You are part of the problem.

[tim]

A Facebook friend linked to this blog post about why you're not a feminist if you think breast-feeding women should cover up, which I liked. So I read some other posts on the same blog. A post with the title "Pink, feminism and gender cues" caught my eye, because pink and feminism are both things that I love. Lo and behold, we have soi-disant feminists writing comments like:

"My son likes pink too. I think society has already gotten to him because he knows the difference between boys clothes and girls clothes. We do buy him pink shirts when they are available in the boys section (e.g. pink polo shirt from Old Navy), but I have found myself wanting to curb his interest in girl stuff in the past out of a fear of him being made fun of." (the author)

"I try to gently encourage more gender appropriate choices for his own protection." (commenter "Rebecca")

"My son always seems to grab for the pink sparkly shoes in stores too. Eh, I just tell him they’re for girls. I am comfortable enough in my status as a feminist that it doesn’t bother me to say it." (commenter "Lynn")

And so on. Does it occur to these people that by denying their sons pink sparkly stuff for their own "protection", they're perpetuating the social norms that make it dangerous for a little boy to wear pink? After all, if more of those boys got to wear pink, they'd be a harder target for bullying (safety in numbers, as well as normalization of what's currently considered transgressive). Does it occur to them that they're creating potential bullies who may pick on smaller boys later because those boys are getting to wear the pink stuff that they themselves were denied when they wanted it?

Does it occur to them that maybe, just maybe, they're acting not so much out of desire to protect their child as desire to protect themselves from possible discomfort and embarrassment resulting from appearing in public as the parent of a little boy wearing a pink tutu?

In conclusion: no, you are not a feminist if you tell your son he can't have something because it's for girls, any more than if you tell your daughter she can't have something because it's for boys.

Comments

[juli]

The socially¹-accepted way to get around "digesting is gross" is to chew with your mouth closed, and people who have a problem beyond that are encouraged to not eat in public. People who chew with their mouths open are, to a lesser extent as one gets older, ostracized. Likewise, the etiquette around breastfeeding has been covering up or doing it in a private area. But I think we've decided different points at which to frame the analogy, which is the fun of using analogies and arguing on the Internet.

1: All of this is mostly about middle-class white culture. My experiences with lower-class white culture and other ethnic groups is that neither of these taboos is as present in many of them.

[tim]

I guess I have a low tolerance for thinking the world would fall apart if there were more naked breasts (with or without babies attached to them) in public; I also have very little tendency to be grossed out or disgusted by things, possibly because I don't have much indignation left over for that after dealing with a typical day. I find it interesting, though, that there are more comments on this post about breastfeeding (which I just brought up for context) than the point I was trying to make; I'm not sure what that says.

[juli]

Breasts are divisive.

There are two problems, I suppose: the false dichotomy between women's chests and men's chests (and the chests of men who were assigned female at birth, etc.) in terms of public exposure, and the issues of sexualization around breasts, which also has the function of making some women who would breastfeed openly in public uncomfortable because of the feeling that they will be sexualized for doing so.

The other is to what extent breastfeeding is something that public establishments should be expected to make reasonable accommodations for (of?), and which they cannot prohibit on the basis of dress code. Given that there's no shortage of restaurants using dress codes to discriminate against the visibly-disabled, with no shortage of stupid slippery slope arguments that they use to justify their behavior to themselves, I don't think that can be ignored. It seems like some places have laws in place to prevent that, but I don't have a fucking clue how widespread that is.

Which kind of brings up how "gender-inappropriate" clothing and dress codes interact, which is really stupid.