The Huffington Post recently posted a photo
series from a project called #ABoyCanToo, portraits of boys who pursue interests
traditionally associated with girls. The article, titled, “13 Empowering Photos Show There’s No Right
Way to Be a Boy,” praises
the project for “shining a light on kids who don’t let gender norms prevent
them from following their dreams.”
The photographer behind the collection, Canadian
mom Kirsten McGoey, told HuffPost that she drew inspiration from her own three sons, especially
the 8-year-old middle child, whose favorite activities are singing, acting,
ballet and tap-dancing. “He loves sparkles, pink, rainbows, reading, and has
never been concerned if something was ‘boy’ or ‘girl,’” she gushes.
McGoey has photographed 17 boys, her own among
them, whose passions range from baking to reading books to dancing onstage to
wearing hoop skirts. “Our little boy loves to do his hair with all sorts of
hair accessories,” reads a proud parent’s caption under one of the photos. “He
was born to dance and take flight,” reads another. “Our stage loving boy…
simply lights up when the lights go down and the spotlights turn on,” says a
third. The lesson McGoey has learned
from her photo subjects, the message she wants to convey, is that their
interests may be unconventional but they enable the boys to feel they are
talented at something and are valued.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this,
and there is no need for traditionally-minded parents like myself to freak out.
Young children are curious and should be encouraged to explore what interests
them – that’s how they learn best – even if that interest ultimately fizzles
out, as it often does. Sometimes what seems to be a kid’s passion ends up
simply being a phase. When I was six I wanted to grow up to be, simultaneously,
an astronomer and an archaeologist; needless to say, neither pursuit went
anywhere, for which I’m relieved. My 6-year-old daughter used to be a tomboy
and wanted to be the first female winner of American
Ninja Warrior, and I
encouraged that interest. Now she’s very feminine and wants to be,
simultaneously, an architect and a doctor, and I’m encouraging those passions
as well; but that doesn’t mean she is destined to become either one (although
perhaps she is; time will tell).
It’s unclear why the world needs a hashtag encouraging boys to pursue careers that aren’t normally deemed macho. Perhaps this is news to HuffPost and McGoey, but it’s not like boys have never done this, and without compromising their masculinity. Ballet? No one ever thought Mikhail Baryshnikov unmanly. Cooking? The vast majority of 5-star chefs in the world are male. Acting? No one ever accused John Wayne or Russell Crowe of being sissies.
Nevertheless, as HuffPost puts it, “#ABoyCanToo
aims to empower such kids to embrace their true passions, even in the face of
gender bias and bullying, and to change other peoples’ perspectives about
gender norms.” McGoey hopes this will spark conversations among other parents
about “restrictive gender stereotypes for both boys and girls.” But as
usual with such pleas to smash traditional sex roles, the celebratory tone of
this article and the #ABoyCanToo project barely conceals a desperate fear of
traditional masculinity and an urgent desire to eradicate it.
The radical
feminist antipathy to masculinity, which is becoming deeply entrenched in our
cultural consciousness, has made the breakdown of “gender norms” a social
justice obsession, and children – both boys and girls – will suffer for it.
Such activist parents are just as uncomfortable with boys being boyish or girls
being girly as some traditionalists they despise are with the opposite. The
problem today is not so much that boys are being repressively steered into
rigid, macho sex roles, but that they are being steered away from traditionally masculine attitudes and interests. They are
being told, falsely, that gender is a social construct without any biological
basis. Our cultural elites – who obsess over the buzzphrases “gender norms,” “restrictive gender stereotypes” and
“gender bullying” – want us to celebrate it when a boy flounces around in a
“Scarlett O’Hara dress,” as one of McGoey’s subjects enjoys, but they are
uncomfortably silent or openly sneering when a boy wants to help Dad rebuild a
car transmission or play tackle football.
First of all,
adults need to let kids be kids and be themselves. In time, they will work out
who they are for themselves – without conformist bullying, to be sure, but also
without social justice meddling to steer them in frankly unnatural directions.
Our most important task is to guide children morally, spiritually, and
intellectually to become good, decent men and women. It’s a reductive view of
our children and of our role as parents to obsess over erasing masculinity from
our boys and worry whether they are being properly molded to the chimeric
fantasy of a genderless utopia. That’s gender bullying, too.
From Acculturated, 7/15/16
