The unthinkable

In May, someone I’ve known for more than a decade was convicted of child abuse and related child pornography charges. I think for anyone who knows anything about where I live and what I do, you can put a name to this guy in a second. I won’t, though.

He wasn’t a friend, but a long term acquaintance and colleague, someone I respected and admired. I never had one moment’s suspicion about this man. I would have left my kids with him in a heartbeat. A while ago, clearing out my email inbox, I found an email from him congratulating me on my first baby’s birth.

I am shaken to my core. Not just because of what this says about the world, but because of what it says about me. Some while ago, I decided to respect my “he’s a creep” instincts, and move swiftly and impolitely, if necessary, away from men who gave me the heebies. I was brought up to be polite, to assume the best of people, to presume that my instincts were not terribly important. I suffered for that. Honestly, I have tended to know, at least in the moment, who endangered me (keep in mind that I don’t date/ have sex with men), and it’s been my gendered conditioning that’s made me unable to protect myself.

So I think I’d assumed that, while my children were small enough to keep with me, I could protect them too. And now I know, in the most direct and visceral way possible, that I cannot. My instincts don’t work. I’d have put them in harm’s way and had no idea.

So what can I do for them? Aside from never, ever letting them out of my sight? (Which, believe me, is an option.)

I suppose, I can teach them not to be like me. Teach them to trust themselves, to scream loud, and to tell, tell, tell. To expect respect for their bodies and selves. Not to let that first breach of their boundaries slip past in case they were mistaken, in case he meant it nicely, in case they’ll be thought uptight or rude.

And odds are, sometimes, it won’t be enough. Odds are, someone will hurt my babies. Someone won’t care. So perhaps I can teach them that it’ll never be their fault, that they can always tell, and always be listened to.

And odds are, still they’ll be hurt. Somebody’s babies were hurt by that man I trusted. I have to trust the world with them; I am part of the world that every other parent trusts with their children. So, while it’s a dead weight of fear that tempts me never to let them interact with anyone, I know that’s not the task. The task is to make them strong, and to make the world a modicum safer.

The forces of darkness

I’ve always thought of patriarchy (and am starting to think of kyriarchy) as a colonising force that has, literally, camped out in my brain (okay, not literally camped, but is literally present in the structures of my brain). I can send rebel forces in to resist those ideas when they arise; I can take land back; I can build my own ideas and clear space for those of others. But I can also, sometimes, be overwhelmed by the power of those forces that a lot of people over a lot of time have sent in. They hold their positions fiercely, and when my guard is down, they take their opportunity.

And becoming a mother was one of those opportunities. It’s all so new, every little thing such a new and specific challenge, and, frankly, I’m always so damn tired. To be the rebel mother, I have not only to be a mother, but also to be a mother in ways that, at most, I’ve only seen demonstrated by one or two people, or have only read about, or have only extrapolated from things I believe in other areas of my life. And if the rebel mothering forces fail, the ground will be held by powerful, culture-wide ideas I’ve been taught and have absorbed all my life.

I had smugly thought that being in a same-sex relationship meant I got a free pass on having to deal with gendered dynamics at home. And, yeah, my partner and I were together for nine years before we had children of ours (she has older children from a previous relationship), and in that time, we didn’t have gender-founded issues to address between us very often.

But then, I gave birth to our two children, and gave up working and studying (and then worked part-time). And I was tired, and I was Mummy, and I couldn’t remember how to question what a Mummy is. Ah, responds the colonised brain, a Mummy does everything for her child, and is happy to. A Mummy respects the working-for-pay partner as “really” working, and counts her own hard labour as something else. A Mummy doesn’t seek to be listened to as if her day really counted. A Mummy takes the day shift, and the night shift, and the organising, remembering, managing of the household, and thinks she isn’t using her brain.

I hate bathing my children. I seriously considered not writing that, because it’s supposed to be such fun. But I’ve always hated it. My partner, on the other hand, loves it. But for a long time, I thought I had to do it, at least some of the time, because it’s totally unacceptable for a Mummy to be absent from a whole area of parenting. It was a year or more later that it occurred to me to ask: why? Well, because I’m only doing this little tiny thing, mothering, not using my expensive education and my apparently-atrophied brain, so I must do it right, must love it all, must not burden the proper worker with tasks that are necessary rather than a fun extra to the kids’ day.

I’m working pretty hard now not to be The Mummy (a sort of bandaged zombie, right?). The howling toddler, the stroppy four-year-old, those belong to both of us (and to their dads) just as much as the joyous zaniness of two small kids in the dressing-up basket does. The broken nights, the vile nappies, the food on the floor, the dried-up felt tip pens, the friendship drama: we’re a family, and the children should expect their love, care, comfort and discipline from all their parents.

