Right now Bean is wearing a powder blue t-shirt with a picture of ballet slippers on it, pink leggings, powder blue socks, and a black cotton skirt. He's on the floor of the dining room assembling train tracks and yelling at the top of his lungs.
"Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!"
He's not actually hurt, though he has loudly claimed that he is. It's like sharing the room with a barking coyote. He's since moved on to staging what sounds like an elaborate railway accident.
If it weren't for the outfit, no one would think twice if they observed him right now. His behaviour is all "boy." And yet because he's wearing a skirt, I'm pretty sure that the average person might well look askance until someone explained it to them.
I am off work until Tuesday evening, and incredibly happy to be home. It's been a rough three weeks since I started this new job. A car accident for my girlfriend, a fried computer (hers, not mine), and the new commute for me have all contributed to a household filled with stress. So being home for four days is giving all of us a bit of a break.
Tomorrow is the birthday of Bean's grandfather, known as Pake ("Pah-kuh"), which is Frisian (or West Frisian) for "grandfather." So while my girlfriend went out to get birthday presents for him, Bean and I went for a long walk with Sergent, my seven year old husky-collie mix. Sergent is a sweetheart who loves Bean and lets him do pretty much whatever he wants.
We stopped to play in a nearby park. I use the term "park" loosely, because up until recently it was actually a fruit store. It burned down and they eventually tore down the building and laid down sod. So now there's a bit of grass growing, and there are about a dozen flower bins laid out, but that's about it. It was a good space for Bean to run around in, though, even though I wished it was better fenced-in than it was. Bean is... to put it politely... not a very good listener. He tends to run off and make us chase him because he thinks it's funny. Luckily, yesterday was a really good listening day, so we had a lot of fun running around the little park.
Bean was on his hands and knees in the dirt playing with acorns when one of our neighbours stopped by. She and I have chatted a few times, but she'd never met Bean before then. He was wearing his bright pink t-shirt that says "I love to dance!" on it, as well as his fuchsia skirt over his skinny jeans. The neighbour and I chatted for a few minutes until she tilted her head at me, clearly confused as to why I was using masculine pronouns to refer to Bean.
"Elle?" she prompted me, maybe thinking that French wasn't my first language (for the record: it is).
"Non, il," I confirmed. "C'est un garçon. Il aime les jupes." (He's a boy. He likes skirts.)
The thing is, Bean isn't all boy or all girl in terms of stereotypical likes and dislikes. Many of his behaviours are stereotypically "boy" (although I have known little girls to also behave this way). He's an incredibly high-energy kid. No one ever quite understands to the extent to which I mean "high energy" until they meet Bean. His mother and I often get reactions of "Oh, yes, my child is go-go-go too!" By which they mean that sometimes their kid gets hyper and runs around. Bean never stops moving, ever. Not when he's watching TV, not when he's making a puzzle. He's rarely quiet. The rest of the time he's loud. The volume ranges from we-have-to-talk-louder-to-make-ourselves-heard-during-normal-conversation all the way to ear-splitting shrieking that makes all our pets run for cover.
He also likes trains and cars and digging in the dirt. He just also likes pink and purple and sparkly things, princesses and fairies and makeup. It's very, very rare that he will sit and "play quietly" with any of his toys, whether it's his trains or his Barbies. In "Raising My Rainbow" Lori Duron said that they like to think of C.J. as a rainbow rather than a muddle of colours. If we think of the gender thing as a colour spectrum, Bean isn't a rainbow so much as he's kind of like a tie-dye t-shirt. Colourful and chaotic. We don't know if he'll continue to be gender nonconforming when he gets older. The trend seems to be 'yes' for now, but it's hard to tell. He's three and a half. He may decide that he's bored with skirts when he's five, or he might not. Either way, we're going to let him express himself the way he wants, and hopefully he won't want to censor himself for fear of being teased or bullied.
So the neighbour and I had a good chat about how kids should be allowed to like whatever they like. She was a little more hesitant when I brought the conversation around to grown men being allowed to like supposedly feminine things only, but she kept on gamely when I went into my "Feminism is also for men!" speech.
At the end she waved, Bean politely said goodbye, and she went on her way. No fuss, no muss.
For the most part, we haven't received the sort of censure that I've read about with other people whose kids don't fit the norm. It helps that, for better or for worse, my girlfriend and I are part of the LGBT community here. We may not be very active, but we know a lot of queer-identified people. All of our friends are feminists and believe in the equality of the genders. They've been teaching their daughters that it's they can want whatever they want out of life, and they understand the importance of teaching the same thing to our sons. Bean is also still young, and we are blessed that his daycare providers are supportive of his clothing choices and don't believe that ballet is only for girls.
In short, love the colours you love. The spectrum is literally just a social construct.
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