against hating men

I'm not a pick-me I just don't want all of us to suffer

hi all,

below you’ll find an essay about men. there’s so much more I could write and I am sure I will in the future, but I wanted to get something out as I’ve been thinking about this a lot (and polling many of my male friends… so if this is you, thank you lol).

there’s no advice today, but my next newsletter will only be advice (please write in anonymously here!), and then the following will be a batch of 10 things that are feeling good, and then the cycle starts all over again with another essay! if there are things you’d like me to write about, please let me know — I have a running list of topics but am always looking for more.

I am very curious what you all think about this schedule and I want to hear from you! if you’d like to support my work in a material way, please subscribe for $5 a month, less than the price of a fancy coffee. and please “heart” this, comment on it, re-stack, etc., as that helps share my newsletter with more people. of course, feel free to forward it as well.

I paywall everything a couple weeks after publishing, so make sure you subscribe (for free or not) so you don’t miss anything.

love,

your friend Mindy 

---

I found out the sex of our baby sitting at our dining room table. I clicked on the link in my email to my hospital app, which brought me to the results of my non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) test. my husband was working second shift at the time; I called him as I clicked through to the portal so we could find out together. on the top of the screen I saw MALE. I said, “it’s a boy, I have to go, bye,” and hung up on my husband, a nice and normal person who didn’t have a preference about gender, and only wanted a healthy baby.

I didn’t want a girl so I could put her in cute outfits (although that too) or so I could have a “mini-me” or whatever. I just didn’t want a boy. it’s embarrassing to share now — and also feels silly and insane, in retrospect — but I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to connect with him or love him as much as I could a girl. I was afraid to raise a boy, I didn’t feel like I knew how. I still don’t know how — and with hindsight, I don’t think I would if I had a girl, either — but I love my son more than I ever thought possible, obviously, more than I have ever loved anyone ever. I feel ashamed that I ever felt this way, but I know I’m not alone, because I’ve talked multiple friends off the proverbial ledge when they got the same results in their NIPT tests too.

I feel a little afraid to write about this — gender and its wars and masculinity and what’s innate and what isn’t — because it all feels so fraught right now, and I don’t want anyone to think these thoughts are indicative of anything beyond the specific observations I’m sharing here. but the last (almost) three years of parenting a boy and spending time with our friends’ kids has shifted my perspective around gender. for a long time I believed that gender was entirely a social construct, and any preference a child showed for “boy-coded” or “girl-coded” things was culturally created. I don’t think that any longer — which is not to say that customs and habits don’t matter (ever heard of the superstructure????); I just think there are other innate factors at play too. obviously this isn’t true for every child in our society or in the world (duh), but I have been shocked to see how rough my son can be, how aggressively and physically he wants to play, and that his main interests are vehicles, construction, and sports, even though we’ve tried equally hard to push art and dolls on him. from what we’ve seen — and I am aware this is anecdotal! — his friends that are girls are able to sit still and focus on an activity much more easily, whether it’s playing pretend, painting, or watching a movie. our son’s favorite activities are running, jumping, and throwing things. obviously there are many non-gendered factors at play, and obviously everyone has blind spots (us included!), but these are kids being raised by people with “modern” ideas of gender; without deeply set gender roles in their own marriages or partnerships, in which both partners cook, clean, and do childcare; and who have trans and non-binary people in their lives. all of this is to say: it seems like children are drawn to certain activities, toys, and ways of being, possibly — in part — on the basis of their sex.

like I said, I feel very cautious about talking about all of this. I remember when I was pregnant and I told an acquaintance that we were having a boy and was chastised for it — this person said I shouldn’t assume the baby’s gender. maybe they were right, but to be honest, we never considered using gender neutral pronouns (and all this person did was ensure that I’ll never talk to them about anything important again). we know a few families who have chosen to use gender neutral pronouns for their kids (and obviously we respect that choice!) but most people we know, including parents who are trans, just rolled with the pronouns that matched the gender that matched the sex — for norms or for ease or for the same reasons as us, who knows. our calculus re: gender was (and is) that most people are cis so our son probably will be too, and if he’s not that’s fine, and in the meantime we will encourage activities and toys and clothes that run the gamut from “boy” to “girl” with the hope that he ends up a happy, well-adjusted person who can talk about his feelings.