And I have a daughter, and I have a son. What will they think a Mummy is, if they come to be one, or come to be the partner of one? Will it be easier for them to resist?

As I left for work one day last week, Firstborn said mournfully: “You’re not nice to your children and you don’t spend enough time with us. I decide that [Partner] is my biological mummy.”

After I’d finished trying not to laugh at her, we discussed how my bio-motherhood is immutable, but that doesn’t mean I have to be the only one who spends time caring for her; likewise, because Partner isn’t Mummy (usually, though terms vary) doesn’t mean she can’t be the one who’s simply There. Or, indeed, that one or other Daddy can’t be that person, as well.

So I like to think I sent a small rebel platoon into her brain. I hope her forces are stronger than mine. I’m her mother, after all, and that’s my job.

How not to flaunt your childfree cluelessness

So, a friend linked to this Straight Person’s Guide to Gay Ettiquette, and to be honest, it pissed me off a lot.

A lot of it doesn’t apply in the same format to British queers, anyway – we can, for example, have our same-sex relationships legally recognised, though the author is right about how insulting it is when well-meaning people call it “marriage” when that is very specifically not what we were given.

But then it comes on to the question of children.

Another bone of contention will most likely be procreation. You have probably already noticed, if you have small children, that with most people who do not have them, a certain glazedness will begin to cloud their previously limpid eyes after about 5 minutes of looking at your baby pictures. This is because nobody but you is as excited as you are about your baby, and single persons who have yet to taste the joys of diaper changing are remarkably uninterested in the play-by-play daily drool and burp report. You have learned to adjust, if you still have friends. If you have noticed a marked dropoff in your extrafamilial social life, you may just have found the source of this problem.

Ah, here we go: a standard child/parent hater statement. Talking about children is dull; parents only ever talk about their children; if you want to retain non-parent friends you must never talk about your children; your non-parent friends are quite right to drop you if you don’t comply. Hey, I got a line on my bingo card!

A related, but different process of adjustment awaits with your gay  friends. Sure, they will happily dandle your little one and play airplane with him when they visit, but they will not take it well if they find your conversation revolves around the little tyke 24/7. This is because many gay couples would like to have children, but can’t, because we live in a country where judges think it’s more important that a child’s sexually abusive stepfather have visiting rights because the kid “needs a male role model” (actual words from an actual judge, no lie) than that s/he be raised in a loving home by two parents of the same gender. By prattling on obliviously about Janey’s first succesful trip to the potty, you are reminding them that if they ever do have the chance to toilet train a spawnling of their own, it will only be after some serious medical intervention and perhaps one or two long-drawn and vicious court battles.

See what they did there? Yes, that’s right. Us gays who actually already do have children either don’t exist, or can no longer be spoken about with the generic word “gay”.

Leaving aside “we live in a country” which, in fact, we don’t all live in, there’s then the assumption that getting kids as a queer necessarily involves medical intervention. News: turkey basters are in the cookery section, not in medical supplies!

And then there’s a bit that makes me want to cry:

“So do you and Rebecca plan to have children?” There are several possible honest responses to this question:

…

• No, because I’d rather not inflict a life of shame and ostracism on some poor little entity that never did me any harm.

Oh, that would be an honest response, would it? Those of us who’ve chosen to inflict a life of shame and ostracism on our children thank you for that little spurtle of self-hatred.

Basically, all you need to remember is that if you pretend that your friends can lead exactly the same kind of life you lead as a heterosexual, you are not making them feel more accepted and at home.

Well, quite. Quite. That’s quite the take-home, transferrable lesson, isn’t it? This piece is meant to have queers reading it with a wry self-identification, I think, the sort of thing that makes us feel at home and supported among other queers, so we can face the world with renewed strength. Well, I guess that’s something we breeders can’t hope for.

Never mind, though, because I need to tell you that Secondborn used the potty this morning!

Big Daddy is watching you…

Reading Anji over at Mothers for Women’s Lib writing about her regrets that her son doesn’t share her last name reminids me of a story…

See, my kids do share my last name. It was a no-brainer for me: before my daughter was born, not a single person with my last name had ever appeared in the records of Scotland, since 1580. Who wouldn’t want to be the first? And being someone with a slightly odd and very unusual last name has been a fairly big part of my identity all my life. I couldn’t imagine bringing up children with one of the frankly pedestrian options on offer from the other three parents. (I did offer to hyphenate with one of them, but everyone pointed out that that would sound stupid.)

This episode happened when we went to register Secondborn. (I don’t recall it happening with Firstborn, which is odd.)

