Children's Acculturation and Gender Identity

I have a friend with two boys, five years apart in age. They are both rather well-adjusted, and completely different in nature. The younger of the two, currently six years old, in times of stress takes on a role rarely permitted to be seen in most homes, and even more rare in school settings where gender roles are reinforced with a multitude of examples where both adults and children guide an individual's choices toward the "right" one based on their genitals.

This boy, who visits my own home on occasion, comforts himself by nurturing a small baby doll. Though sometimes he refers to his baby as "she," he has informed me that his baby is a boy. He routinely comforts it, cradles it, and changes its clothes depending on the time of day (pajamas for bed, day clothes for going out). He will give it a pacifier when he thinks it is necessary.

When I agreed to babysit both boys for their parents' anniversary, I suggested he bring his baby. I knew he had been particularly emotionally raw of late, and had been carrying around my friend's house for a few days previous. He was delighted, and we even talked about how to make a sling so that if he wanted to carry his baby around hands-free, he could do so without worry. The morning after spending the night, he came down, and I asked him if he'd changed, and he said he had. Then I asked if he'd changed his baby, and he ran upstairs to make certain that the pajamas were exchanged for day clothes.

The level of care and nurturing he takes for his baby is unprecedented to me as a parent who's visited many preschools, daycares, and elementary schools. Literature on gender roles that assumes that such things are "natural" have never spent time in a daycare for toddlers where the teachers will remove certain toys from a boy's hands and give them something "more appropriate."

This is acculturation at work, neither good, nor bad. How else are children to learn societal norms and what is expected of them? However, we as participants in culture-making can choose to make different choices as my friends have.

Then again, our children may decide that our assumptions and culture don't work for them anymore. Take, for example, this blog post by Babeland about children bending the gender rules of Disney fairies. Children who use the web site circumvented the gender assumptions made by the company that only allowed for the creation of female fairies within the game by making their characters taller, more slender, and giving them shorter hair styles and androgynous names.

The company, recognizing that there was a demand for male characters within the game, created them, but out of some fear of referring to boys as "fairies" calls them "sparrow men," as though they were a race unto themselves. This not only speaks to an assumption of the roles males "should" play in our society, but also a fear of anything feminine being displayed within young men that might be construed as homosexual in nature. Given the derogatory nature of the word "fairy," I'm surprised that they did not use this opportunity to return its original meaning to those who wish to use it.

Beginning the Search

Before I began my search for articles for my bibliography, I had to address the internal issues facing me. Though my comfort zones and past experiences have given me a wealthy foundation of information about human sexuality, and I could see many places in which that knowledge could be put to use, by my senior year I already had doubts about whether or not to continue to pursue this "comfortable path."

With our nation's political climate being hostile for the last ten years, ever since the Bush administration's theft of the United States, we remain uninsured, in debt, and overconsumers of our environment. All of these issues take precendence in my mind for topics that need to be addressed by the citizens of this country, and such changes can be supported by anthropologists willing to put in the effort toward public discourse and active changes on a community level.

Entering the quarter, I had already attempted to contact several individuals from previous Lavender Language Conferences who presented topics that were of interest to me. Only one among them returned my emails, and was able to direct me toward other resources, but had nothing to share from recent publications.

Not wanting to let this stand in my way, I began a systematic search of anthropological journal articles published over the last fifteen years with various keyword searches such as "gender," "transgender," "queer," "gay," "lesbian," "prostitute," "sex work," et al. Despite the diverse qualifiers I offered the search, the majority of my results turned up primarily international, regionally-based, and often highly biased returns. Again, I pressed on. I decided to branch out into other fields as well, collecting information from women's study articles, and also current publications in the broad media.

In many ways this will require a cross-disciplinary viewpoint, for there are some issues not being addressed by Anthropology today, and others that are only represented through the limited lens of a specific region. While diverse sources are important to gain a broader perspective on over-arching themes within human sexuality research, I know that I will likely be spending my in-public work within the local Seattle area, or at least somewhere within the United States. I am a firm believer that we must work on ourselves before we can attempt to adequately assist others in their goals towards region-based progress.

[This is, of course, a lot of jargon. Are you laughing yet Holly? Karen would be slapping my hands and giving me a lecture right about now.]

Another aspect of my initial searches involved a discovery of areas that I felt need further addressing or at least further research. While my first list of terms I wished to explore under the heading of human sexuality grew rather cumbersome, seeing what was already available in the literature and comparing that to recent news reports that concerned me, I found myself most especially drawn to a few core issues: decriminalizing prostitution, the criminalization of children who are eternally labeled "sex predators" for minor exploratory instances, and the juxtaposition of gender identity and sexual preference including terms like transgendered and gender queer.

By focusing on narrower topics, I can better explore where future work could have meaning should I explore it. While I remain interested in further studies of polyamory, the "kink community," pre-natal and post-partum sexuality, and childhood development, to pursue them would be narcissistic and what I consider "taking the easy path."

Nevertheless I must return to my original statement that I am now unsure whether human sexuality itself is even relevant to the more pressing concerns of food security and environmental damage from anthropogenic sources. No matter how much I wish to see justice for the people, it matters little if there is nowhere for humans to live or any resources with which they can survive.

Then again, I am unsure if I have the stamina necessary for work within environmental spheres. Perhaps in many ways, human sexuality remains an escape plan, a way of moving away from the real work that needs to be done immediately. An optomistic view, though, might suggest that if I am creative enough, I could work to assist in systemic changes that address both the concerns of individuals on a social justice level and the urgent needs of a globe facing severe changes over the course of the next thirty years.

STATUS UPDATE: Though in some ways I am well ahead of where I wish to be mentally for this independent study project, the actual reading of texts and creation of a rough bibliography is not where I intended by the third week. However, narrowing my focus should help me provide more quality research for each subject.