Spring Sing and the Politics of Amador County

I've made a point of surrounding myself with people who see the world through a similar lens as my own. This practice has resulted in my opinons and life perspective being spread over a broader range of experiental terrain. So even though I haven't had the occassion to visit Amador county since my last backcountry mother's day celebration (an alarming proportion of my maternal relatives live there), the source of my inspiration for the current musings is an experience one of my satelite sensors had while dining at a local restaurant in the illustrious Amador county.

She was reading a newsletter detailing the regional happenings for the month of February. She was immediately drawn to a section called "marriage advice from children." A young girl, age ten advises, "You don't pick who you marry, God picks who you marry and eventually you just end up with them." A young boy, age ten advises, "It's important to pick someone who likes the same things as you. If you like sports she should like that you like sports, and keep the chips and dips coming." Oh man, where do I begin?

Let's start with the implications of the young female perspective. Not only does it reflect the deeply rooted conditional experience of girls who learn to be complacent, resigned, and complicit in their gendered role and identity; it speaks to the dangerous orientation women have to relationships, marriage and men. I think that one of the most beautiful things about children is that they see and interpret the world in incredibly honest and candid terms. The fact that this young girl has articulated marriage in terms of "who you end up with" is an authentic translation of how she has experienced life. Even at ten years old she has learned acceptance, how to take the prescriptions she's given without protest because resistance is either unrealistic, unavailable or impossible. Her statement reflects the social identification of women, and perhaps even more so young women, as obedient, pious and complicit with the roles and characteristics that are outlined for them overwhelmingly of course, by standards and representations that are created by men. Even more interesting for me is that while it is perfectly acceptable for young boys and men to imagine themselves as escaping marriage forever, girls and women percieve it as a part of their natural destiny. Certainly we all know that men who are single are "bachelors" at any age while women who remain unmarried are "old maids", "spinsters", or simply crazy, unmarriable or otherwise undesirable. It's funny how language works like that. So whether you believe God, your mother, your best friend or your eventual spouse picks who you marry, it's inevitable and unavoidable. I guess like with everything else that "just comes with being a woman" we should just get on board and over it, right?

I imagine whoever was in charge of publishing "marriage advice from children" thought that what the ten year old boy had to say was adorable, hilarious and irresistable. I can also imagine that many of the people reading "marriage advice from children" had a similar reaction. And that's fine, I guess. Except I'm horrified that a male as young as ten has already inherited the value system and perspective that his statement represents. Not only does it imply a gendered hierarchy in which his interests and identity are superior in caliber and significance, it suggests that women don't, can't or shouldn't have an identity that is seperate from their male counterpart. Of course we can't discount the resonance of women's service, and with that, subservience, to men that echos in the end of the statement. I'm sure the likely interpretations would be that he's just a kid and it's just a joke, or he's probably just reiterating and reflecting what he sees in his own family. And although it all might be true, it nonetheless speaks to the power of socialization and reproduction. This ten-year old certainly wasn't born with these attitudes, and printing them only validates, confirms and reaffirms them. And as with many things that are taken as "just a joke" it reenforces stereotypes, preserve norms and prevents critical observation from developing. Ok, ok, so Amador county isn't exactly the progressive political capital of the northwest and it is certainly understandable how these issues could wind up undetected in the Northern California foothills. Unfortunately, youthful incarnations of gender inequality is not limited to conserative voting districts.

The private catholic school where I work holds an annual concert called "spring sing," and from what I've gathered each class picks and practices a song to perform. Recently, a girl in third grade was complaining to me about the song her class had been chosen to sing. The title? "Guys say cool and girls say gross." Yes, that's right, almost a decade into the twenty-first century, in west los angeles(considered liberal, no?), a third grade class will be divided along gendered lines to sing a song that not only suggests, but demands that children experience the world in certain ways based on being a boy or girl. So what if you're a girl who doesn't think it's gross (I think the song is about somebody's loose tooth), what does that say to you about yourself? Here's some hints: abnormal, weird, strange, unusual. I imagine the experience for boys who do think it's gross is similar and equally uncomfortable. Beyond this, and perhaps what I find to be most interesting, is how this song conjures up the image of young boys pushing eachother out of the way to check out how "cool" "it" is while the girls recoil in horror and try to get out of the way. Does anyone else see the males moving to the foreground (where the action is) while the females are shoved into the background in observation? And this is just one of the ways that girls learn how to react while they passively watch the boys interact with whatever environment they're in.

I am 23 years old and have spent my entire life playing with boys. And even though I'm nearly a foot taller, more athletic and faster than your average 8 year old, the boys at this very same school refuse to throw to me on the football field. I catch every pass my adult co-worker throws me and I can launch a perfect spiral as far as anyone else I've seen throw, yet after every snap I stand un-guarded in the end-zone and no one even looks my way. Somewhere in the course of their relatively new school career, these boys have learned that women are either untrustworthy or incapable on the football field and I imagine have absorbed this same information about other spheres of their daily life. These boys have a female P.E. coach, in fact all but one teacher at the entire school are women, and all but one of their day care counselors are women. They are overwhelmingly picked up from school (and you can infer raised primarily) by women and yet somehow they have learned that in some places women just don't belong....hm...interesting, I wonder how that happened?

The truth is the messages about gender roles and identity are everywhere for these kids and it is no surprise that their understanding of gender difference develops before their awareness of just about any other aspect of identity (race, sexuality, etc.). If in an age where women are presumed to have achieved equality in so many ways, education, career, etc, why are young people still learning these lessons about their respective places in the world? Probably because as much as we'd all like to point to the Clinton '08 presidential campaign and say, here's living proof that women have made it in this world, we can all go on with our lives, the reality is they (we) haven't. And we certainly won't as long as we (womena and men) remain complacent and uncritical about media, curriculum and implicit stereotype-reenforcement that teaches both males and females where we belong.

Yesterday I saw a white t-shirt hanging in a girl's clothing store window. In pink writing the shirt said: "I'm too pretty to do math" For those who believe that I'm full of unnecessary, righteous, feminist bullshit.....I rest my case.