The registrar had filled in all the details of Secondborn’s names and biological parentage on the computer. She turned the screen towards me and his bio-dad and asked if we were absolutely sure that these were the details we wanted, as after she clicked the button, there was no going back. Yes, we agreed. She clicked. And a pop-up window appeared:

Child’s surname is not the same as father’s. Continue? Yes/ No

Yes, that’s right. The patriarchy is actually programmed in to the registration system. Wow.

Hobbled

Another post about buying stuff, of course. These pics are from December, actually, but: Here are some boots I wanted to buy for Firstborn – cute, and zip-up so she might actually manage them herself:

Until I saw the soles:

Seriously? In Scotland, in winter, for a child of four? No grip at all?

So we got her these:

Which obviously were from the “boys” section of the shop.

It isn’t the first time I’ve notices that shoes marketed to girls often have no tread on the sole, but with winter boots it seems even more marked.

I don’t think there’s much more I need to say about it than that. If little girls try to run or climb, they clearly deserve to fall and be taught a lesson.

Inheritances and taffeta

Just a quick link for you from the excreble Guardian Family supplement:
Gay Godfathers Rule

Oh, where to begin? With the stereotype of gay men as childless, rich and brimming with “good taste” and bonhomie? With the cheerful encouragement by the mothers of the writer’s (three-out-of-four) female godchildren that he will, better than any actual woman, police conventional femininity? With the fact that the article might be mocking the parents who think in this stupid way about their fabulous gay friends, but is probably dripping with self-hate? Because he talks about his status as a qualified counsellor and the experience of growing up gay and isolated, but the quotes from the parents are all about inheritances and taffeta.

My kids have gay actual fathers, as well as, in Secondborn’s case, a gay Oddfather.  Just occasionally, people take my comment that one of Firstborn’s dads is much better at plaiting her hair than I am, and run with it. Gay men have such flair for these things, don’t they? I bet she’ll have lovely clothes as she grows up. They’re sorely disappointed when I point out that he works in tech support and keeps  a pile of What Car magazine in the downstairs toilet. Not to mention that he’s a good feminist ally.

I still have a shred of hope that this is a belated April Fool or, perhaps more likely, that all of the Guardian weekend supplements have been infiltrated by performance artists literally making a mockery of liberal Middle England. If not, I’ll get back to you when I’ve finished bashing my head off the wall.

(I can’t, in all seriousness, actually manage to write “hat tip”, but I got the link and a healthy dose of articulate rage from the fabulous Glitzfrau.)

Sacrificing choice

So, I wrote this article for the F Word, and there have been comments (scroll down – that’s not all the comments I’ve had, though). Mostly, actually, supportive and pleased that someone’s talking about breastfeeding from a feminist perspective. A few have disagreed with my take, and this one I’d like to address:

On that, I can’t see how ‘battling through’ breastfeeding when it is agony is healthy, and it feeds worryingly into patriarchy’s ‘mother as martyr’ dynamic

And then, of course, there’s the now infamous Case Against Breastfeeding article. In that, too, Hannah Rosin frames breastfeeding as a “compulsory self-sacrifice”.

Okay, so, say I’d written an article about becoming a mechanic. I initially found the work really physically hard. Because I hadn’t yet gained all the skills I needed, I burned my arm on a hot engine.  I hated it.  I dragged myself into work every day for a month. But this is what I’d always wanted.  I was determined to stick with it. Gradually I gained skills, got strong, proved to be really good at this. Now I’m making progress in my career and my sense of self has been transformed. Who would have thought someone like me (a woman, someone who doubted herself) could do this? Wow! Feminist role model; personal triumph.

Or I was a doctor. Punishing hours; awful things happen; many skills to learn. But I got good at this, and people got better! All that early hard work has made me fulfilled, skilled and able to help other people. Isn’t it great that there are women gaining those skills and doing those jobs?

Say I was a nurse. Hard physical work; hard emotional work; lots to learn. But I learned, grew, and got huge emotional and intellectual satisfaction from my work. That’s a  bit sus, isn’t it? Emotional satisfaction from nursing? From doing a traditionally female job of looking after other people?

But in fact, I am not a mechanic, a doctor or a nurse. I’m a breastfeeding mother. I get huge emotional rewards from it; I feel like it’s a worthwhile thing to be doing; I know, also, that it is the best feeding option for my children, and a straightforward and healthy way for them to bond with their mother. But that’s suspicious. Going through difficulties to succeed at nurturing my own children is the wrong kind of narrative for a feminist to take pride in.

