"don't get dirty you are going to ruin your dress' while boys played in the mud: "that is not lady like" when doing something boys were known to do: watching movies where a man had to save a weak and fragile woman: growing up in the catholic church the girls were told that abstiance was their responsibility and the boys never really had the same message: in early middle school- high school ideas of men with many exual partners being manly but girls with the same were less valuable: women being given away by their fathers (women are property of men before and after marriage in this view)
it makes me sad that we push this so early and so often. we are obsessed with binaries and patriarchal systems are hidden in everyday life
In school, boys who chose home ec were mocked. I chose shop — not because I wanted to, but because I didn't want to be seen as feminine. I loved cooking and had no interest in woodworking. I gave up something I genuinely loved because of what it would mean about me.
It makes me sad that I was already doing image management at 13. I think about the children in my life and I want them to feel freer than I did.
My dad referred to anything emotional or gentle as 'soft.' He'd say 'don't be so sensitive' when I cried. Nobody said it directly, but the message was constant: having feelings — something I now associate with femininity — made you weak.
When I think about my kids receiving these same messages, I feel a kind of protective anger I didn't have for myself. I still catch myself using the same language my dad used, and I'm working on that.