Raising A Son

I've never felt very confident about raising a son. If I'm completely honest, there is a level of fear and trepidation that I've carried for years when faced with the idea. Growing up, I didn't really fit the mold for the male archetype (I didn't really fit the mold for anything). As a boy, afraid of my difference, I spent large swaths of my youth in one of two modes: avoiding confrontation and close friendships with other boys out of fear of being labeled different, or seeking physical altercations in order to hide behind my anger in (what is a completely fucked up world, I know) the comforting embrace of violence or at least the threat thereof. Raising a son means revisiting that stuff and, quite possibly, reliving those experiences. How am I supposed to do that?

Boys are tough, they don't cry (they barely have feelings for that matter), they relish competition. So, I acted tough, I didn't cry...a lot, and I tried to really like sports. The totally fucked up part of this whole machismo patriarchal culture in which we all came of age is that it's insidious. Like racism, patriarchy is this institutionalized piece of our culture that I can easily avoid thinking about or challenging precisely because I have a penis and identify as a man and the system privileges that. I wish I didn't have to raise my son in that sort of culture.

I recently read an article by a columnist on RockPaperShotgun (it's a PC gaming blog, I'm assuming most of you don't read it or care but). Robert Florence does a column on board games and in this piece enters into the fray of Cards Against Humanity creator, Max Temkin, being accused of rape. He writes, "I’d like to point Temkin to a part of rape culture that actually hurts everyone – this constant bullshit that there is any grey area around consent." I cannot count the number of conversations I have been in with other men about rape and women in general in which there is a very specific effort given to alleviating men of any responsibility when it comes to their own actions. It is mind-boggling. And then it's infuriating. And then it's incredibly sad.

This is the stuff I'm talking about. Debates around rape and rape culture are so beyond excruciating because the impetus is on obfuscating, straw-manning and blurring arguments for the sake of maintaining a cultural order that privileges power over personhood. Consent is a straightforward concept, you don't get to play devil's advocate around questions of consent. If an adult who is in full control of their faculties says yes, then it is consent. If that person says ANYTHING else, it is not consent. If that same person decides to change their mind about their consent, it is no longer consent. If, for whatever reason, that person is no longer in full control of their faculties, actions are no longer consensual. If you are confused by this, you are probably male.

I don't know, maybe all of this sounds a bit heavy for a one-year-old birthday post for my son, but this is the stuff that I see in the future. These are the things that scare me about raising this kid. I want him to be able to enter the world as he is and enter the world allowing everyone around him to be who they are. So, I do my best refusing to allow him to grow up in a house that says he can't cry when he needs to or can't be what he wants to be. I resolve to make damn sure he knows whether he is gay or straight or bisexual,whatever his gender identity, he is my child, and I will love him precisely because of who he is not in spite of who he is. Because being a white American male of Northern European descent, it is important for him to learn to hear the voices of all people as loudly and vividly as he will undoubtedly hear and see the voices of people who look and speak like him for most of his life.

There's a lot to work on, raising a son. There's this omnipresent sense of urgency that seems to weave itself through our everyday interactions even at this age and it's been helpful keeping things in perspective. It's helpful to remind myself that fostering a loving, caring, accepting human being starts with providing a loving, caring and accepting family life. It's beginning to dawn on me that maybe the basics of raising a child, regardless of their reproductive organs or emerging gender identity, are the same. That's helpful.

Watching him dance when he hears music, moving however he wants and not stopping for an instant to check who's in the room, that was when it hit me how much cultural and personal baggage we drop on our kids. This kid is happy dancing and moving and unconcerned with your judgment. He is inquisitive. He climbs stairs and people and chairs even though he can't walk. He cries when he falls (usually because he's scared himself). He's a crappy sleeper and a fantastic cuddler. He loves planes, trains, and dogs. He hates peas. He is blissfully unaware that their is a whole world of crap he's going to have to wade through as he grows up and finds himself. I guess my job is perhaps a lot simpler than I've concocted in my head. Love him, support him, teach him, I think that should cover it for now.

In the final count, I aim to raise a feminist. I think the world will be better for it.