CN: MISOGYNY, SEXUAL ASSAULT, TRANSPHOBIA
While I didn't seriously think I would ever become a father, I always knew I would prefer having a girl if the impossible came to be. Predominantly, this was because I remember what I was like as a boy. Those teenage years, in particular, were a horrifying mess. It was disgusting. The oils. The smells. The stains. The sheets. I still feel completely disgusted by the concept of that happening in our house.
So, of course, from the first instant that we saw two lines on the pregnancy test, we just knew in our hearts that we would be having a boy.
The foolproof logic behind our belief came from two irrefutable truths. Firstly, there are a lot of girls in our family. We have three nieces and no nephews. I have six second cousins, and only two are boys. It felt like it was statistically impossible for our child not to be a boy.
Secondly, it just 'felt' like a male was growing in Gemma's womb. We had this overwhelming conviction that a smaller version of me was on the cards. That might sound strange. But there is always so much emphasis on feelings when you start your pregnancy journey that it seemed perfectly reasonable for us to trust our gut on this one.
My thinking changed slightly because a young boy was an absolute certainty for us. Quicker than I would have ever anticipated, I became more comfortable with the idea of a little boy tearing up the house. As a man, this excitement should probably have stemmed from the potential to have a partner in crime with whom I could get up to fun shenanigans. Popular culture and social media are lousy with images of lads and dads doing fun things together, like kicking rugby balls and being absolute larrikins together.
I had little interest in any of that. Instead, I was excited by the idea of ensuring my son avoided some of the bad decisions I have made that are explicitly related to being a man.
For the past several years, I think I have gained a good grasp of how abhorrent some of my past behaviours were. Through my teenage years and adulthood, I swung violently between being passive-aggressive, dishonest, manipulative, self-pitying, emotionally abusive, unreliable, emotionally distant, dismissive, cold, and clingy. Sometimes, I was all at the same time.
I have ruined multiple relationships, both romantic and platonic, by generally being a toxic bastard. Lots of my dickishness came from me completely ignoring mental health red flags. Even more, it came from years of denial about substance abuse. But those twin pillars could not be built without a strong foundation of toxic masculinity (amongst others that we can touch upon later).
It's difficult to talk about toxic masculinity without having people roll their eyes. It sometimes feels like an internet buzz term, and by this point, it is a cliche for men to plea a mea culpa for their crappy behaviour. So, let's get this out of the way immediately. My bad decisions in my life are mine, and mine alone. Nobody forced me to torpedo relationships through a mixture of entitlement, arrogance, and meanness. I may have had some natural tendencies to be a prick unrelated to toxic masculinity. However, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that being immersed in a culture where male entitlement is sewn into our institutions greatly enhanced my perceived right to be a prick.
Looking back, the mind-bogglingly simple notion that I was not entitled to relationships, sexual or otherwise, completely flew over my head. This ignorance didn't stop me from expecting to go to markets to pick a girl or a friend off the shelves. Instead, it manifested in my refusal to change when things didn't work in any relationship.
I blamed them if I was passive-aggressive and cruel to a partner, and they had had enough. When I flaked on friends and ignored their messages, I got frustrated with them for being too emotional. If colleagues got tired of me being an unreliable burden at work, it was the job's fault. Everyone else was to blame for my screw-ups because they were not contorting to fit into my universe. To me, I was a misunderstood hero. To everyone else, I was a villain.
Even when my frustrated and hurt family and friends reached out to support me, I wouldn't listen. I didn't want to hear people's feedback because I was ludicrously thin-skinned. Alongside entitlement, this extraordinary fragility is one of the most potent symptoms of toxic masculinity in places like New Zealand. Men here so often see themselves as stoic and stern. Yet at the slightest hint of someone criticising us, we lash out in hysterical self-defence. Nothing scares us more than our self-doubt; if we sense others have that doubt, we attack them with unrestrained ferocity.
This patheticness would be funny if it wasn't so dangerous to everyone around us.
So much of this toxic entitlement and insecurity was utterly avoidable had I been honest with myself. I should have been grateful that people cared enough to want me around. I should also have been humble enough to pay attention to their concerns. Instead, I just hurt people and projected my own self-loathing onto them.
I have worked to make amends where I was brave enough to reach out. For those I have been too cowardly to contact, I lie awake and let intrusive thoughts treat my mind like an open bar at a wedding. That's not helpful for anyone, but I owe them that much.
