Speaker 1: Welcome to Katie's Crib, a production of Shonda Land Audio
Speaker 1: in partnership with I Heart Radio. Hi, everybody, welcome back
Speaker 1: to Katie's Crib. I Am Katie Lowe's okay, so expecting
Speaker 1: Mama's know that the moment you find out you're pregnant,
Speaker 1: the question that shortly follows is what are you having?
Speaker 1: And everyone in their cousin is happy to put on
Speaker 1: their detective hats share their predictions. Oh it's a boy
Speaker 1: because you're craving sweet over salty. Oh it's gotta be
Speaker 1: a girl because you're feeling like crap. Then there's also
Speaker 1: the gender revealed parties, which have really taken off over
Speaker 1: the years. People are finding creative and at times like
Speaker 1: very dangerous ways to reveal the sex of their baby
Speaker 1: to be. And as a mom who was ecstatic sobbed
Speaker 1: when I found out I was having a girl, I
Speaker 1: get it, but I really I got me thinking how
Speaker 1: this pink blue divide affects our kids and what our
Speaker 1: ideas about what's normal for boys and girls reveals about
Speaker 1: our society. So here to speak to us today about
Speaker 1: gender norms and more is Lisa Sellen Davis. Lisa is
Speaker 1: an essayist, she's a novelist, she's a journalist, and she
Speaker 1: is the author of the book we are going to
Speaker 1: be unpacking today. The book is called Tomboy, The Surprising
Speaker 1: History and Future of Girls Who Dare to Be Different. Lisa,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me on Katie's Crib.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me on. I'm not sure exactly
Speaker 1: when this episode airs, but I am like three weeks
Speaker 1: from having a girl, unless she tells me otherwise. But
Speaker 1: there's inherently different conversations going on than when I had
Speaker 1: my son, and I am obsessed with Lisa's book. It
Speaker 1: goes along with the two seventeen op ed in New
Speaker 1: York Times that went totally viral. So tell me what
Speaker 1: inspired you to write tom Boy? First of all, I mean,
Speaker 1: the first thing that led me to write it was
Speaker 1: having an here who veered away from traditional gender norms.
Speaker 1: So in preschool, when kids were really starting to conform
Speaker 1: and boys and girls were starting to separate and play differently,
Speaker 1: girls were starting to play more with girls and boys
Speaker 1: with boys. My kid was not doing that. My kids
Speaker 1: stayed right in the middle, played with everybody, played with everything.
Speaker 1: You know, it was happy to play princess, but wanted
Speaker 1: to be the dog. By the way, since she's going
Speaker 1: to middle school in the living room, I just heard
Speaker 1: her read a story for her humanities class and it
Speaker 1: took place from the point of view of a dog,
Speaker 1: and I was like, she've got her wish. She's the
Speaker 1: She's the dog. So, as I do with all complicated
Speaker 1: things in my life, I wrote about that initially, and
Speaker 1: about the complicated feelings around, like being a feminist and
Speaker 1: wanting to have a kid who rejected all that feminine stuff,
Speaker 1: but then also being confused by it right, And what
Speaker 1: happened was over the years, as she continued being different
Speaker 1: from the other girls, um very very kind people who
Speaker 1: knew her well were assuming that she was trans or
Speaker 1: wanted a different pronoun her name, or to change in
Speaker 1: the boys locker room, and it was all out of
Speaker 1: loving kindness, but it was also so based not on
Speaker 1: what she said, but on gender stereotypes. So it was
Speaker 1: very confusing for me, as someone who was raised hardcore feminist,
Speaker 1: to see the way that all this stuff that we
Speaker 1: worked so hard to say didn't just belong to boys
Speaker 1: was making people think that she actually was a boy.
Speaker 1: So I wrote about that in there was a big response.
Speaker 1: I would say most of it positive, but the negative
Speaker 1: was so negative. And I think the combination of all
Speaker 1: those things, along with thinking why were there so many
Speaker 1: kind of tomboy kids when I was young and there
Speaker 1: aren't that many today, what happened. It's really that whole
Speaker 1: mix of things that led me to think there's a
Speaker 1: book's worth of material here. Oh my god, it's fascinating.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely fascinating. Um. You mentioned that there was some
Speaker 1: backlash from the op ed particularly Um I was informed
Speaker 1: that it was from the transgender community. Okay, So when
Speaker 1: you dug into that sort of stuff, the backlash, what
Speaker 1: did you what conversations did you have with them? Well,
Speaker 1: there were some people who wrote articles arguing against my
Speaker 1: piece and saying, you know, what I was talking about
Speaker 1: was how do we support trans kids but not assume
Speaker 1: that a girl who is, you know, pushing against gender
Speaker 1: norms is trans. And I had no idea that I
Speaker 1: was like, not just stepping on feet, but stepping on
Speaker 1: land lines with this. I did not know that there
Speaker 1: was a kind of feminist trans culture war going on,
Speaker 1: which is not monolithic, right, Not all trans people feel
Speaker 1: one way, not all feminists feel one way, but there
Speaker 1: was a very vocal minority of people, and so some
Speaker 1: of them felt that I had a son and I
Speaker 1: was abusing my son, and my you know, that my
Speaker 1: my son was going to kill himself and um. And
Speaker 1: and that was like, you know, actually kind of proving
Speaker 1: my point of like why why are gender stereotypes and
Speaker 1: gender identity the same thing? And UM, I don't even
Speaker 1: it's years later, I don't have an answer to that question.
