#our birth dads behaved so similarly with family and children

[butch4maryoliver]

save me mary oliver save me

[bigbooksandhottea-blog]

Story of my Life

               Let’s take it from the top. When I was born, several things happened in quick succession, I screamed, I peed all over my mother, and I was pronounced female. That moment would dictate how I lived the rest of my life, which is ironic since I haven’t done much screaming since (I daresay I’ve forgotten how to perform that particular vocal act), and I never wet the bed after I got out of diapers, you could say I’ve rebelled against my female designation as well, with more than my fair share of body dysphoria, but mainly I was just never sure of the purpose of the small F on my birth certificate and all the legal documents that followed.

               I seemed to be the only member of my family who felt this way. I was born into a very traditional Catholic household and learned these gender roles from a young age. At that time, my main model for femininity was my mother. I did not want to be like my mother. She was very servile to my dad and siblings while also being high strung and anxious. These two things were likely connected, and neither of them seemed appealing to me. I decided very early on that I did not want to be a mother, assuming that I would end up like my own mother, but even worse, that I would have a child who was similarly unappreciative.

               This was frowned upon in the Catholic church, where the prime directive for a woman was to have babies. In the bible, that was almost all they wanted, from Sarah to the two women defending their motherhood to King Solomon. Even my namesake, Rebekah, is most famous for her deception of her husband in favor of her favorite son. Indeed, it could be said that Catholics are so against abortion because the faith is so entwined in the idea of reproduction, that is how I got indoctrinated after all.

               Religion in general should not be discounted as one of the great shapers of our society. While Catholicism cannot necessarily be construed as a dominant religion, it is a branch (although it would be more historically accurate to say the trunk) of Christianity, which has dominated much of the Western world for centuries. This has not been without its consequences.

               I cannot speak for the rest of Christianity, but I know from years of experience that Catholicism is steeped in ritual and tradition. This has led to a cultural appreciation for these things, which isn’t always bad, but can be harmful in the case of gender roles. Having said that, my mother tried desperately to get away from the housewife mentality of her time, getting a degree as an electrical engineer and having my dad be the one to stay home with me when I was too young to go to school. I was impressed when I heard this story, until my mom told me that she had hated every minute of engineering school.

               This introduced me to the concept of feminism for the sake of feminism. A similar phenomenon is present in Boulder that I like to call progressivism for the sake of progressivism. Boulder prides itself so much on being a progressive town that it shows open hostility to those who are not “open-minded,” which has created something called the “Boulder bubble.” For those inside, it can feel like a utopia of free thinking, but for those outside, it feels like an exclusive club that only the fit, white elite are privy to. As part of progressivism, feminism is also included in this, particularly what Roxanne Gay describes as capital-F feminism.

               Capital-F feminism was extremely prevalent in the second wave feminism that my mom participated in. Although it did spurn her to getting a well-paying job and a comfortable life, she did not end up doing what she wanted until much later. Despite not wanting to be like my mother, I am still her daughter and I too briefly pursued an engineering degree. Unfortunately, I have very little motivation to do things I do not enjoy, so that pursuit ended in a spectacular crashing of my GPA. I will take the time to reiterate that this was due to my disinterestedness in the subject, not necessarily because it was “too hard for me” as my ex from the time would tell me.

               That ex, and indeed all my exes would teach me even more about a woman’s place in society. I’ve been lucky enough to have the experience of dating all kinds of people from both sides of the gender spectrum, as well as having time to be single. Some people will tell you that dating different genders is no different, I will not. Like most people who were assigned female at birth, I dated men (well really boys at the time) first. I got to see what it felt like to be taken care of.

               I’m not sure when I first realized that I was into girls too. I got to experience a more even level of give and take than with guys. Simply put, it was no longer obvious who would pay for dinner. Regardless of the model relationships I would have as a result, coming out was a pretty painful process, facilitated by the fact that I had no idea how to talk about how I was feeling. At the time, I was vaguely aware of the term “bisexual,” although it took many more years for me to realize the extent of my sexuality, mainly due to my lack of knowledge about the non-binary nature of gender. Here’s the quick and dirty of the sexuality you may not be aware of, courtesy of my really tiny handwriting:

(if you can’t read this, I apologize, you’re really missing out, but this is tumblr, if you ask it nicely, it will tell you all about pansexuality)

               This ignorance was mostly fostered by the fairly strict gender expression displayed to me at a school that considered a male-identified individual in a skirt and pigtails top-notch comedy (and also thought it was okay to have indigenous people portrayed as a mascot, but that’s a whole other can of worms). Despite my growing up in a fairly small, conservative town, it’s pretty typical for people everywhere to accept the gender they were assigned at birth.

