How to raise a feminist son in a few easy steps
Haha, jk jk, I have no clue what I’m doing
When I was pregnant, I was absolutely positive that the alien growing inside of me was a girl. So I was shocked – shocked! – when I learned at an ultrasound that it was a boy. “Are you sure?” I asked the technician. “Oh yes, quite sure,” she said, pointing to the penis on the screen.
“Boys are great!” my mom said when I called her later that day to tell her and bemoan my fate. “You get to be the queen!”
“I don’t want to be the queen, I want to raise a queen,” I lamented, ignoring what her reassurances implied about how she felt about parenting my brother and me.
I had grand images of raising a badass, brilliant, fierce girl warrior, one who would be molded to fight the patriarchy, to kick down barriers, to be confident in who she was, to take on the world. This is the language I knew, this is what I’d steeped myself in for more than 20 years by that point. Raising a boy did not figure into this fantasy.
When they cut my son out of me in a C-section at 42 weeks, after I heard the baby’s healthy cry and the doctor exclaim “wow, big baby!” (he was almost 10 pounds when he was born, thank god for C-sections), the first thing I said was “Is it still a boy?” Affirmative.
But all of that disappeared the minute they put this incredible creature in my arms. I didn’t care what this human’s sex or gender was – I fell utterly in love. And in the 11 years since, I cannot imagine having anything other than this boy. He is perfect.
I shifted my fantasies of raising a queen to visions of raising a feminist son. When he was younger, this honestly wasn’t that hard. I provided toys across the gender spectrum for him to play with, though he was never much interested in any toys except those for building. I switched out sexist pronouns in stories I read to him. I tried to model what a strong woman looked like. I painted his toenails and fingernails when he asked me to (he always wanted alternating green and blue). I took him with me to vote for Hilary Clinton in 2016, enthusing the whole way there how exciting this day was (fuck.) I talked with him frankly about male and female bodies and tried to normalize tampons and menstruation. I worked with him on “naming” his emotions to build his emotional literacy. The New York Times ran a piece “How to Raise a Feminist Son,” which I cut out and taped on the inside of my pantry closet door (it’s still there). This whole raising-a-feminist-son thing seemed pretty easy! OMG I AM SUCH AN AMAZING FEMINIST BOY MOM. (I actually can’t stand the phrase “boy mom,” for so many reasons.)
But now he’s in middle school. And like everything else, it’s more complicated. As we barrel toward the next few years of tween and teen life, I’m more conscious than ever that I don’t know what it’s like to be a boy or a man. I try to see the world through his eyes, and I can see how it might feel like boys are in a no-win situation and that lots of people want to blame men for, well, everything. This has been an education for me, and a humbling. Don’t get me wrong – I realize that my white male child has a ton of privilege and that our society still values men more than women. (Not to mention that the fact that this is a thing I am even worried about shows the privilege we have. I don’t have to worry extensively about affording food for him to eat or him getting shot by police, just for two examples.) But maybe now I’m just a bit more like those annoying men who have daughters and suddenly claim to care about women. Now that I have a son, I can see how hard it might be for him, and boys, to navigate this moment in time we’re in. OMG I AM SUCH A HORRIBLE FEMINIST.
To me, feminism is not so much a political identity, but a moral value that guides my life and is just one of many factors informing my political leanings. It is core to my identity and my belief system, and I cannot envision a reality where I am not trying to raise my child according to my values, as I’m sure most parents think, no matter their ideological beliefs. Does my son have to be a feminist? No. Does he have to have the same progressive values I do? No. Do I want him to be a misogynist who writhes in his own resentment and bitterness? No, I really don’t. Will I love him no matter what? Yes, of course, without reservation.
At the risk of raising the hackles of the progressive internet (not that all that many people are paying attention to what I think anyway), I worry sometimes that my son will have a reactionary response to the progressive values he’s exposed to, including my own. That I will push him too far in the other direction. That I will Alex P. Keaton him, except he’ll end up with a Lambo or some stupid shit instead of a wearing a necktie as a teenager. Striking the right balance while talking with a smart tween boy about feminism and the patriarchy without shaming him for being born into the body he was born into is harder than I expected. What if this backfires?? It’s certainly harder than buying him dolls to play with alongside toy trucks.
I’ve tried to remove “toxic masculinity” from my vocabulary. I’ve tried to put aside my own disappointment and frustration with so many men and to focus more on my disappointment and frustration with the patriarchy, which has created all of us. I’ve tried to talk with my son about how the patriarchy damages our collective and individual humanity, regardless of gender, that it denies all of us the full range of the beautiful, maddening human experience.
Is this the right thing to do? I HAVE NO IDEA. I DO NOT KNOW WHAT I AM DOING. What I do know is that I care more about how my son thinks than what he thinks. I want him to come to his own opinions, I want him to question the status quo, to question everything. (He seems to have zero problem questioning me these days!) But I also don’t want him to fall into this addictive “manosphere” internet black hole, where Andrew Tate and his imitators lure boys into their misogynistic, greedy, rage-filled lairs. Even though we live in Brooklyn and my son goes to a very progressive school, the manosphere and its dumb-ass memes have begun to infiltrate. And it makes me feel like screaming wildly at the internet with the fiercest mom fury, “Get your disgusting tentacles out of my kid!”
