Kids and gender

SOME TIME last month I was in the car with my 5-year-old son, with his Tito Mark (a friend, not a relative) at the wheel.  Suddenly out of the blue, my son proclaimed in a tone of papal infallibility:  “Tito Mark is bading.”  (For now, I’m going to translate “bading” as gay but the term is much more complicated than that.)

Mark is as macho as macho can be, complete with tattoos.  He grunted, like “real men” do, “Di a (Nope).”

I knew it was another one of those off-the-cuff remarks from my son, meant to spark some conversation, so I took him up on it, asking him why he thought Tito Mark was bading.

My son pointed to Tito Mark’s ear and explained, “May hikaw e (He has earrings).”  I was fascinated, seeing for myself what Jean Piaget had written decades ago about the development of children’s cognitive capabilities.

My son was clearly going through what Piaget called a pre-operational stage, where children classify objects (and people) around them by a single feature. A cat, for example, is a cat because it has long and visible whiskers. If you trim the whiskers the child might say the cat is no longer a cat but a dog.

This kind of pre-operational thinking extends into gender.  Little boys will protest if you ask them to wear a dress because they are convinced that will make them girls.  My son had zeroed in on earrings as a “woman thing” but, curiously, had also figured that if a man uses a woman thing that makes him bading. I knew he wasn’t being anti-gay in the way he used the term. For him, bading was a hybrid male/female gender category.

I asked him, “What about Tito Noli?  Is he bading?” Noli is another family friend who is as bading as bading can be in the sense of being effeminate and yet does not wear earrings.  My son paused, then shrugged his shoulders, “He’s Tita Noli.”

I thought I’d shift the frame: “And what about men who have nose rings? Are they bading?”

My son found that hilarious, practically rolling in laughter as he threw the question back at me: “Nose rings?”

I suddenly realized he probably had not seen anyone with a nose ring. But, ever the comedian, he just had to answer, “That’s silly.  If Tito Mark weared (my son’s grammar, like his concepts of gender, is evolving) a nose ring, he would be a horse.”  There was a split second pause, and then the final judgment: “A bading horse.”

<STRONG>Controversial gender</STRONG>

Gender is a mine field. These days religious conservatives in the United States and their followers in the Philippines insist that gender is a “code word” invented by some international conspiracy to justify tolerance of homosexuality.  Deeper down though, what these conservatives fear is the way the boundaries of masculinity and femininity are being challenged, which they blame on modern times, on Westernization, on secularism.

But male-ness and female-ness have always been fluid concepts. Even in pre-colonial Philippine society, there were transvestite males (men who would dress up and live as women) known as babaylan, asog and various other names.   Such transgenders were perceived as powerful because of their androgyny, so much so that they would officiate at religious ceremonies.

Such roles for transgenders were found in many societies and to some extent, I think our subconscious memory of the babaylan makes Filipinos quite accepting of a bading priest (albeit without earrings).

Certainly, modern society is much more complex, with more cross-overs in terms of gender roles, but that can be a good thing. Until the early 20th century, there were still laws in the US that banned women from wearing pants.  That was an improvement over the medieval ages, when someone like St. Joan of Arc was burned at stake, again for daring to take up male roles, especially as a soldier. Today, conservative ire targets women who dare to try to plan their families, which they label as a transgression of natural law.

That is why gender issues need to be tackled even with very young children. I want my children to grow up understanding that boys can do girl things, and vice-versa, but the battles for this equality start at home.  My parents scold my son when he wears red sneakers, which they say are “only for girls” but they also order him to wear a red shirt for a birthday party, red being an auspicious color for the Chinese.

The battles spill over into school. I was alarmed when my son came home one day with homework showing pictures of a dad driving a car, going to work, watering the garden and pictures of mom cooking, doing the laundry, carrying baby.  I asked him if it was all right for his Dada to cook for him (which I do from time to time), and without batting an eyelash, he answered yes—and promptly announced he was hungry.

I brought up the matter of the mom and dad lessons with the guidance counselor (the school is Catholic) in one of our parent-teacher interactions and the counselor assured me the pictures are discussed and the kids are told that it’s all right for dads to do “mom things” and vice-versa.  She acknowledged that you can’t limit the roles, given how many working moms there are today, as well as single-parent households.

<STRONG>Sexuality education</STRONG>

Let me relate these adventures in gender education to the RH bill.  I know people who believe in family planning, even using contraceptives themselves, but are opposed to the RH bill because it prescribes “sex education.” Usually, they express the fear with descriptions like “I just don’t like the idea of teaching condoms in kindergarten.”

What the RH bill proposes is  “sexuality education,” something much wider than sex education, to be taught in phases.  Awareness of gender issues, which boils down to a respect for people, men or women, straight or gay, is a vital part of sexuality education and one which has to start early. Unesco has evidence-based guidelines on comprehensive sexuality education where you can see why this gender component of sexuality education is so important. Gender sensitivity challenges stereotypes so girls learn to assert their rights and boys can be more respectful toward girls.  And for both boys and girls, sexuality education allows them to go beyond traditional gender roles and tap into their full potentials. (See https://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001832/183281e.pdf)

I’m comfortable that my kids can ask people if they’re bading because they do so without malice.  What I find disturbing is when a kid is scolded for calling someone bading, and then the kid comes home and hears the same parents or elders making fun of Tito’s effeminacy behind his back.

Our goal should not be superficial political correctness.  My kids will never make fun of people who don’t fit the traditional molds—not because I’d scold them, but because they see, for themselves, the whole spectrum of Tito-like Titas and Tita-like Titos in their lives, with or without earrings and nose rings and tattoos, loving and caring for them unconditionally.

Email: mtan@inquirer.com.ph/