The thought of a son of mine repeating my mistakes gave me chills. The more I considered what it would be like to have a boy, the more I thought about taking some of this learning and applying it to my parenting. That undoubtedly sounds pompous and obvious ('Hey, guy, we're trying to do this already - you are not special'). But it was a watershed moment for me. My flaws have led me to a place where I am grateful and happy.
Perhaps all that past toxicity and denial could help me be a better Dad to a boy who will get mixed messages from the world around him. It was exciting and refreshing, and I had a bit of confidence in my ability to follow through on it.
Now, these realisations were all profoundly emotional and deeply cathartic. However, a massive spanner was thrown into the works when we got to week ten and had an Illumiscreen test.
The test showed that we weren't having a boy. We were having a girl.
In hindsight, it is crazy that we thought we knew what we would have based on a sample size of six and vague 'feelings'. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I'm also confessing to many things I am ashamed about - so we can add this to the list.
As you might imagine, this news brought up many new thoughts with stunning immediacy. Like the potential miscarriage scenario, the experience beginning to affect me means that my perspectives have shifted hugely at a whirlwind speed. Finding out we were having a girl has brought a lot of new feelings that I'm trying to unpack.
The positive feelings are very straightforward. I'm genuinely excited to be having a girl. I cannot wait to have the daddy-daughter time, where I introduce her to things I love in the (highly unrealistic) hope that any of them might interest her. I have silly images in my head of a punk rock chick, who doesn't take shit from anyone, and who I can introduce to pinball. Those feelings are fun and exciting. They are easy to deal with.
Conversely, I am terrified when I ponder what she will be burdened with because of a roll of the genetic dice. She will face so many obstacles that I'll never have to. The burdens of biology, social inequality, and the ridiculous standards that girls live up to are just a few that come to mind. These obstacles are becoming apparent in ways that naturally feel much more visceral than before.
This is now being brought into sharp relief in a new way that concerns me. I feel like one of those politicians who decry sexism, but only after they preface things with 'as a father/husband/son'. It shouldn't take birth for us to think about what kind of world we normalise for women.
The more I look at myself in preparation for fatherhood, the more I see that men like me secretly enjoy patting ourselves on the back. We like to think that we listen, respect women, and work on ourselves to acknowledge our privilege and improve things.
But I have realised that despite my efforts, it is easy to be complacent, and I have taken many things for granted. Understanding concepts like toxic masculinity and patriarchy is one thing. Authentically comprehending our own misogyny throughout our lives is scarier, and we still shy away from it.
As men, our right to invade a woman's autonomy is deeply (sometimes subconsciously) entrenched into who we are because that's how social and political structures have been set up. Economic disadvantages; horrific domestic and sexual violence statistics; not being taken seriously by healthcare professionals; unrealistic beauty standards. All these freedom violations are primarily because of men (especially wealthy, older white ones). In 2020, this shouldn't be a controversial statement. But the more we see the world unravelling around us or accidentally stumble into a comments section, the more it's disturbing to see how little acknowledgement of this there is.
It is almost inevitable that our daughter will come across men treating her like shit. It won't matter if she is gay, straight, bisexual, asexual, or pansexual. Realistically, at some point, a man will attack her autonomy by doing something gross, violent, or traumatic. I don't mean that in the broad sense. I mean this on a visceral micro level. She will be groped, or she will be intimidated, or she will be made to feel of lesser value because she is a girl - and those are the lighter scenarios. And all of this would be so much worse if she wasn't going to be white and growing up in a comparatively progressive country.
Her peers will be less of an issue. Kids today are much more intelligent, empathetic, and respectful of gender imbalances than we ever were. Parents are also so much more attuned to the problems of systemic sexism and prejudice than they were even a decade ago. But that's a small subset of males overall. Many of us don't want to understand the impact of our actions, let alone look to change them.
I'm not trying to throw stones here aimlessly. I have been that guy in the past. I want to say I have never pinched a girl's ass at a pub while pissed. I want to say that I have never creepily intimidated a girl (either intentionally or unintentionally). I want to say that I never thought that the universe owed me a sexual partner because I was a "nice guy." None of that is true because I would have done and felt all these things at some point. It would have just been normal behaviour on a typical day.
Men use extreme examples of abuse to minimise the effect of our small acts of common autonomy theft. It's not even intentional. It just is what we know.
Sadly, it's only taken me until very recently even to begin to understand what trauma(s) our 'normal' behaviour can lead to. Even sadder, much of that learning didn't come from listening to women in my life. It came from watching the Me Too movement unfold and watching things like Season 2 of Sex Education on Netflix (highly recommended, by the way).
