Gender in Children: Performative or Inherent?

Gender in Children: Performative or Inherent? Professional Bro Adam Carolla was on Dan Savage’s Savage Lovecast a few weeks ago. Savage, who I almost always agree with, had asked him on weigh in on whether a boyfriend should be willing to have a threesome with another guy, if he asks his girlfriend to have one with another girl. Carolla was clearly far too uncomfortable to answer the question, but in attempting to, he rattled off a lot of heternormative nonsense about the “inherent” differences between males and females. As he stammered through a wildly closed-minded explanation of why the genders behave differently when it comes to sex, he insisted that idea that “socialization” informs gendered behavior is a “load of shit.” Little boys like guns, little girls like dolls, “inherently,” says the man whose expertise comes primarily from watching women jump up and down in slow motion.

Carolla’s explanation was that he has twins, and the boy likes boy things and the girl likes girl things. Savage actually agreed, saying that his own kid isn’t anything like him or his boyfriend in terms of what he’s interested in. But to conclude that the different ways girls and boys are socialized has nothing to do with the development of their gender identity seems to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Kids are born with their own personalities– parents know this, becase if they try to make their kid into what they want instead of what the kid wants, it’s not going to work. But when it comes to gender expectations, the individual kid is going up against some pretty powerful forces.

Author Peggy Orenstein is about to release a book called Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture. Jezebel wrote up an event yesterday where the author spoke to promote the book, discussing such things as girlie toys, the color pink, and the learned performance of sexuality.

“When girls are pushed [into sexuality] prematurely… they learn that sexiness is a performance, and don’t learn to connect it with their own feelings,” Orenstein said, adding that this was the crucial distinction between being “anti-sex” and “anti-sexualization.”

The cultural obsession with sex as a public performance, she said, was what was behind psychologist Deborah Tolman’s account of how she asked little girls how they felt, and they answered with how they looked.

The discrepancy between how girls and boys are socialized not only informs the way children act, but the way they think about themselves. If you’re a little kid whose individual personality doesn’t fit neatly into the gender role you’re expected to perform, then you will grow up being constantly reminded, by images, products, and media, that there is something wrong with you. And if you’re a girl who likes girly stuff, you’ve got a different kind of struggle ahead– according to Orenstein, 40% of six-year-olds wear lipstick or lip gloss on a regular basis. That’s a life of wearing makeup, a life growing up believing that that’s just how girls must behave, that you’re less of a girl if your lips aren’t sparkly.

I’m really looking forward to reading this book. I don’t think there’s anything negative about girly girls or boy-power boys. But I think it’s dangerous to use the word “inherent” when it comes to children’s gendered behavior. To do so suggests that little girls who are tomboys or little boys who like makeup (and they do exist, I work with kids and know these types personally) are inherently wrong. There’s an article in the Times today about little girls in Afghanistan being disguised as boys to bring honor and privilege to a family. In contrast, our Western problem seems trivial, based primarily in consumption– what toys should we buy our children, as opposed to what freedoms we will be granted or denied based on our childrens’ sex. But it’s also a reminder that gender is largely a performance. If we let boys and girls in on that secret, and allow them to navigate that terrain freely, I think they’ll grow up to be much healthier men and women.

Tags: Adam Carolla, Afghanistan, author, Dan Savage, Peggy Orenstein, Savage Lovecast, The times

Molly Knefel is a stand-up comic and writer living in Brooklyn. She writes and stars in a web series with her brother called John and Molly Get Along, which has been featured in Punchline Magazine an ...read more