Speaker 1: I think it's a delicate, difficult thing to talk about.
Speaker 1: Other people were saying, you're blaming trans people for adults
Speaker 1: narrow understanding of gender. So what I did was I
Speaker 1: contacted some of the people who had criticized me, but
Speaker 1: I also contacted a bunch of prominent trans people like
Speaker 1: Kate Bornstein. I contacted Chase Strango, who's a lawyer for
Speaker 1: the a c L who had written this very viral
Speaker 1: piece arguing against mine, UM, a number of trans experts
Speaker 1: and gender therapists to really say, Okay, you think I've
Speaker 1: got this wrong, Um, let's tell me more about that
Speaker 1: and um. And that was a wonderful experience because I
Speaker 1: did learn two see gender from multiple points of view
Speaker 1: and in the end. I don't think I learned that
Speaker 1: I was wrong. I stand by my original point, but
Speaker 1: I did learn how to keep those viewpoints in mind
Speaker 1: as I wrote how to be more sensitive, how to
Speaker 1: be more inclusive, and how to write about one of
Speaker 1: the most difficult subjects in a way that hopefully didn't
Speaker 1: make vulnerable people more vulnerable. So it was, it was,
Speaker 1: It was a growth experience. Can you all me like,
Speaker 1: just so that we're all understanding the same terminology? Like
Speaker 1: what who is considered a tom boy? What is that?
Speaker 1: What's the history of the term. Well, it turns out
Speaker 1: I had to have a basically a whole chapter on
Speaker 1: defining that term because it turned out to be so hard.
Speaker 1: What does it mean? So it dates back to the
Speaker 1: fift hundreds, and it originally meant a really boisterous, like wild,
Speaker 1: misbehaving boy because tom means tom type, tom cat, tom
Speaker 1: turkey means male type and boy ment boy. After that
Speaker 1: it started to mean a kind of lascibious like slutty woman,
Speaker 1: and then about a hundred years later it meant a
Speaker 1: misbehaving girl who act like a boy, and that was
Speaker 1: an insult for like two hundred years and in the
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, it actually became a term of pride,
Speaker 1: so much so that the whole many parts of the
Speaker 1: culture started encouraging women to raise their daughters as tomboys.
Speaker 1: It became a method of child rearing to create healthy,
Speaker 1: strong girls. But a lot of the stuff that we
Speaker 1: would say was tomboyish acting like a boy is so
Speaker 1: rooted in the time and the culture and race and class,
Speaker 1: and there were things like whistling was considered a boy's activity,
Speaker 1: So you would be a tomboy if you whistled, and
Speaker 1: you would be and you would be. You couldn't dress
Speaker 1: like a boy in the nineteenth century. It didn't matter
Speaker 1: what clothes you were wearing. But your clothes might be
Speaker 1: ripped or torn or shabbier because you've been playing baseball
Speaker 1: and climbing trees. So all these things that we think
Speaker 1: of as boy typical and girl typical they shift depending
Speaker 1: on what's happening in our culture at the time. When
Speaker 1: I think of the word tomboy, I immediately go to
Speaker 1: like characters like Joe March and Little Women, And for me,
Speaker 1: like tomboy is a positive thing. Yet boys who are
Speaker 1: interested in like stereotypical girl role norms. They're called derogatory
Speaker 1: terms like sissy for example. What is the root of
Speaker 1: this and what did your research reveal? Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean from the beginning, there's been the idea that this
Speaker 1: kind of latitude that girls have to cross over into
Speaker 1: boy territory that's tolerated or even encouraged. That's never happened
Speaker 1: for boys. I think we're on the cusp of it now.
Speaker 1: And there's never even been a positive word for a
Speaker 1: boy like that. We have nancy boy, we have sissy.
