The Emperors New Clothes: Gender norms, parenting and consent.
In the wake of another litany of sexual assault revelations occurring from parliament to schools, it has me thinking about how we talk to our children about gender and consent. There is at the moment a push for more specific consent education to be brought into our schools. This is positive and a great step forward. But schools are not the only places where this education needs to take place. We as parents need to start doing this work early. Really early.
Research into sexual assault has time and time again shown that the social expectations and roles that boys are suppose to aspire to contribute to a culture that permits and dismisses sexual assault. For more detail see the link attached, however in brief, traditional masculine roles reward boys who are aggressive, sexually dominant and unapologetic. These same social drivers reward boys who reject ‘female’ affiliated domains, casting women as ‘other’ and frequently ‘less’.
By the time our children reach secondary school where this new consent education will take place, their identities and their understanding of the social world have already started to form. They’re already playing with the various moulds society provides for them and they are well aware of what is expected of them as a ‘boy’ or a ‘girl’. Children as young as three can articulate gender norms and children even younger than that can respond to them. The idea that gender and any associated behavioural norms is a biological inevitability is frankly, ridiculous. The pubertal output of a young man unable to express emotions, dominate his peers and enjoy a sexuality based on conquest is not a biological inevitability. These are social outcomes that come from centuries of social learning and social modelling. This is evident in a wide body of psychological literature that shows things like babies who are exposed to more gendered language, show more gendered play. I’m not discounting the impact of biology entirely, however if gender did indeed proceed solely by biological imperative there would be no need for social reactivity to those who transgress gender lines. The fact that there is such embedded social persecution to poorly performed gender roles is proof enough that it is society that determines the parameters of gender, not the body.
Why is this important? Because if gender is an implicitly agreed upon set of social rules, we are the first point for our children’s education on gender and consent. We begin their journey in understanding who they are and how we expect them to behave. We also contribute to the social norms all around us. We are teachers to our neighbours, friends and family. However a difficulty arises of us as we are products of the same inculturation of gender norms as our children. These norms are invisible and often feel natural. As the leaders in our children’s lives these internalised behavioural edicts direct our thoughts and perceptions. We’re influenced by them and act (mostly unknowingly) in accordance with these rules, subtly rewarding or promoting gender congruent behaviours. It’s hard for us to notice these thought patterns, let alone overcome them. Luckily, we have one giant advantage over our children. We have fully formed, adult brains that are capable of reflection in a way our children’s brains aren’t.
Most of us will resist the idea that our thoughts are imperfect, or that we’re driven by forces sometimes out of our awareness. To show how automatic these rules are I’ll share two examples from my own experience. First, I swear that toy shops had more dolls in them after my daughter was born (she’s the youngest of my two children, following my son). I genuinely noticed dolls more once she was born. The gender rules that exist in my brain would draw my attention to dolls in relation to my daughter more than they did for my son. This is a common trick of attention. Most people will have experienced seeing the make and model of the new car they have just purchased with increasing frequency. This doesn't mean there are actually more cars of that model around. Rather, our mind is an imperfect information processing machine and our attention is directed by our internal world, rather than being an accurate copy of the world around us. As for my son, he loved bright clothes. Ghanda jumpers with flip crystals were his favourite things. As he aged I felt a growing sense of dread in my stomach as he wore these jumpers. I had to override my impulse to deny him these clothes. I could have been his first gender police officer, in the end it was his peers. Eventually the other children did say something and those jumpers were relegated to home wear only, and then quickly donated to his sister. A brief chat with one of our out and proud friends who wears some of the most amazing and vibrant suits I’ve ever seen saw a brief resurgence in the jumpers, but it was short lived. He learned his role, now he sticks to the navy, grey and occasional red clothes allocated to ‘boys’ and I no longer feel anxiety at his clothes.
Worrying about such low key incidents like this can elicit disdain from some around the real impact of these seemingly trivial societal norms. After all, calling a boy in a pink jumper a “sissy” doesn’t make you a rapist. I agree. However, these beliefs are building blocks for larger and more diabolical social norms. As our children age into adolescence aggressive masculine heterosexual social norms can kick in. The social rewards for being the conqueror, the most boyish of the boys takes over. All at a time when our children are developmentally more attuned to their peers than their parents. If you’re waiting for adolescence to correct toxic gender norms, you’ve waited too long.
It starts subtle and it starts small, but we’re funnelling our children into a mould that has some horrendous end points. Whenever we accept that certain behaviours are natural we’re starting down a pretty frightening path. Natural becomes synonymous with immutable, unchangeable. We’ve all experienced seeing someone’s pride at a boys rough and aggressive behaviours. He’s just a “boy, boy” has been said to me more than once. But what if we changed the narrative? Much of our understanding of gender is just an elaborate emperors new clothes situation. We’ve all believed the teachings of our fore-bearers. We’ve all accepted the “truth” that boys and girls are “just like that”. But what if we were curious about our own biased gender thoughts? What if we scrutinised the way we think and talk when it comes to gender and what it means to be a boy or a girl*? What if as parent’s we challenged our beliefs first and became models to our children? Could we teach them that ‘girly’ things and thus girls bear no intrinsic weakness? They are not “other”. Could we teach them that their worth is not linked to their sexuality but their rather to their humanity? Could we change what it means to be a boy, boy? I don’t know. But I think we should try.
Tips for parents
Pay attention to how you feel when your child does something gender incongruent. Do you feel a pit in your stomach. Do you feel anxious? Annoyed? Reflect on how this might subtly direct your actions.
Assume you are experiencing faulty thinking. Assume your thoughts are tainted by gender norms. To get a feel for how crazy our brains are I’d recommend going down a YouTube rabbit hole on things like faulty attention and social conformity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8BkzvP19v4
Model battling gender norms, fight the fight for your kids. If your kid likes something “girly” or “tomboyey” defend them when other adults say something. We normally make light of it and say something like “that’s a pretty old fashioned way of thinking”. Awkward yes, but it shows my kid that we don’t succumb to peer pressure on these issues.
What do you offer your kids (especially very young kids)- do you offer and enthusiastically play with toys of all types. Don’t fall into my doll trap!
What do you say to your kids?
Think of labels you’d use for the opposite sex and consciously use them more on your kid. For boys use labelled paise such as “that was so kind when you...” “I noticed how you looked after your friend when they got hurt, good empathy bud”. For girls focus on praising their strength and determination etc, note that parents tend to discourage risky play in girls more than boys, reducing their girls opportunity to build coordination and confidence. Try to focus on them as physically competent and capable.
Identify, label and validate emotions- especially in boys. “I can see you’re angry that x did y, that’d make me angry too” “I think you might be frustrated that you can’t get it right yet, it’s ok to cry when we’re annoyed”
Start taking about consent early. We follow the edict “you don’t touch people in a way they don’t want to be touched”. We’ve had friends kids who don’t want to rough house, fine, that law is immutable. Same with tickling, hitting, cuddling. If another kid doesn’t want my kid to touch them in a certain way, I intervene. This extends to other adults. Intervene on behalf of your kids and model to them that they can draw the line. If my kid is saying stop (even in fun) we stop.
More reading:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/27/the-trouble-with-boys-what-lies-behind-the-flood-of-teenage-sexual-assault-stories
https://www.respect.gov.au/
*In this article I’m reflecting on perceptions associated with a binary understanding of gender, I do however understand that gender is fluid and multidimensional.