Toys and Sexuality

It’s been quite a while since my last blog so forgive me if I've lost a step or two. Being a full-time parent and full-time employee certainly takes its toll as I find myself exchanging the written rants for the verbal ones. But today, I had a surprisingly profound conversation with my mother-in-law which may have actually changed the way I raise my daughter from here on out.

Now, anybody who knows me or has read my writings knows that I am a fairly strong conservative. I’m the kind of guy who, like Archie Bunker, longs for the days when “...girls were girls and men were men.” And once upon a time, not all that long ago, America was a very conservative country.

Pick up a history book or, for that matter, watch an old movie. From the first days of their lives, girls were raised to learn how to be ladies. They were taught to be well-mannered, submissive and, yes, feminine. Boys were brought up to be tough, strong and dry in the eyes at all times.

What happened next is a bit of a mystery.

Sure, I can point a few fingers at possible catalysts that served to wreak havoc on this male/female dynamic (i.e.: television and the liberal media), but I couldn’t say for sure how many things contributed to creating the ultra f**ked up society in which we currently live.

As I just mentioned, I think it all really started with television and, more specifically, with a certain feisty wife who dared to stand up to her obese, bus-driving husband. His “Pow, right in the kisser” threats fell upon apathetic ears and people laughed their asses off because it was so… well… different. Alice Kramden wasn't a submissive TV wife - not by a long shot. Her posture, language and attitude were gruff, as was the pitch of her voice. She barely even sounded feminine... and given Ralph's large frame, one might have wondered if Ralph could have even taken his own wife in a fight.

So, what’s my point in all of this? My point is that, for YEARS now, I’ve been telling people that sexuality (...like most everything in this world) is LEARNED and not something with which we’re born. Yes, we’re born with sex organs and, as we grow, our hormones run on auto pilot for a while, but we still need to learn what sex is all about, how it works, etc. If I was wrong on this, there wouldn’t be so much as one “how to” book or video on anything related to sex.

Yes, I’m a guy. Yes, I’m into chicks and yes, common sense drives the vast majority of us to ultimately seek out members of the opposite sex, but who’s to say how many of us straight guys wouldn’t be gay if raised in a completely different environment? If same sex relations were the norm and heterosexuality, the deviation from that norm, maybe the majority of people in the world would be gay.

Which brings me to my issue.

My daughter recently turned two years old and, from the time she was like seven months old, she would play with those wooden train sets every time we went to the Children’s Museum. Sure, she’d play in other areas as well, but the train table was never missed. At present, she’s a HUGE Thomas the Tank Engine fan and, yes, as a parent who wants to nurture her interests, I’ve done a few things to bring Thomas closer to home.

I downloaded a bunch of Thomas episodes, showed her a few of them and bought a few of the more popular trains (Thomas, Gordon, James, Percy, etc). Now, not a day goes by where she doesn’t literally drag me to the computer, ask me to sit down and say to me, “Daddy! Choo choo! Watch... choo choo!” to let me know that she’s yearning for her daily Thomas fix. And for her birthday, I gave her the wooden train set table that she runs to whenever we’re at that famous toy store with the giraffe who yearns to be a certain kind of kid.

My wife and mother keep telling me that these are toys that only boys should be playing with and I’ve been calmly waving them off in a “what harm could it do” kind of way. Well, here’s the harm. The harm is that the trains could very quickly turn to planes… or Transformers… or action figures… or Star Wars gear – toys that are traditionally crafted with boys in mind. The Thomas trains just might be her gateway toy to increasingly boyish toys.

With such toys comes the desire to play with like-minded children and before you know it, she's only gonna want to play with boys because she'll have so little in common with the girls. Yes, those girls... who are having invisible tea parties, playing with dolls, cooking pretend food in their "kitchens" and imagining themselves as the princesses they always see on their toys... won't want to have much to do with the girl who plays with boys' toys.

I happen to know of a couple of mothers who so adamantly refuse to conform to societal and gender norms that they go out of their way to dress their girls in anything but pink. They encourage these girls to play with whatever toys they want. One girl plays with toys from both gender categories, but the other girl is decidedly tomboyish and, lo and behold, she has zero female friends.

Zero.

Now, I’m not gonna sit here and tell you these girls are future lesbians, but it certainly wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility. I believe that a big reason why we are attracted to the opposite sex as adults is because we spent our entire childhoods in closest proximity to members of the same sex, building brotherhoods and sisterhoods with our friends and sharing common interests. If you’re reading this and you 100% disagree with me, that’s totally cool because I’ll be the first to admit that I have very little professional data to back up anything I’m saying here. For me, however, this is more than just a gut feeling.

