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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

“Dad, I’ve been meaning to ask you: What’s a ‘sl*t’?”



(Image courtesy of Married to the Sea.

I was in the kitchen with our cis-gendered daughter of nine years age, a few weeks back.  She was eating her dinner and I was reading a post by Rabbit White.  Striking up a conversation, she asks me:

“Dad, I’ve been meaning to ask you – What’s a ‘slut’?”

Now, there’s an ice breaker.

(Cross-posted at SexGenderBody.)

Of the many lessons my daughter teaches me ongoingly, perhaps the most noticeable is that the critical moments in our lives and relationships show up with no notice, no plan and no place to hide.  Intimacy, relatedness and honesty don’t pussyfoot around.

So, I closed the laptop and looked at her.  I told her that it is an insult used on women, by people that want women to feel small, shameful and bad for being human and to tell women that they are not good.  I said that all mammals have sex and that humans are mammals.  I told her that in many cultures, women are insulted for a great many things, treated like property and denied the right to enjoy many (if not all) freedoms that men have. 

I said that I know some  women who embrace the word themselves, to claim the right to enjoy  their own lives in their own terms. 

I said that the word, like any attempt at insult is only powerful if a person believes that other people define that person.  I told her that if someone insults her, the insult is not important.  What is important is that she learn the many ways of dealing with insults. 

Most of all, I informed her that no word will ever be who she is, whether spoken by an enemy or a friend.  The definition of who she is, will always be a gift that only she can give herself.  No one – NO one on this earth can ever take that away from her.

I shared this on twitter because I thought it was pretty funny.  (Almost as funny as the time I used the word “orgasm” in front of her and had to explain that…to my bride’s amusement at my lump-headedness).  One person suggest that I bail on the explanation and pass it off to “mommy”.  That’s not really my style, though.  I’ve embraced digging myself out of awkward moments for a host of reasons.  

– I am this girl’s male relationship role model.  If I don’t show her what an honest conversation from a man looks like, who will?

– We don’t have that kind of marriage.  We don’t run from those moments.  We cherish them because they will never come again.  Each one is special.  Rather than treat them as diasters to avoid, we hold them into our lives and share them with each other as gifts of the tales of our lives alone and together.

– In those awkward, uncomfortable moments between people – there is an opportunity for honesty and relatedness.  That awkwardness catches us off guard because we don’t have scripted platitudes, prejudices, reactions, assumptions.  These moments are gifts and they startle us with their immediacy, their undeniable presence and the sudden awareness that we not alone.  Someone else is with us, right now and they are as aware of us as we are of them.

– I like to spare my acts of cowardice for  real emergencies (like NOT wearing my Bears  jersey to a Packers home game…again)

As I considered and digested the event and that comment, I ventured back to a familiar train of thought for me: The gift of a girl child.  We only have one, so she’s the first, oldest, best, etc.  I have been able to interrupt, notice and replace my own internal sexist assumptions and behaviors – every day for the last 10 years.  I am fairly certain that I would have passed on and glossed over a great deal of sexism to a boy child, given the knowledge of what I’ve learned since she was born.  Being married to an amazing feminist woman as I am, I’m sure these things would still have come up.  But, she’s a real gift – as I believe all girl children (whether cis or trans) are.

In face of the selective abortions of girl fetuses, abandoned girl babies & murdered female infants, she is a miracle.  Given what a scheming revolutionary I am, working against the kyriarchy / patriarchy / military / religious / financial model of oppression as I am…she is going to be more than capable of carrying on the family business.

Any gender is a good gender to me.  That said, the presence of this girl child is the most amazing and powerful gift of all my born days.  She is the promise of a life that will not be dull – ever. 

-arvan


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3 comments

  1. hubiestubert

    As a boy child, I was a terror. I know what an ebbil little bastiche I was–well, perhaps not ebbil, but ornery and obstinate, and pretty much a regular boy–so when my wife told me she was pregnant, I knew I’d love our child no matter what.

    But, secretly, I was hoping for a girl.

    And I gotta say, she’s taught me a lot. And let me teach her some too. I love how sly the thinks she is–she has a fair amount of both her mother and I’s streak of the Devil and good natured mischief is one of her primary hobbies–but it’s fun to see her look at rules, and try to figure them out, and play with them in ways that aren’t hurtful, but certainly pushing boundaries. She’s a natural leader, but always peace maker. She doesn’t join a lot of cliques in her school, but she’s welcome in most because she doesn’t take sides. She’s a creative little dickens, and very much a storyteller, and always willing to listen to others’ tales.

    In short, she’s everything I could have asked for, and so much more. And she accepts that her old man is a flawed individual, and swears not to make my mistakes. I assure her that she’ll make her own, and that we’ll figure out how to deal with them together, and sometimes, that’s enough.

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