The Downside of Raising a Feminist
Opening girls’ eyes to sexism means it’s impossible for them to ignore
All year, my 11 year-old daughter girded herself for the section in health class that would cover anatomy, puberty and periods. It’s not that the lessons would be new to her, or that she was embarrassed—we’ve raised her with frank conversations about bodies and health. She was, however, worried about the reaction of the boys in her class. She knew, she told me, that they would laugh.
As predicted, on the day her teacher shared a diagram of a vulva, a group of boys started laughing and said it looked “like a stingray.” (I’ll admit, that’s a new one!)
Her teacher shut the comments down, but Layla was pissed. Because as a burgeoning feminist, this wasn’t the first time she noticed sexism at school. Late last year, for example, a boy in her grade was going around smacking girls on the ass during recess. When one girl pushed him afterwards, they both got in trouble. Layla watched with horror and disappointment as administrators treated the boy’s behavior like everyday playground hi-jinx, and classmates guilted the girls who had stood up to him for ‘tattling’ and making said boy feel bad.
It was the schoolyard version of a very familiar story: Institutions failing to protect women, and people jumping through hoops to protect men and blame the victims. You couldn’t have scripted a better after-school special.
Not every incident at school was so clear-cut. Recently Layla noticed that whenever her class watched a TV show during lunch—a Covid-era perk since they’re not allowed to talk while eating—the boys mocked the voices of girl characters. At first, Layla wasn’t sure if it was sexist, because they’d imitate the voice of one male character, as well. Then she put two and two together: This male character had a high-pitched voice; the boys were making fun of him because he sounded like a girl. (We had a long conversation about homophobia and its relationship to sexism.)
She spent literal weeks thinking about how to put a stop to it. Layla didn’t want to ask a teacher for advice because that felt like tattling, and she shut down my suggestion to call them out in the moment because kids weren’t supposed to be speaking during lunch in the first place. (How I birthed such a consummate rule-follower is beyond me.) Every day, she was coming home angry and upset, trying to figure out what to do.
It broke my heart. Not so much the sexism itself, which I had prepared myself for, but that she felt responsible to stop it. And that’s the downside of raising a feminist: Opening our girls’ eyes to sexism means it’s impossible for them to ignore. And when we teach them that sexism shouldn’t be tolerated—then drop them off in a world where it’s everywhere and no one seems to be doing anything about it—of course they’re going to feel like the burden is on them.
What’s worse is that they’re largely right. Whether it’s school administrators or bosses, the people in power meant to protect you often won’t. And no matter what your age, everyday sexism still goes mostly ignored. If you want your day to day life to change, to not have to deal with misogyny in ways big and small, it will have to be you that does something about it. Because despite progress made, we still live in a world where the vast majority would rather ignore the slights (or even the not-so-slight) because doing so is just easier.
And unlike those of us who have been living with sexism for years, our daughters will experience misogyny with fresh eyes. They haven’t gotten to the age where you pick your battles or compartmentalize—every bit of injustice feels new and stinging to them. It’s hard to watch.
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t raise Layla any other way. I’m glad she has language for the things I didn’t, and an understanding that will, eventually, make her path forward easier. I just wish she had a few more years of freedom from all of it.
As for the boys in class, we’re still working on a solution. I know she’ll get there, and that she’ll make her way through countless other experiences that make her feel angry and defeated. In the meantime, I got her an extremely large stingray Squishmallow. I figure given all the bullshit ahead of her, it’s never too early to learn the art of reclamation.
The Downside of Raising a Feminist
I thought more people would chip in on ideas for your daughter and the boys in class mimicking the girls’ voices on tv. Have you considered providing her with a universal remote so that whenever the boys do this she can change the channel to an all female show. This can double as both a way to deal with the problem and a psych experiment. Hypothesis: these boys will be unable to learn from regular negative reinforcement (channel change) to modify their undesirable behavior. Make sure whenever she is out for of school during lunch someone completely trustworthy continues the negative reinforcement.
Smiles and laughs from this piece - the stingray! Especially the link :) It's nice because the topics here often feel grim (justifiably and rightly so).
The more I engage with and the more I think about these issues, the more I think men being involved has to happen for anything to change. It's much harder than it should be getting even women on board against the patriarchy, but it's insufficient if men have no interest in changing, just as racism in America isn't going to get any better if only people of color are thinking about it.
So how do we motivate men on the issues? It's a vexing problem if they don't see any benefit to themselves of women being treated better, and therefore don't care. The only answer I have is that women need to keep demanding that every male person in their own lives be educated and enlightened on the issues. And I guess I would say women need to use any and every tool at their disposal to do that.
Jessica I think it would have been fascinating if you had a son! My mom had no daughters, only three boys, and I have to think that our relationship with her and the respect we had for her were hugely important in how we turned out. Maybe it has to start with the mothers for men, and then persist throughout their lives with all the subsequent women and girls that are introduced into it.
Women can talk endlessly about the issues, but we have to change the MEN. It is a bit disappointing (though I guess not surprising) about the boys at Layla's school. As a Gen Xer I had hoped that we were better than the boomers and the millennials were better than us, and that Generation Z was even better. Here's hoping for positive developments in 2022 and every year going forward.