               This tendency traces back to society’s views of the sexes and how they should behave, resulting in the training of gender into children. Judith Butler explores this subject in greater detail in her book Gender Trouble, a main takeaway of which is that gender should be viewed entirely as a social construct. However, this construct has absorbed many other aspects of our culture, down to colors and other inanimate objects. While working in the paint department I’ve repeatedly heard fathers tell their sons they could not paint their rooms purple or pink, but at the same time, I’ve never heard anyone tell their daughter they could not paint their room blue.

                 Telling boys they can’t do things because it’s a “girl thing” or something that “boys don’t do” is alarmingly common in our society. The same thing is hardly ever said to girls attempting traditionally masculine activities. In recent years especially, there has been significantly more effort invested in encouraging young women to pursue whatever strikes their fancy. This has resulted in an attitude that women can have masculine pursuits, but men cannot have feminine pursuits without incurring deep shame. While the distinction between masculine and feminine is as arbitrary a distinction as that between male and female, this tendency is still telling of the inevitable hierarchy that arises between distinct things.

               I have been extremely privileged in that I am fairly masculine. While biology and inconsistency have made it impossible for me to actually pass as male, I have been able to engage in any activity I choose, from basketball to dance. I know I would’ve had more advantages had I been assigned male at birth, but at the same time, I would be unable to pursue dance or dye my hair, especially to the extent I would’ve wanted in the home I grew up in. This general attitude shows that society has accepted masculinity (or things associated with men) even when women do it, and find femininity merely excusable in women and downright unacceptable in men.

               It is for this reason that lesbians are sexualized and gay men are stigmatized. I can speak from personal experience that straight men were a lot more comfortable with me when they thought I was a lesbian (without bothering to ask if I was, naturally), than when they found out my sexuality extended to their gender. I think part of this disarmament was due to my fairly masculine appearance. When I was a kid I was often called a tomboy, and although I still wore dresses and lots of floral, I also rocked baggy jeans and flannel, which earned me the title of “butch” when I came out. While more attention was paid to the masculine clothes I wore, wearing more traditionally feminine clothes was still an option.

               This realization hit me hardest when I meant to go to Denver Pride this last summer. I ended up not going, mostly because I had just gotten off a long flight, but also because I wanted to go dressed in full drag and hadn’t realized how unassuming (and hot) it would be until I actually started looking for things to wear. Not only did I usually wear clothing that could be considered masculine, but I realize seeing someone who presents as feminine dress as male isn’t really scandalous and didn’t feel (at least to me) worthy of Pride. On the other hand, a person who presents as masculine dressed as female gets all kinds of reactions, mostly negative outside of Pride, and is considered abnormal.

               To me, this means that it is okay to want to be a man (hell, Freud did a whole bit on it), but not okay to want to be a woman. By spurning things typically associated with women, society is still spurning women. I’ve focused mostly on appearance, since gender presentation has been a large part of my experience, but this issue goes beyond fashion or color or physical characteristics. Since our culture has gendered personality traits, things like aggression, confidence, repression of emotions, authoritativeness, and opinionated views are all considered positive. I have known plenty of women who are capable of any (or all) of these, and often with an intensity to rival their male counterparts. These women have been rewarded accordingly, but people who possess traits that were unfortunate enough not to be designated as masculine are considered “weak.”

               These weak, feminine traits include passivity, caution, emotionality, obedience, and indecisiveness, none of which have any significant disadvantages in moderation, much like the masculine-identified traits, but they are considered lesser by our society. In fact, the way we react with others is judged so closely and affects so much that I used to think the world was make for extroverts and me and my fellow introverts would have to become writers or dancers or other professions that don’t involve talking. But it has become increasingly clear to me that it is not merely an outgoing or friendly personality that is valued, it is the perceived strength of these masculine traits over the feminine that still holds more value in our society.

               At the same time, I do not think that things traditionally labeled feminine should be held above the traditionally masculine. As with all things, I think balance and equality is key, but true equality cannot be obtained until we liberate things associated with women, not just women themselves. Ideally this would occur through a release of the concept of the gender binary, as the need to label the world often leads to hierarchies that hurt everybody.

[harryandmeghan0-blog]

How Princess Diana Is Helping Prince William and Kate Middleton Raise Their Children

New Post has been published on https://harryandmeghan.xyz/how-princess-diana-is-helping-prince-william-and-kate-middleton-raise-their-children/

How Princess Diana Is Helping Prince William and Kate Middleton Raise Their Children

Asked to extrapolate the type of grandparent his late mom, Princess Diana, would have been, Prince William gave a surprising answer. 

