcusable behavior leads to adolescent and teenage boys who develop more inexcusable behavior. It leads to belief systems I don’t think we want, and belief systems I don’t think we set out to create.
    Think for a moment how you treat boys and girls differently, or even men and women. For one day, just be aware of it. Are you keeping them on equal footing? And if you’re not (like myself), what are you going to do to overcome it? Do you truly believe that it’s okay for boys to hit and girls not to? Do you think boys should be given wiggle room when it comes to obeying their parents because they are boys? I am trying to imagine how my parenting would have been different if I had a boy. Would I let him sit and cry longer because he needs to learn to “tough it out”? Would I refuse to let him wear pink if he wanted to?
    This is the very beginning of my thought process on misogyny and how it shapes our culture. I’m looking towards what I can do to reshape our culture just a tiny bit, in my tiny corner of the world. Maybe I can start by not saying, “Well, I guess he’s a typical boy.”