Why can’t little boys be allowed to raise their babies while their wives run off to earn the bread?
There was a time when I wanted to be a little girl. I wanted to cook and clean and to sew. I tried to take home economics when I was in Jr. High. In the 1970’ this was not permitted, so they signed me up woodshop and tried to turn me into a little boy.
I am not saying I wanted female genitalia. I like my male organs. I long to be with and create a new life with a woman, even if to practice and not to create.
In our society, we confuse sex with gender. Before the 20th century, this was not a problem. When we lived on farms, fathers took their sons into the fields and came home to help their wives with the garden to prepare the meals. My grandfather in the swiss alps lived with his animals, the added warmth carried them through the rough alpine winters.
Suddenly at the end of World War II, the men came home and needed jobs, so we fired all of the women who worked in the shipyard and flew the planes, delivered to the war front. Women were unhappy with this thing forced on them but what choice was left to them?
On our television, we created the false narrative of the “Leave it to Beaver” family. My grandmother must have felt the weight of not fitting into this new paradigm. She had always worked to feed the family and do her housework. Grandpa never earned enough, as a gravedigger to support the ten children, so she worked at the Deseret Industries or she cleaned motel rooms. The children when they were older worked to support the family.
They were looked down at school because the best she could afford was Levi’s and clean white t-shirts.
We need to separate sex from gender. Maybe if more men were permitted to stay home and raise the babies and their wives were encouraged to join the corporate world, or learn to weld, or program computers less of them would be gender confused?
I had an Uncle Eddie who was an orderly and loved to care for older people. He relaxed in the evening by watching football and crocheting while wearing a mumu. He had his hair in curlers preparing to look good the next day at work. He was not gender-confused. He was happy to be what he was. He found a good woman who enjoyed his lifestyle, and they enjoyed a good life.
I hope more of you are permitted to be good little boys and good little girls without reference to your biological sex.
When I Was a Boy by Dar Williams
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