Speaker 1: That's you can right. No one wants to be called that,
Speaker 1: and no one says that a initiatively. UM. One of
Speaker 1: the things that really surprised me and the research was
Speaker 1: finding out that until a hundred years ago, young boys
Speaker 1: and girls, until about age six, when they went to
Speaker 1: school UM were dressed the same, and they had long hair,
Speaker 1: and they wore dresses, and they were lace and flowers
Speaker 1: and frills, and none of that stuff was girl stuff,
Speaker 1: and there weren't gendered colors. Kids were dressed according to age,
Speaker 1: not sex, because the way that people understood gender, sex
Speaker 1: and sexuality was that they were all mixed together in
Speaker 1: their minds. Thinking about a little boy being a little
Speaker 1: man was forced you to think about them as a
Speaker 1: sexual being, and they didn't want to do that. And
Speaker 1: the reason that that changed was that the fields of
Speaker 1: psychology and sexology advanced and they began to think of
Speaker 1: gay people as a classification of person. And the idea
Speaker 1: was that the Nurk sure made you gay, not nature.
Speaker 1: So they started encouraging boys to be in boy clothes,
Speaker 1: because God forbid, they were wearing dresses and those sort
Speaker 1: of icy things till they're five or six. Then God,
Speaker 1: we've done something. They might be feminine, and then they
Speaker 1: might be gay, because femininity and homosexuality were linked together
Speaker 1: in people's minds. So the whole practice of dressing boys
Speaker 1: in boys clothes and like never putting them in in
Speaker 1: pink and frills and whatnot is to make sure that
Speaker 1: they're not gay. And that was very hard for me
Speaker 1: to stomach. I'm like, wow, there's abba it's literally woven
Speaker 1: into our clothes. You know. I can't tell you how
Speaker 1: different um I've I haven't. I've been very fortunate and
Speaker 1: that I have not bought a single thing um for
Speaker 1: my baby coming. I have a lot of friends who
Speaker 1: had girls, and they sent me all their stuff it
Speaker 1: looks like the closet barfed unicorns and rainbows of pink
Speaker 1: and purple, and I it's such a struggle because the
Speaker 1: one part of me is like this is a nightmare,
Speaker 1: and the other part of me is like this ship
Speaker 1: is free, Like I don't want to buy anything like
Speaker 1: this is amazing. Um, tell me about pink and blue.
Speaker 1: Tell me about where did this divide derive from? Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, most people don't know what they're participating in,
Speaker 1: what the roots of it are. And then the messages
Speaker 1: they perpetuated by participating, they're not even awake to know.
Speaker 1: I mean they think that there's there's boy stuff and
Speaker 1: there's girls stuff. And I think now people say like
Speaker 1: it's fine, So what what's wrong with pink? And what's wrong?
Speaker 1: And you know nothing? The answer is nothing. That the
Speaker 1: problem is the messages encoded in the different toys and activities, clothes,
Speaker 1: and just the way we treat boys and girls differently.
Speaker 1: In our minds, we don't, but all the research shows
Speaker 1: that we do. And if you don't know the sex
Speaker 1: of the baby objectively, someone tells you you will treat
Speaker 1: that child differently, which is research that my family has lived.
Speaker 1: When people have have assumed my child was a boy
Speaker 1: or a girl. She has actually experienced being treated completely
Speaker 1: differently right in front of us. And I think, I
Speaker 1: think the thing that's important to know about the pink
Speaker 1: blue divide and everything that's lumped in it is, you know,
Speaker 1: pink has only really been considered completely a girl's color
Speaker 1: since the middle of the last century, and it was
Speaker 1: contested before. When they started gendering colors, maybe in the
Speaker 1: in the twenties. Sometimes some places would say that blue
Speaker 1: was for girls because it was associated with the virgin mary,
Speaker 1: and pink was for boys because it's part of red,
Speaker 1: and red is masculine. And these ideas were contests, did
Speaker 1: and debated, and eventually for various reasons, including the growth
Speaker 1: of suburbia and consumer culture in the fifties and the
Speaker 1: fact that Mamie Eisenhower, President Eisenhower's wife loved pink and
Speaker 1: decorative and pink, and these things happened together to solidify
Speaker 1: these ideas. There's nothing wrong with pink, right, There's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with unicorns, there's nothing wrong with rainbows. The problem
Speaker 1: is that when we mark things as for girls as feminine,
Speaker 1: we automatically say that they're not as good until like,
Speaker 1: you grow up and if you're gay and you're like,
Speaker 1: I love unicorns, rainbows and sparkles, and it becomes like
Speaker 1: you reclaim it as a pride. But what happens is
Speaker 1: anything that's marked us for girls gets devalued. And so
Speaker 1: another really really interesting piece of research I read was
Speaker 1: about how these girls who go through the really intense
Speaker 1: princess phase sometimes between the ages of three and six,
Speaker 1: and they only want to wear pink, and they're really
Speaker 1: like trying to perfect the stereotype and archetype of a girl.