“She’d be a nightmare grandmother, absolute nightmare,” he quipped in the 2017 ITV and HBO documentary, Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy. Sure, the former nursery school teacher would have loved Prince George, 4, and Princess Charlotte, 3, “to bits,” said the royal. (At this point Prince Louis was still nine months away from making his appearance.) But she’d be so taken with her little ones that she’d indulge their every whim, he speculated. “She’d come in probably at bath time, cause an amazing…scene, bubbles everywhere, bathwater all over the place, and then leave.” 

Her style certainly left a mark on her eldest heir. When Diana gave birth to her future king in 1982, her insistence on hands-on parenting was seen as revolutionary. After all, a newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II left young kids Prince Charles and Princess Anne in the care of his grandparents and household staff to embark on a six-month tour of the Commonwealth shortly after her coronation. And her decisions to let them wear jeans and baseball caps and eat McDonald’s hamburgers, while not express defiance of any sort of rule, were certainly not the done thing. 

Now the 36-year-old and his wife Kate Middleton, 36, are following in her trailblazing footsteps. While the pair certainly abide by many royal traditions—today, after all, 11-week-old Louis was baptized at St. James’s Palace wearing a replica of the intricate lace and satin dress made for Queen Victoria‘s eldest daughter in 1841, the same outfit his older siblings donned—they’re keen to give their tiny heirs a life outside the gilded walls of Kensington Palace. “They feel it’s important to make them aware of their backgrounds,” a source told Us Weekly. But it’s also “vital” for their kids—third, fourth and fifth in line for the British throne, respectively—”to have as much normalcy in their lives as possible.” 

So far, they feel they’ve struck just the right balance. As William told BBC News in 2016, “As far as we’re concerned, within our family unit, we are a normal family. I love my children the same way any father does.” 

Anwar Hussein/Getty Images

Much of this modern way of thinking and lack of hired help has been credited to the so-called “Middletonization” of the royal family, what with William’s bride being a commoner who experienced a relatively modest upbringing. But the seed was planted well before the University of St. Andrews grads ever crossed paths. 

It was Diana who declared, “I want to bring them up with security. I hug my children to death and get into bed with them at night. I always feed them love and affection; it’s so important.” And she’s largely thought to be the first woman in the royal family to nurse, ABC News royal correspondent Victoria Arbiter said: “Of course, that’s hard for us to know for certain, but Queen Victoria was adamant that she found breastfeeding disgusting. She thought babies were ugly, and she didn’t really enjoy any part of being pregnant, yet she had nine children.”

Diana, meanwhile couldn’t get enough of her newborn boys. At William’s first press conference she admitted, “I find I can’t stop playing with him.” 

So when it came time for an official tour, this one to Australia and New Zealand, she insisted 9-month-old William come along. “And [people] were like, ‘Breaking royal precedent,'” Daisy Goodwin, author of My Last Duchess told ABC News. “But it was brilliant, because…we all really warmed to her. Because no woman wants to leave her baby, and that was what made Diana so lovable—that she always absolutely adored her children.”

Chris Jackson/Getty Images

William and Kate followed suit, toting 8-month-old George Down Under for their 19-day visit in 2014. And while George and his new sister Charlotte didn’t tag along for a weeklong trip to India in 2016, “Because George is too naughty,” Kate told fans, “he would be running all over the place,” they were on hand for a 2016 trip to Canada and a stopover in Germany and Poland last year. 

Both trips produced some utterly relatable photographs of Kate trying to soothe or scold both of her children, each snapshot serving to highlight the fact that despite living in a literal palace, when it comes down to it, the duchess is a regular mom. Rather than rely on a team of household helpers, William and Kate have a team of one: longtime nanny Maria Borrallo. “They’re not having them raised by a coterie of nannies behind palace walls,” Christopher Andersen, the author of the new book Game of Crowns: Elizabeth, Camilla, Kate, and the Throne, told Good Housekeeping. “Charles had no real exposure as a small child to the world outside the royal circle. She does have a nanny, but really Kate is a hands-on mom.”

Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Having spent their earliest years two-and-a-half hours from the London spotlight in the sleepy Norfolk village of Anmer, Charlotte was able to develop her love of soccer sheltered by cast-iron security gates, 12-foot pines and a no-fly zone that was placed overhead at William’s request. At a 2016 luncheon held in his honor, British Football Association president William reported to the crowd that the then-11-month-old was “a very good footballer. You hold her hand and she kicks it. Very sweet.”

