If by more "straight" you mean "less like a walking stereotype", then not really, and I also feel that neither is much different from telling them they can't go to school dressed like this
Two sentences in, and I'm already getting douche chills. Ironically, the only way this can be considered "gender fluid" is if the parents have already internalized the idea that wearing dresses is a female thing. Seems a little self-defeating. Is that what we're calling them now? Pink boys? For fuck's sake. Normal people would consider this "playing". You know, that thing that kids tend to do. Doesn't have to have some deep identity thing behind it, nor do you have to base your social movement around it. I used to throw my Spider-Man action figure off the roof when I was a kid. Somehow, I didn't grow up to be the Green Goblin.
If I stayed in my hometown to raise a family, then having my son go around in a dress would be a huge 'fuck no'. I'll be the first to admit it, I live in a rural town in the middle of the bible belt and some things just ain't done. There's a local LGBT scene, but the members of it for the most part keep a low profile. I've heard of some bullying towards gay boys/men in the schools, but that's the worst of it. Lesbians get a free pass around here for some reason. There was a kid in my school... Lets call him Brenton. He was born in Germany to parents that immigrated to the county after he was born. I hung out with him during gym class in 8th grade, he wore his hair long and painted his nails. He got some shit over it, but nothing like when he started wearing women's clothing to class during high school. The first time he showed up in a skirt and a women's tank top he was openly and publicly rejected by the rest of the students. I ain't seen the guy in years, but from what I understand via Facebook he left town right after graduation and is now doing well in Dallas. There was another guy, I never knew him well, but he was very feminine in his mannerisms and came out as gay after he moved out of town to work in a beauty salon in North Carolina. While not totally shunned, he caught his share of flack for whatever reason. On the other hand, there was... Ashley. Well Ashley was a very open, very butch (yet astoundingly hot) lesbian. She'd usually show up wearing baggy jeans and other men's clothing. In contrast to the two guys mentioned above, she was accepted and tolerated by all but the extreme bible-bashers. The faculty never liked her, but to be fair she was a shithead. The last time I saw her, she was sitting in a jail cell for armed robbery but that's another story entirely. So to sum it up and get to the point... If my son came out and told me he was homosexual or a cross dresser I'd tell him to keep a low profile about it, or move to a more tolerant atmosphere after he got his high school diploma. Not because I'd be ashamed about it, but that's just how it works around here. If you choose to display an alternative lifestyle publicly, then you're not going to have an easy time of it.
Oh sure he'd be bullied, right up until he kicked the shit out of the first bully. After that, do you think any bully in the school is going to risk being known as someone who got the shit kicked out of them by a dude in a dress?
Nah, in real life they'd just come back and beat him harder and he'd wind up doing web cam videos under the sheets about Britney Spears' flubs.
This is the position I agree the most with by far. No matter what weird thing you're doing, if you OWN IT and if you're confident, you usually get by fine. Who knows, your kid might come back and say ''I didn't like the other kids' reaction, I prefer to dress like the other boys now'' and that will be a lesson to him that sometimes in life compromises are necessary in social settings. It just requires that your trust his judgement (OH MY GOD NO NO NO ARE YOU INSANE?!?!?!?) for once. And if you're that worried about your kid getting beat up, just make a deal with him on the thing: you can wear whatever you want at school, but you have to take boxing lessons. A 1-2 combo and jacked arms will solve a lot of bullying problems.
This statement is far more revealing than you think it is, and if I'm honest, makes a good synedoche for the entire thread. Secondarily, I like how a group of people who spare no effort decrying the "culture of self-esteem" are now so quickly using it as a reason to disallow their children from doing such a thing. I expected as much.
