The following post is in response to this amazing article. It's on the longer side, but definitely worth every minute: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/01/the-miseducation-of-the-american-boy/603046/?fbclid=IwAR3JWaeM0BiMduwtIYwL6p0gu5UGwS1qIu7_mNmzqFIcxUWWc7w3BtvA7jk
I have a tendency to code-switch, and when I do, I do it hard. One minute I could be talking about simple harmonic motion and explaining arrow pushing mechanisms for aromatic rings and enolates, and the next I’ll be dropping words like gnarly and bruh; I would feel my larynx drop and my laugh come from the back of my throat instead of the top of my nose.
Growing up, I was the only girl in my house (my mom worked the evening shifts), and the only girl my age at church. I didn’t grow up “one of the guys”, but I was pretty close. The thing is, when you’re a girl, you can’t ever be “a bro”. You’ll be told “it’s a guy thing” when you ask how cars work instead of getting a straight answer, and be told to be “ladylike”—all quiet and still-- when “boys will be boys”.
So if I couldn’t be a boy, I wanted to be better. If they wanted to race, I would be faster, and if not faster, I would go for longer. If they thought only boys could be strong, I put my elbow on the table and dared them to an arm wrestle. If you won’t tell me how combustion engines work or how to use a drill, I’ll figure it out myself, thank you very much. After a while, it was easy to be the boy scout no one really asked for or expected.
Being a girl has made doing “guy” things easier in some ways. I like being gassed up when people are surprised I can work with my hands and can do more than cook and look pretty on stage. There have been many times when I’ve actually been encouraged to “be one of the bros”, especially when it came to athletics or STEM, and I’ve been really lucky to have never once felt my leadership disrespected or questioned because of my gender. In hindsight, it’s been far easier for me to trade in my dress for a pair of pants and get my hands up in the weeds than it has for my brother to do theater or even be the quieter, gentler side.
Fast forward to college, I get to be “a bro”. Read: because I can talk about things like weightlifting and surfing and be “a chiller”, I’m cool enough to hang with the guys. I’ve worked hard (like real hard) on cultivating the code-switch from talking to my female friends to talking to my male ones. I know what verbs to use, what tone I should be speaking in, how my body language should read. And I get the privilege of walking the line between being “girly” and being a “bro”, jumping back and forth between either whenever I want: getting to talk about my emotions and having tons of awesome heart-to-hearts, while still getting to have those conversations that are more sounds than actual words.
In the age of feminism, I can pursue whatever I want, and challenging the rhetoric of male dominated spaces by merely being female has been one of my favorite pastimes. But I also see the effect of toxic masculinity in the men in my life who feel the weight of being the breadwinner on their shoulders, who think that it’s their responsibility to provide and protect, and then beat themselves up when they fall short of superman. I see it in small things, like the expectation of who pays on a date, who does the driving; of being ballsy when it comes to taking control of a situation, but having to #nohomo or start a sentence with “I’m straight, but…” when it comes to showing affection.
As many harmful stereotypes there are for girls, there are just as many for boys. Now, I don’t mean to diminish the gender gap and sexual discrimination that’s so prevalent across society, but I do want to call attention to the plethora of ways unfair gendered expectations have limited our capacities to grow, develop, and achieve.
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