Meanwhile George, lover of anything with wheels, was able to tool around the 20,000-acre grounds of Anmer Hall on bike rides with Dad. And when Charlotte wasn’t tumbling around with George, she’d be trailing after her mom, a family friend telling Us Weekly she had her own set of kitchen gadgets she used when Kate was preparing food in the 18th century home’s renovated kitchen. Her other go-to toy, the friend revealed, anything Disney Princess, though, “I don’t think it’s quite dawned on her that she’s a princess herself.” Similarly George, “quite likes The Lion King,” William has revealed, however, it’s unclear if the presumed future monarch grasps the full weight of the song “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King.” 

In an ideal world, that particular cognizance is a ways off. Catherine Mayer, author of Charles: The Heart of a King told E! News that William knows how much his father struggled with the weight of his future as a child. So with George, he and Kate “are trying to delay that moment of realization and give him normality before they thrust this on him.” 

While it seems likely a few of his well-heeled classmates at Thomas’s Battersea recognize his status, for now he’s just George Cambridge, whose parents chatted with the other grownups at orientation and turned out to watch him portray the role of sheep in the nativity play. 

Richard Pohle/The Times/PA Wire

But all of that may not have been possible if Diana didn’t take a stand back in the ’80s. At her insistence, William, followed by his brother Prince Harry, became the first heir to “begin his schooling outside of a palace,” Newsweek‘s George Hackett wrote in 1985. “The decision to have William, 3, develop his finger-painting skills among commoners showed the influence of Diana, Princess of Wales, who had worked in a nursery school herself when she was just a Lady.”

And William’s first day at Jane Mynor’s nursery school went went swimmingly, the young prince returning home with a finger mouse and his Postman Pat thermos. “He enjoyed himself; there were no tears,” a palace spokesperson proclaimed. 

Just the slightest bit of annoyance. Bodyguard Ken Wharfe recalled one anecdote to ABC News, noting Diana informed William there would be people taking pictures and he’d need to behave. “And he, in this sort of just William way, said to his mother, just below the pink cap, ‘I don’t like ‘tographers,'” recounted Wharfe. “She said, ‘Well, you’re going to get this for the rest of your life.”

Jayne Fincher/courtesy of HBO

But to balance out the intrusion, Diana packed in as much fun and normality as possible. Before she came along, royals were mostly kept sequestered from the population they’d one day rule. As a princess, Elizabeth was said to be so trapped in her gilded cage the palace had to invite in a Girl Guide company (known as Girl Scouts in the U.S.) so she had kids her own age to play with. 

“I think that really is the long-lasting legacy that Diana has left William and Harry,” royal correspondent Arbiter said. “She took them outside the palace walls.” 

With Diana leading the way, they road the bus and the tube and even went to Disney World, where they stood in line with everyone else. 

“She made sure that they experienced things like going to the cinema, queuing up to buy a McDonalds, going to amusement parks, those sorts of things that were experiences that they could share with their friends,” Diana’s chief of staff Patrick Jephson told ABC News. 

Perhaps more importantly, she introduced them to her charity work, bringing her boys along on visits to hospitals and homeless shelters. “It was a very difficult dilemma for Diana to prepare them for the very distinctive, unique life that they have had to lead,” Jephson said. “And she did it very cleverly, I think.”

Mike Forster / Daily Mail /REX/Shutterstock

That included taking a 7-year-old William to a homeless shelter “completely out of sight of any camera or media,” Wharfe recalled. “This was Diana’s way of actually saying to William, ‘Listen, it isn’t all what you think it is living at Kensington Palace.’ That was a quite a brave thing on Diana’s part.”

It’s a lesson William, now the patron for the Centrepoint homeless charity, took to heart. “She played a huge part in my life and Harry’s growing up, in how we saw things and how we experienced things,” William said in a 2012 interview Katie Couric. 

For now, he and Kate are focused on parables that are more easily digestible for those under the age of 5. “My parents taught me about the importance of qualities like kindness, respect and honesty. I realize how central values like these have been to me throughout my life,” Kate said during a kickoff to Children’s Mental Health Week last year. “That is why William and I want to teach our little children, George and Charlotte, just how important these things are as they grow up.”

But greater education lies ahead. As William recalled to Couric, his mom “very much wanted to get us to see the rawness of real life. And I can’t thank her enough for that, ’cause reality bites in a big way, and it was one of the biggest lessons I learned is, just how lucky and privileged so many of us are—particularly myself.”

George, Charlotte and now little Louis will never have bath time with Grandma—their greatest connection to her coming from William’s frequent bedtime stories and the photos that line the halls of their 21-room palace apartment. “It’s important that they know who she was and that she existed,” William explained in Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy. 

We’re willing to bet they’ll be feeling the effects of her legacy for years to come.