Speaker 1: And then they turned six, between six and eight, they
Speaker 1: start saying, I hate pink, I hate princesses, and they
Speaker 1: go through a kind of tomboyish phase. What I learned
Speaker 1: from the psychologist doing this research of what they called
Speaker 1: the PFD or pink frilly dressed to tomboy phase, is
Speaker 1: that these girls are not just rejecting pink and pink
Speaker 1: frilly dresses because they realize they're still a girl whatever
Speaker 1: they wear, but because they realized that the world looks
Speaker 1: down on that stuff, so they start pushing that stuff away.
Speaker 1: Um and people think, oh, yeah, the princess phase is over,
Speaker 1: but it's actually not something to celebrate because they've actually,
Speaker 1: basically by age six, they've internalized all kinds of sexism.
Speaker 1: So in our house, you know, everybody wears pink. My
Speaker 1: husband wears pink, my super my super masculine daughter wears pink.
Speaker 1: My super feminine daughter wears pink. Rainbows are for everyone,
Speaker 1: barscles are for everyone, Unicorns are for everyone, and nothing
Speaker 1: is off limits because it's marked for one sex or another.
Speaker 1: We're just not doing it here. This is like a
Speaker 1: a safe zone for colors activities. No one's gonna say
Speaker 1: I won't do that because it's for boys, or I
Speaker 1: won't do that because it's for girls. Yeah, like you
Speaker 1: can't play with that truck or whatever. Like when you
Speaker 1: were setting up nurseries, I'm not sure if you did that.
Speaker 1: Were you super conscious about what colors went in there,
Speaker 1: what toys like, was that a mission for you or
Speaker 1: were you sort of like, that's not a battle I'm
Speaker 1: fighting right now, And it didn't turn into it until
Speaker 1: you had your daughter, and we're actually experiencing her taking
Speaker 1: the lead on this stuff. So I think when I
Speaker 1: had my first kid, I was doing what I thought
Speaker 1: was gender neutral, which I revised since because For me,
Speaker 1: gender neutral just means you ring everything. Everything's on the
Speaker 1: tape everything, there's paint, there's blue, and there's everything else.
Speaker 1: But um, I also got tons and tons of hand
Speaker 1: me downs, and I didn't know what I was having.
Speaker 1: So I kept the girl things that I liked and
Speaker 1: that and the boy things I liked. But I wasn't
Speaker 1: asking myself where did I get this idea of what's
Speaker 1: girl stuff and boy stuff? And when all the kids
Speaker 1: were segregating by sex and my kid went in the
Speaker 1: middle of them, and I was like, what what is happening?
Speaker 1: I still didn't ask myself, where did my ex Why
Speaker 1: do I have all these expectations for her based on
Speaker 1: her body parts? Like so she she came out female,
Speaker 1: and then I had all of these ideas of who
Speaker 1: she was going to be. Even though I was raised
Speaker 1: hardcore feminist. My family is filled with, you know, lesbians,
Speaker 1: like like they are all kinds of people not conforming
Speaker 1: to gender in all kinds of ways, and yet I'd
Speaker 1: kind of fallen into this trap of having sex based expectations.
Speaker 1: So what this book allowed me to do? What's question
Speaker 1: all of my own assumptions that I didn't even know
Speaker 1: I had because I assumed, as like a lefty and
Speaker 1: an educated person that I feel the same way. Like
Speaker 1: I I'm like, oh, I'm fine. I have so many
Speaker 1: friends that dressed differently and don't conform and love who
Speaker 1: they love and you know where what they wear. And
Speaker 1: I found myself with my son like he's being raised
Speaker 1: by two musical theater actors and all he wants his trucks.
Speaker 1: And I was stuck and disappointed as that, I mean,
Speaker 1: I went a little bit the other way, Like I
Speaker 1: just was like, are we really going to an l
Speaker 1: A Sanitation department party to look at garbage? Like we're
Speaker 1: going to look at garbage trucks? Because I just want
Speaker 1: to do the things that he's leading that bring him.
Speaker 1: He's three, right, Yeah, So most people, I sure did
Speaker 1: not understand how kids learned about gender, And neither did
Speaker 1: like my pediatrician or any of the grown ups in
Speaker 1: my kid's life. And we didn't understand that at age three,
Speaker 1: the great bulk of children don't know the difference between
Speaker 1: gender stereotypes and sex. The ones who are interested in
Speaker 1: like perfecting being a boy or being a girl. I mean,
Speaker 1: and this actually applies to some trans kids too, right,
Speaker 1: they want to prove their membership in the group, and
Speaker 1: they know what the rules of membership are, so they
Speaker 1: know that trucks are part of the membership. And and
Speaker 1: for girls, you know, that's why they go through that
Speaker 1: princess space. It's all about belonging, yes, And and we
Speaker 1: often think that it's like the the trucks or the
Speaker 1: pink dresses are what the bogy biological needs are about, Like, oh,
Speaker 1: there must be an evolutionary reason that girls love pink,
Speaker 1: that isn't it. The evolutionary impetus behind those behaviors is
Speaker 1: the human need to belong exactly as you're saying. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is I've been told that this is my group,
Speaker 1: and so I'm going to do everything I can't to
Speaker 1: master that group. And then it opens up these questions
Speaker 1: about kids like mine who why didn't she conformed? Why
Speaker 1: didn't she need to master the group the group rules.