These kind of threads really do make me want to ban everyone. Youth suicide rates are by far, by several orders of magnitude highest amongst young men who have non conventional sexual or gender identities. That's been an unavoidable fact for a fucking long time. Something like 98% of young gender or sexually queer men will experience addiction by age thirty trying to cope with their fucked up childhoods. If you have a son who is a little bit different in terms of gender or sexual preference, and you are actually a decent human being and you want that kid to live to see his 30th birthday, you should work with all the people available to you to help that kid find some peace and happiness in himself. And the conventional 'No son of mine will be a faggot in a dress' approach leads to miserable kids, major mental health problems, addiction and suicide. The current prevailing thinking from clinicians and pediatric psychologists is that when kids want to explore outside of conventional gender roles - you fuck them up more by teaching them shame and forced conformity than by letting them just run through that shit and figure out for themselves if it's worth the hassle. There are consideration factors - like if you live in central Sanfran, your dress wearing son will have a very different experience than living in podunk Alabama. That kind of shit has to sway your decision, but frankly I'd argue that it should sway your decision to move for the good of your child. I know more than a few good parents who've moved from backwoods hick towns to liberal metro areas because they had kids who were absolutely going to go through hell growing up hicks and decent human beings and good parents will try and mitigate that shit by moving somewhere that their kid can grow up healthy. But by all means, swing your dicks around about 'no child of mine'. I bet not letting you get an ear ring was EXACTLY like spending your entire childhood ashamed of who you are.
I recommend not fighting the instinct. That post was far more rational and considered than any response I've considered for this thread. Most of mine centered around the phrases "bigoted redneck" and "ignorant mouthbreather."
Wearing a "skirt" does not make you any less of a "man". Evidence: Scotland. We all know people should not be hung up on what a person looks like or what they wear, but it's rather basic nature to at least be mistrustful of something different. Unfortunately, many people are taught what is "different" by a prejudiced society. This largely also appears to be taught that "different" goes hand in hand with "threatening". Until that changes, and on my understanding of human nature as a whole I don't see any positive outcomes, I would suggest that teaching masking and camouflage should be strongly considered.
[edit] Lets try to stay slightly more on topic than yelling at the asshole. If we're going to have a cluster fuck, lets keep it moving in the intended direction.
Seriously? If your family has a stable life somewhere and you have a child that is a bit non conformist, you advocate uprooting your whole fucking family to move somewhere that they are a bit more accepting of your child? To accommodate one child? I have a lot of respect for you and your opinions as they are usually well thought out and very articulate. I may not agree with your lifestyle, but I always understand where you are coming from because you present it so well. For a moment I want you to think back on your life...did your parents ever up and move because y'all had a different outlook on life? If they did, what lesson did you learn? To run away when faced with a challenge? Is that the correct lesson to be sending? Every child is going to face challenges, when they are on a non conformist path those challenges are going to be even more....ummmm...challenging ( I really need a thesaurus.) Even if the child grows up in a cocoon of love, happiness, rainbows, and acceptance...they will eventually be faced by the big, bad world his/her parents moved from to prevent him/her from being ridiculed by. Should their lesson in how to deal with it to be run away? How would I deal with a son that wanted to wear a dress and play with dolls? I'd probably teach him to fight and stand on his own, not to run away to a safe place. Full disclosure: When I was 5 or 6 my favorite Christmas gift was a doll house. I loved decorating it and arranging the furniture. My father just about shit himself when he found out and bought me a circular saw...not the most appropriate gift for a 6 year old.
Jesus. Yes. My parents moved from a podunk town outside of another podunk town where Rodeos are the height of theatre, country and western is the only kind of music, paintings of horses are the height of art, and new things (including but not limited too technology, personal privacy, faggotry, books with words we don't already know in em, and motorized transport other than dirt bikes and pickup trucks) are considered witch craft, to a magical shangrila of acceptance and tolerance called 'The City' when I was a kid. The lesson I learned from that is that my parents loved me and wanted me to be happy. Also that the easiest way to win a fight is to not associate with fuckwits when you don't have too. People have been moving from shitty circumstances to give their kids a better life since the dawn of time. Do you think people who migrate from the third world to America so that their kids can have a better quality of life are sending the wrong message as well? The reality is that even in the big city, kids will probably be bullied from time to time. But if you think your son might be transgendered or homosexual - do you really think that a typical rural small town is going to lead to a happier or healthier child than a liberal metropolis? Shit, if you have a kid who is actually transgendered and you know before they hit puberty - it makes a fucking incredible amount of difference to start treating them with hormone blockers before puberty starts and correct gender hormones as they get older. Acting on that early changes lives in incredibly positive ways and spares them from unbelievable amounts of difficulty and suffering. But how many doctors in hicksville wherever actually know how to interview or counsel a possibly transgendered child, much less specialize in it? How many medical professionals have actual experience with hormone blockers for children? How many schools have gay straight alliances, and how often are those groups even remotely as influential as the local church? Reality is that most homosexual young men grow up isolated from their peers and typically lack support when faced by group oriented bullying. That sort of crap is drastically mitigated in schools that have programs like gay straight alliances and support programs oriented towards kids who have atypical orientations. And those programs are drastically less common in hick towns. You might teach your kid to be the chuck norris of fighting back, but older kids or kids in groups will still usually win.
