My grandson, Ayden, is 4-years-old, and he loves to wear a tutu.
His mother, my daughter-in-law, discovered this because she makes tutus and sells them online to customers around the country. One day, Ayden wanted to model one of her creations and she let him. He looks fabulous in his tutu, and even wore a rainbow colored one for the Pride celebration this year. He rocked that tutu.
Fortunately for Ayden, no one has yet to ridicule this beautiful boy in a tutu — but a boy his mom calls “Boo” on her blog was not so lucky. The mom, who maintains a blog called “Nerdy Apple Bottom” describes the terrible treatment she received at her son’s pre-school when he went to a Halloween party dressed as Daphne from the animated series “Scooby Doo.”
She writes about Boo’s anxiety over going to school dressed as a girl because the kids might make fun of him. Apparently, it wasn’t the children who were offended — but their mothers.
Two mothers went wide-eyed and made faces as if they smelled decomp. And I realize that my son is seeing the same thing I am. So I say, “Doesn’t he look great?” And Mom A says in disgust, “Did he ask to be that?!” I say that he sure did as Halloween is the time of year that you can be whatever it is that you want to be. They continue with their nosy, probing questions as to how that was an option and didn’t I try to talk him out of it. Mom B mostly just stood there in shock and dismay.
And then Mom C approaches. She had been in the main room, saw us walk in, and followed us down the hall to let me know her thoughts. And [her thoughts] were that I should never have ‘allowed’ this and thank God it wasn’t next year when he was in Kindergarten since I would have had to put my foot down and ‘forbidden’ it. To which I calmly replied that I would do no such thing and couldn’t imagine what she was talking about. She continued on and on about how mean children could be and how he would be ridiculed.
My response to that: The only people that seem to have a problem with it is their mothers.
The mom is shocked that her son had to learn a hard lesson about how cruel the world is from “allegedly Christian women.”
Honestly, it’s what she should have expected.
Christianity, especially in its most conservative or fundamentalist form, is obsessed with gender norms, and will tolerate little deviation from them. A 5-year-old boy dressed as a girl offends the senses — and breaks, what Soulforce founder Mel White calls, “God’s chain of command.”
In my book, Bulletproof Faith, I quote White from an interview I did with him on this topic. For conservative Christians, he said, the universe falls apart if this chain of command is broken.
“God created the order from God to Jesus, from Jesus to men, from men to their wives, from wives to their children. So men play a critical role in bridging the gap between the deity and the family. The human male is the person that God uses to bring the truth to the world and the family. If the man quits acting like a man and doesn’t take the man’s responsibilities — that’s what they call gays — then the structure falls apart,” White said.
As those Christian women at the preschool saw that precious little boy in a dress destroy their worldview of “God’s chain of command” they could not help but speak out against it. These women are so deeply immersed in a world of misogynistic thinking that they reacted reflexively. They probably couldn’t tell you why a boy in a dress is so wrong — but all their Christian training tells them that is just is.
Feminist theologian Beverly Harrison has written that the connections between homophobia and misogyny run deep because “the social control of women as a group has totally shaped our deepest and most basic attitudes toward sexuality.” That control is so complete that society expects “compulsory heterosexuality” and its only alternatives are celibacy or asexuality.
This social control then, Harrison posits, is at the heart of not just the inequality of women, but the inequality faced by gays and lesbians.
“We must acknowledge that it is through our socialization to sexuality that we begin to learn ‘fear of equality’ and either to feel ‘strong’ by lording it over others or to feel ‘safe’ by being controlled by them. By conforming rigidly to ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ roles, we learn, at a foundational level, to tolerate inequality.”
These Christian women that Boo’s mother contended with were simply trying to assuage their discomfort with a boy in a dress by lording their gender conformity over them. The sad fact is that these women are simply victims of misogynistic and homophobic teachings that are so deeply ingrained in both church and society that we never notice them anymore — until a little boy walks into class in a dress.
Despite their status as victims, however, what these women did to this mother is nothing short of bullying. Their reactions — even though they may come masked as “concern” — really spring from an unconscious place of deeply internalized misogyny. More importantly, these mothers are models for their children — and in attacking this mother for “allowing” her son to wear a dress they are creating more Christian bullies who feel free to attack anyone who steps outside of their assigned gender roles.
When we talk about the problem of bullying in our schools, it is not enough to punish the child who bullies. Instead, it is our responsibility as people of faith to look further into where the child learned such behavior. For the youngsters being raised by these mothers, we don’t have to look far. They spent all morning modeling for their children how you treat someone who does not conform to gender norms. You bully them, you harass them, you make them feel ridiculed so they will fall into line.
You don’t break the chain of this violence by simply punishing the bully, or his parent, but by working for deeper change within both church and society to end the misogyny — and the homophobia and fear of any gendered “otherness” that arises from it. That’s a tall order, but this mother has taken the first step by refusing to conform. The assault by these mothers has only strengthened her resolve to teach her son not to fear equality.
If a set of purple sparkly tights and a velvety dress is what makes my baby happy one night, then so be it. If he wants to carry a purse, or marry a man, or paint fingernails with his best girlfriend, then ok. My job as his mother is not to stifle that man that he will be, but to help him along his way. Mine is not to dictate what is ‘normal’ and what is not, but to help him become a good person.
I see my daughter-in-law doing the same thing for my precious grandson, but that will not make it hurt any less for him, or for me, when someone does, inevitably, make fun of him in is tutu.