Speaker 1: Eventually I was like, Oh, I guess it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: I guess it's a wonderful thing to be celebrated because
Speaker 1: she's not internalizing all of those gender stereotypes, and so
Speaker 1: I don't have to do all this work to pull
Speaker 1: her away from the gender stereotypes because she's living in
Speaker 1: this like limital space of freedom naturally, hallelujah. But then
Speaker 1: I had a second one. Then I had a second one,
Speaker 1: and that was completely different, right, completely different, totally different.
Speaker 1: I keep getting reminded. We had Glenn and Doyle on
Speaker 1: the podcast and her kids or teenagers, and she was
Speaker 1: saying in the teenage land, which I haven't faced that yet,
Speaker 1: I'm horrifying, but but that it's amazing to see even
Speaker 1: in her bathroom. The words that are used on her
Speaker 1: son's deodorants and things like that versus her daughters, like
Speaker 1: the sun's will are red, white and blue, and the
Speaker 1: words that are very active, you know, like let's acts
Speaker 1: are body odor and killing, you know, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: It's very conquering. And then the female one or like
Speaker 1: soft colors and very like sensual and words that are
Speaker 1: soft and like you know, and she's like even that,
Speaker 1: it's crazy. Yeah. And the boys are like you can
Speaker 1: smell like wood or nature like outdoors, and then I
Speaker 1: don't know, the girls are jasmine, floral, lavender, vanilla, vanilla. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: what is your opinion of gender reveal parties? Oh? The
Speaker 1: gender it's it's such a isn't it such a funny thing?
Speaker 1: And just all the disasters that it's led to. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, it just leads to fires, people getting hurt
Speaker 1: and like, I mean, this is a new thing. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean as someone who's been studying gender really intensively
Speaker 1: for a couple of years, you know, what are the
Speaker 1: frustrating things for me about the whole discussion is that
Speaker 1: most of us don't know what gender means. I mean,
Speaker 1: and not only that it means different things to different people.
Speaker 1: So we have these crazy culture wars that are really
Speaker 1: about people having different definitions of the same word, competing
Speaker 1: definitions that do different things. Gender means all of the
Speaker 1: expectations and the stereotypes, all of the ideas we have
Speaker 1: about people based on their sex. Then very often gender
Speaker 1: is used as a synonym for sex. So in a
Speaker 1: gender reveal party there actually it's really a genital reveal party.
Speaker 1: That's what you're you're actually because that's all you know,
Speaker 1: you know, even they're identifying as and you don't know
Speaker 1: what they know they have a vagina, yeah, and you
Speaker 1: don't know what they're gonna be. Like it doesn't you
Speaker 1: get an idea of this kid's gonna be sweet. This
Speaker 1: kid's gonna be you know, stay home and take care
Speaker 1: of the parents. This kid's gonna marry a nice boy.
Speaker 1: Your sex as a predictor of how how people will
Speaker 1: treat you and interact with you, but it's not a
Speaker 1: predictor of who you're going to become. Whatever we're celebrating
Speaker 1: when we have a gender revealed party, which is our expectations,
Speaker 1: our stereotypes, the ideas that we've imposed onto kids because
Speaker 1: of their bodies. That's right. I opened up the email
Speaker 1: saying I was having a girl. Yeah, and I sobbed
Speaker 1: cheers of joy. Um. I've always wanted to be a
Speaker 1: mother to a daughter, and um, whatever she's into, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't care if she's a tomboy or whatever. Like
Speaker 1: I just am really fascinated by a mother daughter relationship
Speaker 1: and really wanted to experiences that in my life. But
Speaker 1: I have to say, my son is a very physical player,
Speaker 1: and already we're like, well, we're so happy we're having
Speaker 1: a girl because he's going to learn empathy and compassion
Speaker 1: and be soft with her. She might not be those things,
Speaker 1: like you know, you know, that's the type of st
Speaker 1: kids are. Wrestlers. I mean, and why I mean. I
Speaker 1: think what people often say is if you have one
Speaker 1: or two kids and you have ideas about gender, that
Speaker 1: a lot of times those kids will cement those ideas
Speaker 1: and they'll play into it, and you'll say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is girls are like this. And but when you
Speaker 1: ask people who have lots of kids, they end up
Speaker 1: realizing like, oh, we can't just attribute everything to sex
Speaker 1: or gender the way we we thought we could. I
Speaker 1: think it becomes very overwhelming when the veil is lifted
Speaker 1: and you see how you're participating in these ideas. Um.