I try to discourage my boy from squealing, not because it's feminine, but because it's fucking annoying. But what can you do with an 8 month old*? To be honest I'd have no idea what I'd do if this situation presented itself, but I can't say I fear the possibility. There's (possibly embarrassing) photos of me and my younger brothers at different ages (about 5-7) wearing some old dress or otherwise dressed as a girl. Odd considering my parents' slightly repressive religious leanings, but each time it was of our own volition (we just had a basket full of dressups), and our Mother just thought it was amusing. We all turned out straight as far as I know (jury's still out on me), so anecdotally I don't see much of a correlation of dresses=teh gay (though that's not much a worry for me either). As for me teaching my kid to fit into society's norms, he's shit out of luck on that front. I'll do my best to set him up for being social, but it's not my forte so he's gonna have to learn most of that on his own. As unplanned parents, me and the ladyfriend didn't exactly have our ducks in a row in terms of a parenting style, and while we're not completely in the dark when it comes to caring for a child, we just garner advice and do what we feel is right. We're a tad unconventional, at least around these parts; he's listening to death metal (thanks to his Mother) and I dress him in Pulp Fiction themed clothes (have to get the next size up for his 'Bad Mother Fucker' suit). I'm sure we're not the only parents just playing it by ear, I just hope we have enough sense to not mess him up too much. I'm pretty sure nature will take care of at least %50 of his personality, if not more, so there's that... Just because he's a kid, and "gender fluid," doesn't mean he's not a douche, it shouldn't be politically incorrect to say so. There's plenty of douches in the world, straight or otherwise, and they didn't get that way just when they were adults. Spoiler *The answer does not involve karate chops, apparently...
What if your son's gender fluidity manifested in a way other than fashion. Say declining invitations to play cowboys and Indians or stickball or touch football with the other boys in favor of playing house with the girls, or being one of the cheerleaders at that same touch football game. Would you approach it the same way as you would if he had the desire to dress like Donatella Versace most days?
Give the kid a kilt. He thinks it's a skirt and his friends think he's a badass. Problem solved. You guys make this parenting thing so goddamn difficult sometimes.
Should have clarified I was talking about the parents, not the poor kid. Sending a letter to every other parent in the school district, going on and on about how your child is a special little snowflake... ugh. I can get behind this.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.news.com.au/business/companies/target-misses-mark-with-hooker-clothes-for-girls/story-fnda1bsz-1226449942265" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.news.com.au/business/compani ... 6449942265</a> I'm in the camp that aligns with the above. In the same way I wouldn't want my 10 year old daughter dressed like a street walker I wouldn't want my son dressed that way either. As a parent you have to protect your children, sometimes that means protection from their dumbass selves. If after they are 16 they and intent on a course of action then that’s different. For me this “pink boy” phenomenon is right up there with those self satisfied bitches breastfeeding until the kid is six, a sterling example of weak parenting. Would you let an 8 year old get a tattoo or breast implants? But what if they really needed it to feel whole? No. My baby brother played exclusively with dolls until he was about 8 and insisted on “horsey wall paper” in his bedroom. My parents are pretty liberal so went with it. They never let him take one to school, despite at least one emotional performance that I recall. By the time he was 10 the phase had passed and I bet the little bastard is thankful he didn’t end up with the “doll boy” stigma through primary school. I still like to remind him if he’s giving me the shits and getting the upper hand.