It’s got to  be a different story. We have framed so much of feminism as about choice; so much of feminism is about choice. But a narrative of motherhood can’t be like a narrative of a profession. Motherhood isn’t entirely abstractable – you have to be someone’s mother. Motherhood is a relationship, or a web of relationships, not a qualification. It’s unfair: you just do  it, you just are that kid’s mother, whether you’re better than the infertile woman next door or not. Furthermore, since you are that kid’s mother, there are things you can do that nobody else (pretty much) can do. And breastfeeding is a key one there. So, to a degree, there is no choice: the best food for your child is one only you can make (wet nurses and milk banks being vanishingly rare options). Which is a bummer when it’s hard to do, because of work outside the home, because of pain, because of inhibition, because of hating it.

Yes, it’s every mother’s choice to breastfeed or not. But let’s not pretend it’s a neutral choice, or that it’s a choice made in a vacuum.  Let’s not deny evidence and silence individual stories in order to fit in with a currently orthodox feminist notion, any more than we silence feminist voices to fit in with the patriarchy. Let’s also be clear that demonising any broad sweep of opnion, be that breastfeeding advocacy or formula-feeding advocacy, is a stupid move. I’ve never said formula feeding mothers are “selfish” or that I “pity” them, despite both those words being used in comments to my article.

There are a lot of problems with the notion of “choice feminism” (oh, so many problems…). Breastfeeding brings some of those to the fore very actutely. Let’s react like a mature, self-confident feminist movement and examine those problems. Meantimes, I’ll continue to breastfeed and other people will continue to interpret that in ways that are about them, not me, and definitely not my children.

Click to gender

That’s it. My relationship with Early Learning Centre has been strained for some time  now (see previous post on the pink/blue issue), but I’ve finally decided to end it. You see, it’s the “filter by gender” thing. Yes, I know it’s been there for a while, but today I’m trying to buy a tea set for Secondborn’s second birthday, and this time, it’s personal.

“Dressing up and roleplay”
Items for girls: 118
Items for boys: 73
Items for both: 72

“Learning and books”
Items for girls: 212
Items for boys: 203
Items for both: 201

“Cars, trains and construction”
Items for girls: 81
Items for boys: 122
Items for both: 81

I particularly like the cases where “both” is fewer than the smaller of the “boys”/”girls” options. You can’t just add them together. Some of that pink stuff is so toxic it can cause penises to spontaneously drop off. And, yes, imaginative play and reading are for girls, while spatial skills are for boys.

ELC is exclusively for kids under 5. At what point, with what evidence, will people figure out that “natural” gendered preferences could be fully explained by this shit?

It’s not just them, of course. Loads of sites offer gender-filtered search, or boys’ and girls’ categories, particularly when it comes to imaginative play or dressing up toys. There’s something odd about parents/ other toy-buyers not being trusted to perpetrate gender stereotypes themselves, isn’t there? Anyway. I’m boycotting. It’s over between me and ELC, but also all those other crappy infant gender programming sites.  Boycotts’r'us.

Poo, bum, willy

Obviously, all radical mothers, particularly those interested in sex-positivity and queer liberation, should read Susie Bright’s blog. A while ago, she was writing about the fact that “clitoris” is banned from Google’s safe search, while “penis” is not. Here is a list of all of the banned words. It also includes “anus”. I guess that’s the final admission that the anus is, in fact, for sex.

I want to see the GoogleMap of the human body. Obviously, it’ll be clothed, because both “nude” and “naked” are banned words (which does at least keep our children safe from Jamie Oliver’s early work). There’s no asshole, though there may be an arsehole, defecation being okay for Brits but not Americans. Oh, it’s as you would expect: “clitoris” is the only banned word which is the medically accepted one for the body part in question. And, this may be an error on the part of the Banned Words blogger, but they seem to have banned a misspelling of “cunnilingus”.

I’m looking for some queer-family-affirmative books for Christmas/ Solstice presents for the kids, and kept coming across The Family Book by Todd Parr, aiming to show the wonderful diversity of families. Amazon’s Look Inside feature reveals the first page here: while families may take many forms, all families like to hug each other.

As a middle-class British person, I’d like to lay a formal objection to that. And, more seriously, it’s hard enough to grow up in a family where affection isn’t often overt or physical without being told it’s actually not a family at all.

But also, it’s interesting what writers think are crucial things that families have in common, and are thus the key things to represent in an “our queer families are just like your non-queer families” book. “Do they work? Do they play? Do they cook? Do they cough?”, indeed.

I’ll post reviews when I’ve got the books, but in the meantime, buy One Dad, Two Dads, Brown Dad, Blue Dads (from which the above quote comes), because that’s just excellent.