Speaker 1: I think what's happened for us is we've trained our
Speaker 1: kids in it so much that they call us on
Speaker 1: stuff all the time that I still don't know how
Speaker 1: to even talk about my kids sex or gender. Like
Speaker 1: when people ask me you have girls boys, and then
Speaker 1: I'm always like, well, technically I have girls. But then
Speaker 1: you're going to get an image in your mind that's
Speaker 1: actually not going to be accurate for either of them,
Speaker 1: because the truth is, one of them looks very masculine, um,
Speaker 1: but it's really very sweet and kind, and the other
Speaker 1: one looks very feminine and will beat you to Paul,
Speaker 1: and it's really aggressive. And like wrestling. And I think
Speaker 1: we have gotten to the point where we went from
Speaker 1: a hundred years ago, or you wouldn't even talk about
Speaker 1: the sex of your child too. It's all we talk about.
Speaker 1: And we can settle back somewhere in the middle where
Speaker 1: we stop attributing everything to their sex or gender. And
Speaker 1: I was the same way. I wanted to have two girls.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to have any boys. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to figure out circumcision. And I also I just thought,
Speaker 1: why is a good man so hard to find? It
Speaker 1: must be really hard to raise one. And I wouldn't
Speaker 1: know about that. And yet I got these two girls
Speaker 1: who are so different, and I don't know who's going
Speaker 1: to identify as what. Um. I've been hearing about parents
Speaker 1: raising their kids as babies, that are their children that
Speaker 1: are being brought up without gender designation from birth. Do
Speaker 1: you think that's necessary, confusing good bad? Um. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: friends with a woman doing that. I became friends with
Speaker 1: her from interviewing her. Her name is Kyle Myers, and
Speaker 1: she's fantastic and super smart, and um, she and I
Speaker 1: are talking about very similar things about trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how to raise kids without the imposition of gender messages,
Speaker 1: and but she's much more focused on gender identity. And
Speaker 1: so although she knows the sex of her child, and
Speaker 1: I think that, like the teachers know the sex of
Speaker 1: her child, she and her partner decided to raise UM
Speaker 1: their kids Zoomer with they then pronouns and let Zoomer
Speaker 1: choose a gender identity when they were ready to. And
Speaker 1: that kind of protective bubble of ambiguity I'm talking about
Speaker 1: is UM something that they tried to create in a
Speaker 1: much more comprehensive way. And I think that that's a
Speaker 1: fine and good way to do it. UM. I don't
Speaker 1: think most people are ready to do that, And I
Speaker 1: think that one of the things Kyle and I talked
Speaker 1: about was, let's say you still want to acknowledge the
Speaker 1: sex of your baby, you still want to use the
Speaker 1: pronouns associated with the sex of the baby. How do
Speaker 1: you still create all that space? And the way I
Speaker 1: do that is by talking about trans and non binary
Speaker 1: and gender career people with my kids and and really
Speaker 1: telling them like what I've been saying all along, which
Speaker 1: is the sex of your body is not a predictor
Speaker 1: of anything. It's not a predictor of how you're going
Speaker 1: to identify. Um, it's not a predictor of your sexuality,
Speaker 1: it's just it's your sex. I hope, I hope my
Speaker 1: kids love their bodies. Um. But I think that what
Speaker 1: Kyle and other people raising babies are doing are trying
Speaker 1: to create space for those kids. And I think there
Speaker 1: are different ways to do it. But I do know
Speaker 1: that the more I can remove the gender messaging from
Speaker 1: my kids worlds, the freer that they are to explore
Speaker 1: and figure out who they are and who they want
Speaker 1: to be and feel like everything's available to them. No,
Speaker 1: And I love this idea. Ce It's it's so are
Speaker 1: you talking to you? Because I'm like, oh, if she
Speaker 1: does do a princess phase and it ends, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be like, oh, thank you, good lord, let's get
Speaker 1: the hell out of this. The feminist in me like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is terrible, like these princess movies
Speaker 1: and the girl getting the guy in the happy ending.
Speaker 1: This is crap. And then you're saying, actually, it's the opposite.
Speaker 1: It's like not to push them to keep doing it.