When the opposite sex is different from you and your friends, they lend themselves to a degree of mystery and intrigue. The “Vive la differénce” spirit ignites as we boys catch our first quick glimpse at a girl's smooth, bare legs. As boys, me and my friends got curious about girls because they were absolutely nothing like us, yet they seemed to enjoy themselves just as much as we did. I mean, there’s a whole “sexuality” known as bi/curious for a reason. Everybody's curious about sex at some point in their lives, whether it be straight or gay.

For me, I just couldn't figure out how girls could have such a great time without so much as one Transformer in their hand. A life without Optimus Prime and Megatron was, for me, a life not worth living. I had my fellow dudes as friends, we did male things, played war games, superhero games and swapped action figures from He-Man to Star Wars to Transformers to G.I. Joe. It’s what boys of my generation did. Ask any thirty something straight guy if they played with any of the four groups of toys I just mentioned. I’d bet my house that 100% of the guys surveyed will have had experience playing with at least one of those four if not ALL of those four.

There wasn’t a miniature tea set, Barbie or Cabbage Patch Kid ANYWHERE in our vicinity and I’m reasonably sure that we’d have kicked the ever-loving sh*t out of any boy in our group if they DID have anything like that. Once in a while, in between trench battles and galactic Empire showdowns, we’d spy a group of girls playing with girly things, having girly conversations and bursting out in girly giggles. We swore them off and spoke of cooties, but honestly, we were all secretly intrigued.

By the time we hit Junior High, the toys started to disappear and we started looking at legs instead. A girl would walk up a row of stairs and if she was wearing even a moderately short skirt, you can bet that at least a few dudes were scoping out the goods. In my senior year of high school, a female friend once asked me about our fascination with boobs and legs. At seventeen, the best answers I could come up with were "They look great" and, in the case of boobs, "Because we don't have any."

At 34, I doubt my answers would be a whole hell of a lot more profound.

We boys weren’t at all confused about our sexualities because most of us were brought up in stable “one mom/one dad” households and were given a pretty clear path to how boys became men and how we should never, EVER hit girls no matter what. Nowadays, couples are splitting up at the first signs of trouble and leaving their children in broken homes. Kids are being brainwashed by their ultra-liberal parents to believe that conformity is a form of oppression and that hugging trees is more important than hugging your parents.

Some kids see their nannies more than they see their own parents and there are no strong role models for them to emulate. It comes as no surprise to me that some people's compasses are a bit off-North. For me, part of being a boy involved my dad taking me aside and telling me that sometimes a boy has to stand up for himself and kick a few asses. Sure, work to resolve the conflict amicably, but if it doesn’t work and you have to belt him, lay the bastard out. Then, Dad gave me some pointers and we bonded as males.

Nowadays, lawsuits appear shortly after a mild bitchslap and ultra-pacifist hippie, hummus-eating parents pussify their kids to the point that a slight frost in the morning will send them into a hissy fit of pansy-ass proportions.

So, I’ve switched gears a bit. Sure, my daughter gets to keep her Thomas trains, but her birthday gifts also included a Mommy & Me doll and a small baby stroller, complete with a pack of mini-diapers and mini baby bottle. And I’m happy to report that she loves this doll tremendously, changes her diaper often, remembers to feed her and even tucks her in to sleep – all with virtually no direction from us.

And yes, the vast majority of her clothing is either pink, red or lavender. We also just bought her another winter coat last week. It’s a very warm, magenta jacket that she loves about as much as we do. Our daughter often sees her mom and me together, giving each other loving attention, hugs, etc., and I really believe this will benefit her a great deal. Coming from a solid and loving home will teach and nurture her in ways that no amount of book-reading ever could.

Lastly, I'm aware that there are some “experts” in the field who believe that one can be born as a homosexual, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that “nurture” has a WHOLE LOT more to do with sexuality than “nature.” And I'll actually back up this claim, citing Volume 146, Issue 20, Page 95 of the November 13, 1995 issue of TIME in an article entitled “New Evidence of a ‘Gay Gene’” by Anastasia Toufexis.

An exerpt from the article reads:

“"Gay gene" researcher Dean Hamer was asked by Scientific American if homosexuality was rooted solely in biology. He replied: "Absolutely not. From twin studies, we already know that half or more of the variability in sexual orientation is not inherited. Our studies try to pinpoint the genetic factors...not negate the psychosocial factors."”

Homosexuals might not necessarily have chosen their sexual tendencies, but they did pick it up somewhere along the line after they left the womb – not while they were in it. Furthermore, they choose to ACT on those tendencies, so don't make it like someone's got a gun to their heads, making them have gay sex.

Anyway, upon finishing up this conversation with my mother-in-law, I resolved to give my daughter more pink clothes, tea sets, dolls and dresses..... not to mention a very loving and stable home.