I get even more nervous about this when I read about studies saying that Gen Z boys and men increasingly say that feminism is harmful. It’s not really a surprise to read in the midst of this current backlash to feminism and women, but it’s still quite disheartening.
I told my son about the Gen Z study, and surprisingly, he actually engaged with me about it for a few minutes. This was not the first, nor will it be the last, conversation we have about hard things.
“So, some of these guys are saying that they think feminism does more harm than good. What do you think about that?” I said.
“Feminism is good. I think everyone should be equal and the same,” he said.
“Why do you think some boys would think that feminism is not good?” I asked.
“They think it’s taking away from men’s power. Nowadays sometimes it’s not like everyone’s equal, but that girls think they’re better than boys,” he said. “It shouldn’t be that girls are better than boys but that everyone’s equal.” (I bit my tongue and fought the urge to launch into a lecture about equality vs equity, about systemic oppression, about all the things.)
“Yeah, I hear you,” I said. “Sometimes it might seem like girls think they’re better than boys but it’s actually a strong reaction to the patriarchy, to a system instead of individual boys. What do you think about that?”
“Oh totally. I mean, the patriarchy is bad, for everyone. But I think that feminism should mean that everyone’s equal,” he said. “And I don’t think that, like, I should be blamed for something that happened before I was even born.”
“Would you say that you’re a feminist?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’d say I’m a feminist,” he said.
“Have you heard of Andrew Tate?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said.
“How? Have you watched his videos, or whatever they are?” I asked.
“Nah, I don’t really want to,” he said. “I only like watching YouTube if it’s about math or Fortnite. I just hear kids at school talking about him.”
“What do you think about Andrew Tate?” I asked.
“Eh, he’s an idiot,” he said. “Can I go back to Xbox now?”
“Yeah, hon, you can,” I said. “Thanks for talking about this with me.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “Wanna watch me play Fortnite? I just learned this cool new thing, I can show you. I’d say you could play with me, but you’re, like, really bad. But you can watch me if you want.”
“I would love to watch you play,” I said. So I did, and he was right – the new thing he learned was indeed very cool.
How do I hold my anger toward the patriarchy at the same time as my unwavering, otherworldly love for this son of mine who has inherited all the benefits of the patriarchy simply by virtue of the body he was born into? I don’t know the answer to that other than you just do, I guess. The only thing I have come up with is to just keep fighting: keep fighting against the patriarchy, keep fighting for my son, keep fighting to help him figure out what kind of person — what kind of man — he wants to be.
I’ll keep fending off the Andrew Tates of the world from my kid, though it sometimes feels like playing misogynist whack-a-mole, and I’ll keep trying to sneak in talks with my kid around his Xbox playing. I’ll keep being a feminist, even if I’m doing it wrong sometimes, and I’ll keep trying to understand my son’s and boys’ experiences. I’ll get both parenting and feminism wrong sometimes, but maybe every once in a while, I’ll get close to the mark.
We have less influence and control over them than we think we do, and at some point we just have to trust that they’re going to be okay.
I mean, even Alex P. Keaton turned out okay, right?
What’s got my attention this week
I recently watched The Disappearance of Shere Hite, which I highly recommend. I’d never heard of Hite before, and after watching the documentary, I know why. Talk about a backlash. She’s my latest lady hero.
I also recently watched a documentary recommended by a friend, 51 Birch Street, which was quietly powerful and I loved it.
Even with cancer, Cecile Richards is fighting for women and our reproductive freedom.
I dispute this. How can the best mayo be anything other than Hellmann’s? Everything is broken.
I don’t usually watch the Grammys, but my son was interested this year so we watched it together. Like the rest of America, I can’t get “Fast Car” out of my head this week. I teared up watching Tracy Chapman and tried to convey to my son how much that song meant to me, but he just looked at me and said “I can’t believe you’re crying because of a song.” Whatever, dude, it’s a great song.
WAL woman of the week
A woman out there in the world, being A Lot
I love you, E. Jean Carroll.
Out of the mouths of babes
“Equality doesn’t seem dangerous to me.” Shere Hite, The Disappearance of Shere Hite.
This is a great, great piece, Nikki! It's something I think about and struggle with as well raising a 10-year-old son (who also makes me watch him do cool stuff in Fortnite.) I sometimes feel like when I try to raise up women, he feels like I'm putting down men or as your son says, "blaming him for something that happened before he was born." I also have no idea what I''m doing 99% of the time, but I really love and appreciate how you approach feminism with your son. (Also you hair does look really great in that picture!)
Whoa. You just snuck yourself into my brain and wrote all the feelings I’ve had over the last almost-14 years with my own kid. Can’t subscribe fast enough!