Speaker 1: But I'm saying, like, it's not a bad thing, Like
Speaker 1: it's keeping all these things available at all times, right,
Speaker 1: exactly and never using girly as an insult. Right, These
Speaker 1: are all things I never questioned, right, these are just
Speaker 1: things I went along with and just assumed that the
Speaker 1: princess thing was bad, because, yeah, the messages in those
Speaker 1: princess movies are bad. But you know, they go from
Speaker 1: feeling proud of being a girl and proud of being
Speaker 1: feminine to feeling shame about it and having to push
Speaker 1: them away. And boys at the same age don't go
Speaker 1: through a phase where they feel like, oh, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say I hate blue and I'm going to wear twotoos. Right,
Speaker 1: it only happens to girls, and boys often get dig
Speaker 1: down even harder into I only do boy stuff because
Speaker 1: they've also realized, oh, girly is an insult. All of
Speaker 1: the discussions that are about toxic masculinity or about girl's
Speaker 1: low self esteem are all rooted in these early years
Speaker 1: of understanding gender and gender hierarchy. I don't think we
Speaker 1: need to keep going down this path if we become
Speaker 1: aware that it exists. We don't even see that we're
Speaker 1: on it. I mean I sure didn't. Oh yeah, do
Speaker 1: you think it's time to retire the word tomboy? So
Speaker 1: I think we're in such an interesting place with language,
Speaker 1: and I feel like tomboy was this word that did
Speaker 1: so much work for so long, because a girl could
Speaker 1: say I'm a tomboy, and then people would change their
Speaker 1: expectations of her. Oh, okay, well she's gonna play sports,
Speaker 1: she's going to climb trees, she's going to have short hair,
Speaker 1: she's gonna wear sweatpants. It made people leave them alone
Speaker 1: some of them. For some of them, it didn't work,
Speaker 1: especially trans boys who were being told you're just a
Speaker 1: tomboy and you're not actually trans. But I think for
Speaker 1: the great bulk of girls, for a century and a half,
Speaker 1: this word gave them what I called them the book,
Speaker 1: a protective bubble of ambiguity. They could just be this
Speaker 1: other person. And then the words stopped working because feminists
Speaker 1: were like, this word sucks. It's two masculines for a girl.
Speaker 1: And other people were like, we should call these kids
Speaker 1: gender nonconforming because it's gender and vitul and other people
Speaker 1: were like, just call them girls. The language matters less
Speaker 1: to me than stripping away our expectations of how someone
Speaker 1: should be, um, who they should love, how they should dress,
Speaker 1: what activities they should do, based on their bodies. That's
Speaker 1: where I want to put the focus. If if you
Speaker 1: want to call yourself a tomboy as a shorthand for
Speaker 1: don't expect of me what you expect of other girls,
Speaker 1: that's fine. If you want to say gender not conforming,
Speaker 1: that's great. You have this idea about me because of
Speaker 1: my body and I and I want you to change
Speaker 1: that idea. Whatever words we come up with to help
Speaker 1: people with that are fine with me. I think it's
Speaker 1: fine to retire the word tomboy, but I think we
Speaker 1: should do it with reverence and thank you for all
Speaker 1: the room it gave girls for you know, I totally agree.
Speaker 1: Um So, I keep hearing about countries like Sweden, um,
Speaker 1: which a place where they're introduce using this national gender
Speaker 1: neutral pronoun and they have gender neutral schools and where
Speaker 1: sex differences are de emphasized. What do you think it
Speaker 1: will take for the United States to achieve something like
Speaker 1: what Sweden has. I don't think that having like a
Speaker 1: million words for kids is necessarily what we need to do,
Speaker 1: but rather just stop making so many decisions based on
Speaker 1: sex and gender like they do in Sweden. Stuff is
Speaker 1: for everybody, hair cuts off for everybody, colors are for everybody,
Speaker 1: sign them up for the same activities. What's it going
Speaker 1: to take to do that? I mean decades of decades
Speaker 1: of repairing the psyche and soul of our nation after
Speaker 1: you know, this reign of terror and sowing of discord
Speaker 1: and hatred, and really good education for children that teaches
Speaker 1: them how to think critically and to how to ask
Speaker 1: where did my ideas of normal come from? And not
Speaker 1: feel so threatened by that? Right thinking critically, just thinking critically,
Speaker 1: Like you go past a billboard, who is that? Like?
Speaker 1: Why was that made? Who is that for? I was
Speaker 1: never raised like that to question what was being fed
Speaker 1: to me? Um, me too. I am also a regular person.
Speaker 1: But I feel like through this research, I I feel
Speaker 1: better about my parenting. I feel better about my decisions.