I want her to live freely and enjoy relationships with whomever she wants. But the idea that her ability to live her life could be undermined by a guy who has had misogyny bred into him via cultural norms is dizzying. Somehow, someway, we need to be responsible for ensuring that our girl can trust men while also knowing that the deck is completely stacked in their favour.
I am trying to figure out what the strategy is. We will talk about it and do whatever we can. But we will never be able to account for the behaviours of others that have been given legitimacy thanks to hundreds of years of patriarchal attitudes being normalised. That's hard to take, and I'm curious to know how others deal with these questions, besides, you know, boxing lessons from age two.
There is also one major elephant in the room that I obviously haven't mentioned. If you are transphobic or you believe that gender is binary, then you might want to stop reading here. I'm not interested in debating the validity of non-binary gender experiences. You can find a Ben Shapiro fan group to have those discussions. The following is written with one undeniable truth framing it: trans women are women, and trans men are men.
As parents-to-be, we may produce a child who doesn't feel that their identity matches their assigned gender. Hell, we might have a child who doesn't identify with any gender at all. I have no problem with the potential for this to happen...
...in the abstract.
This whole writing project, though, is about facing uncomfortable truths, and this is one of the most painful truths I have had to face. That little qualifier was added to the above sentence because the thought of having a child who identifies as trans or non-binary still makes me nervous.
I'm not nervous because I care about what anyone thinks or because I don't believe trans issues are genuine. It's much simpler than that. The idea that my child might be gender non-conforming makes me nervous because I don't want them to face other people's bigotry.
Right now, it feels like transphobia is running rampant throughout the world. You can't open a browser without reading an outdated and arrogant take about gender from someone furious that people want to be comfortable in their skin. Just last week, for example, JK Rowling went on a rampage after being criticised for her open transphobia. Rowling inexplicably chose to pen an essay full of what can charitably be described as half-truths and misrepresentations (in less charitable terms, you could describe it as bullshit). This woman has reach and influence. It's a disgrace that she would use her billionaire platform to tear down trans people in the guise of protecting 'real women'. The fact that people with such status feel empowered to preach intolerance is excruciating.
On the one hand, I am optimistic that so much of the vocal transphobia is just the death rattle of bigotry. It's more likely that it isn't a decrease in transphobia at all, but instead, people are no longer backing down and hiding. People are organising, and younger people refuse to accept assumptions about how society is ordered lying down. Trans advocates are winning their battle, and it's frightening the ever-loving crap out of people.
On the flip side, though, I have seen what people say and read the statistics. In 2018, Rainbow Youth ran the first comprehensive survey of the health and well-being of trans and non-binary people in Aotearoa. The analysis makes for grim reading. Some of the more notable statistics revealed:
Five out of every seven participants aged 15 and older (71%) reported high or very high psychological distress, compared with only 8% of the general population.
More than one in five (21%) school student participants were bullied at school at least once a week, much higher than the general population (5%).
More than half of the participants (56%) had seriously thought about attempting suicide in the last 12 months. Almost two in five participants (37%) had attempted suicide at some point, and 12% had tried in the previous 12 months.
Two-thirds of participants (67%) had experienced discrimination at some point. For close to half of the participants (44%), this had happened in the last 12 months. This was more than double the rate for the general population (17%).
(You can read the report in its entirety here)
Simply put, part of me is selfish, and the selfish part of me doesn't want my child to have to be the one who has to endure those struggles. It's so easy and straightforward to be an ally to causes. All you have to do is say the right things and support people when needed. Being a white, hetero, cis, male ally is particularly easy because I will never face discrimination for anything. As mentioned above, we will give ourselves credit even when we're not doing anything.
It's kind of demoralising to admit and acknowledge that it would be easier for my family and me to avoid that hornet's nest. That's weak sauce, I know, and I don't have a justification for it. But it is in my mind, and I struggle to believe I could be the only one. There is also no point in being dishonest about something important because dishonesty helps nobody on this issue.
However, I also want to state the following in solid terms to wrap up. If my future kid reads this one day, I want them to understand that this truth is unequivocal. I will accept them for who they are, no matter what. I only want them to be happy and as comfortable with themselves as humanly possible. My nerves and anxieties won't stop me from fighting for them in the future. They will never disappoint me, and they will always have their back.
The challenge is ensuring that the message is relayed from the moment they are born.