Genderally Speaking

May 17, 2016

I had five children in my first marriage. The order was girl, girl, boy, girl, and girl. My then-husband was so disappointed when I told him our first was a girl. He was on the road to work (about two hours away) when I went to the hospital. This was before cell phones, so I was unable to get ahold of him so he could be there. When he finally called me, our daughter had been born, and his first words to me were, “Is it a boy?” I replied, “No, but she’s so beautiful!” After our second daughter was born, I think we both assumed we would be the parents of girls. Then our son was born, and we kept saying to one another, “We have a boy!” I can’t say what exactly he meant when he said it, but I know that I was just delighted to try my hand at raising a son and had been resigned that the Lord didn’t have that on the schedule for me.

That boy was born 28 years ago. His sisters are 34, 31, 25 and 22, three of whom are married. There was something completely different about him even when he was a baby. He was drawn to different kinds of activities than those that drew the attention of my girls. Some of the girls liked “girly” things, some were less interested. Our son was about 300% boy, as I described him. He was loud, rowdy, and such a handful. As he became older, I realized that there was really nothing that I was teaching him about what to like and dislike. He has ADHD, and it was particularly challenging in his case. 

I later had another boy and another girl with my current husband. They, too, are very different. Neither is “all boy” or “all girl,” but they have strong tendencies that give a nod to their respective genders. The things that keep their attention and which fill their time sometimes blend, but mostly they are distinct individuals.

When I think of myself as a little girl, I remember being raised in a family where gender roles were more rigidly defined, but I was secretly (still am!) glad to be a girl because I didn’t want to have the responsibilities the boys had and would have as they grew older. I didn’t really understand what I was feeling. I knew I was a girl, and I was glad to be a girl. It never occurred to me that I could or should be a boy. That seems to me like my cats feeling like they should really have been born dogs and living a dog’s life. To be honest, though, most of us would love to live a dog’s life now and then.

Speaking of dogs, we currently have two dogs. Harley is a young male yellow Lab/Collie mix; Shadow is a 10-year-old female Siberian Husky. We rescued Harley when he was nine months old. He had been in an abusive situation. One month later we adopted Shadow from our neighbor who had to move to an apartment. Not only did Shadow basically teach Harley how to be a dog, we have had our own in-home gender study going on with the two dogs.

Harley is rough and tumble and completely oblivious to the needs of and affection for Shadow. Shadow, to Harley, is his buddy. They like to play, but it’s mostly Harley running circles around Shadow while she pretends she can’t take him with one fell swoop. She is very much like a mother even though she has never had any puppies. Our family took in a new mother kitty and her four tiny kittens last year. Harley was very curious about them, and he has always been gentle. Shadow surprised us because she was so gentle and seemed to treat the kittens the way their mother did. She was patient with them and gave them loving licks when they would come near her. We still have three of the kittens, who are a year old now. When Shadow walks by them, she will often reach out and give them a love-lick. Harley’s form of affection seems to be putting the entire head of a cat in his mouth (not in a violent way but a playful one).

In our household my husband and I share the task of nurturing our children. I am usually more gentle in my approach, but he has the wisdom to see things I miss. I have a full-time job, but he has many jobs and spends an awful lot of time trying to keep the plates spinning. He clearly takes his role as the head of the home very seriously. I, on the other hand, am secretly glad that I don’t have to be the sole decision maker for the family! We are all very, very grateful that, while I do the “traditional” mom job of all the family laundry, he does all of the cooking. His approach to cooking is a beautiful thing, one which my tummy greatly appreciates!

I am me. I am a product of my upbringing but mostly who I am chemically, physically, emotionally, and mentally. I have a sense that my spirit existed before I was born. I had the sense before I joined the Church. That same sense tells me that when I leave this earth, my spirit will still be me because my spirit is who I am. I like to think of my body as a handy carrying case.

The many scriptural accounts of the creation tell us that God created us as male and female. I have to wonder, if He created us that way, wouldn’t it make sense that he had more in his plan for each gender rather than just the physical creation of other males and females?

While the history of mankind (even the fact that we emphasize the “man” portion of the word as if it means just male and not human) is filled with mischaracterization of God’s design for male and female, I feel that, like many other issues that have been skewed one way or the other, we are going past the mark and trying to right a wrong by inserting another wrong that our society is defining as a “right.” Male lawyers and female lawyers might understand the law equally well, but each brings a different leaning to their interpretation, and that is what helps make it more well rounded.

We are trying to teach the young girls in our society that they are capable and beautiful and “enough.” At the same time, our media tends to send the message that boys are the root cause of our society’s ills, especially as they grow to be men. I believe that in order to be equal, we need to be treated as though each gender is capable of different things that are all needed to keep the world going.