Speaker 1: I feel better about, like how to mitigate the messages
Speaker 1: that my kids get. Technically, I don't have a boy
Speaker 1: as far as I know, and so I didn't have
Speaker 1: to worry so much about like raising a person who's
Speaker 1: going to treat women badly. But when you think about
Speaker 1: what happens when you have a girl and you don't
Speaker 1: have to throw out your boy hand me downs, right,
Speaker 1: you can keep a lot of your son's clothes for her,
Speaker 1: So if it was the other way around, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: be sharing them. And now you're realizing, like, oh, there's
Speaker 1: all this stuff he's never even had access to because
Speaker 1: it was girl stuff and I didn't show it to him.
Speaker 1: And and so what kind of idea does that build
Speaker 1: in a boy's mind about girls, that their stuff. I
Speaker 1: shouldn't touch it, I shouldn't like it. What happens then
Speaker 1: when they are interested in it? And what kind of
Speaker 1: shame gets developed? If boys learned to appreciate what's thought
Speaker 1: of as girly, to respect it, to be interested in it,
Speaker 1: then I think there's a better chance that they're not
Speaker 1: going to have to deal with toxic masculinity later, but
Speaker 1: there'll be more respectful and kind and in touch with
Speaker 1: their own femininity. Because femininity, as we conceive of it
Speaker 1: in the society does not just belong to females. And
Speaker 1: we know this, we owe it. And yet like cries
Speaker 1: more than my dad, like nobody on the planet, this
Speaker 1: guy cannot make it through sentences these days. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: What a great model that is, How great that he
Speaker 1: feels like he can Oh my god, it's it's like
Speaker 1: it's crazy, this is okay. Before we wrap up, what
Speaker 1: would you like parents and young kids today to take
Speaker 1: away from Tomboy? It was the great intellectual experience of
Speaker 1: my life writing this book. I learned so much and
Speaker 1: my mind was blown over and over again. I got
Speaker 1: to talk to so many interesting people, and also to
Speaker 1: help more people be familiar with their work. I've always
Speaker 1: been interested in the construction of normal. In my family
Speaker 1: of nonconformists, normal has kind of an insult, So it's
Speaker 1: really important for us to ask where our ideas of
Speaker 1: normal come from and to decide how much we want
Speaker 1: to participate in that or not. I think most importantly
Speaker 1: for us to be aware of how much stuck we
Speaker 1: put in these bodies, how many expectations we impose onto them,
Speaker 1: how much we are participating in telling kids who they
Speaker 1: should be based on their bodies. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: that hard to undo it. I really don't. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it doesn't mean that you don't have to practice
Speaker 1: it every day, like you know, meditation. For the people
Speaker 1: who do that, I really wish I was one of them,
Speaker 1: or you know, or exercise all of the things that
Speaker 1: are good for you but hard to do. This is
Speaker 1: another one. It's good for you. It takes a little
Speaker 1: push because you're going against the grain. But a lot
Speaker 1: of people are feeling like culture is something that you
Speaker 1: can't change. But what I learned from doing those researchers
Speaker 1: that it's changed many times because we've pushed back against
Speaker 1: the restrictive ideas of who girls should be. And now
Speaker 1: it's time to bring boys along in that project. And
Speaker 1: let's see who our kids will be if they feel
Speaker 1: that freedom. The last thing I would want to say
Speaker 1: is near the end of the book, I came across
Speaker 1: all this research about how girls who are called tomboys
Speaker 1: in these research studies, and even boys who might be
Speaker 1: called sissies or gender nonconforming, the research showed that they
Speaker 1: did better in school, that if they were facilitated and supported,
Speaker 1: they tended to have more self confidence. The higher girls
Speaker 1: rated on kind of tomboy scales, the higher paying job
Speaker 1: they would have all the more the more creative they
Speaker 1: would be like. And that basically having a kid who
Speaker 1: is gender nonconforming, and I mean that not as a
Speaker 1: gender identity, but as a way of being in the world,
Speaker 1: that it's correlated to all this really good stuff because
Speaker 1: gender norms are bad for kids. So if you have
Speaker 1: a kid who is naturally resistant to gender norms, instead
Speaker 1: of being worried about that, my messages celebrate that you
Speaker 1: are so lucky and encourage other kids to follow suit
Speaker 1: and just do their own thing and feel those kids
Speaker 1: feel free. Lisa, this was incredible. Obviously, in this our conversation,
Speaker 1: I feel completely prepared and like I'm pro level at
Speaker 1: the gender conference. You already my son and daughter. The
Speaker 1: book is wonderful. I can't recommend your book more. And
Speaker 1: and I just thank you Lisa so much for being
Speaker 1: on katie'script. That was so wonderful. Thank you Katie. Everybody.
Speaker 1: I want to hear your thoughts, your questions, your comments.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. You can always reach me at Katie's
Speaker 1: cribba Shonda land dot com. Katie's Grim is a production
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