"No gifts, please!" & Thoughts on "the end of gender"

In the past, we've always noted "No gifts, please!" on invitations to our kid's parties. Most of our friends had, too. In the past, we'd stuck to our (somewhat) crunchy birth class friends, the kids were just babies, and it was just all a little simpler. Now, with the girl in preschool and our circle expanding to people with values maybe a little different from our own, we experimented with leaving that off the invites for the fourth birthday party. Most of the parties we'd gone to, of children from her preschool class and friends of friends from the neighborhood and such had done the gift thing. Many even had the "let's sit around and watch the child open the gifts" portion of the party, too. I worried my kid would wonder why other kids got presents at their parties and she didn't. She even mentioned her friends bringing presents, cutely and excitedly, in a totally age-appropriately-greedy little way, but not overly so.

So, her four guests brought presents. Mostly cute, small little things. One brought a game we already had that we were able to re-gift (with the recipient knowing the story) to another child. One brought a ladybug growing kit. One brought a dolly. And one brought...a Disney Princess Kitchen set. It was a kind and generous gift that I think retails for $79.99 or something (yikes!) but the mom is a really savvy bargain shopper and she assured me she got a deal. Still, when it was presented I got the sense that I was supposed to be super dazzled and I also worried a little about what the other guests might think.

I also was a little freaked out because we don't really "do" Disney here and certainly not the princesses. I mean, we have some cheesy thrift store play jewelry with their silly little princess heads on them from the mother-in-law, but these are largely ignored and the princess aspect not really noticed. I don't have anything major against the Disney princesses, other than that they are garish and cheesy looking and think I'd be OK with them, in moderation, if my kid showed any interest, but, she doesn't. Coincidentally, the one who brought the kitchen set is one who gave me, two years in a row, razors (among other toiletry items) for Christmas and left me wondering whether she did not notice that I don't shave (legs, pits, at all) or if she was trying to send me some kind of message that I should! I wondered the same thing about the kitchen set. Did she not notice we didn't have any Disney stuff and whenever she talked about going to Disney, I just smiled politely and nodded and indicated no interest in going, at all? Did she think we were too poor for Disney and she was doing me a favor? I don't know, maybe she was just getting what she thought was a nice gift for my kid. And it was, mostly, but I was a little worried about having it in my house, even in the play area. I mean, it was just so...tacky. So I was happy to discover when I was putting the crazy plastic thing together that it did not come with the stickers of the princesses and their silly little faces already on it, and, I could choose to leave them off! Brilliant! I could also choose to not put in the batteries so we wouldn't have to hear the thing recite "princess phrases" (whatever those are). I can live with a pink stove and sink unit...with hot pink turrets and bejeweled handles. Princess characters on appliances I cannot live with, though.



All this might make me sound kind of like an angry anti-feminine person or battler of gender differences, but I assure you, I am not. Here, too, I "walk the line" because I understand, to some extent, problems with gender bias and with pigeonholing people, but at the same time I don't like to overdo the gender neutrality thing. I think gender neutrality is actually not achievable (or desirable) in reality. Males and females are different. We should obviously have equal rights for those basic things like owning property, voting, running for office, access to education. Girls should in no way be inhibited from doing what they want to do (nor should boys, naturally), but that doesn't mean we have to go to bizarre lengths to erase any reference to gender, as they are doing at one school in Sweden.

What bothers me alot about this is that, in my view, erasing the pronouns and denying one's gender, they are actually reinforcing the power of gender stereotypes. I was led, by the Feministing.com article referenced in the previous paragraph to a site explaining the term "genderqueer" and was saddened. It said:

The term "genderqueer" began to be commonly used at the turn of the twenty-first century by youth who feel that their gender identities and/or gender expressions do not correspond to the gender assigned to them at birth, but who do not want to transition to the "opposite" gender...

It explained that sometimes these folks refuse to attach a a label at all to their gender identity because they feel that no word can capture the complexities they face with regard to gender. I can respect their feelings, but, what all this tells me is that what needs to change is the attaching of certain colors, accouterments, attributes, etc. to just males or just females and kill the idea that people are one way all the time. I mean, aren't we beyond that now? I think a girl can be a girl, can have long, pretty hair and want to wear mascara but also kick ass on the soccer field and not like to cook or not want to have babies. A girl can also want to shave her head, wear no makeup and combat boots but enjoy knitting and want to have ten babies. A boy can have long hair and wear makeup and want to be a stay-at-home-dad, or have long hair and wear makeup and be a linebacker...you get my drift. People should be able to do what they want and be who they want to be, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else. But, do we have to erase gender to do that? Can't we just expand on what it means to be a male or female?

If I had a little boy I'd be just as inclined to let him play with a pink kitchen set someone gave us as a gift, but would have been just as disinclined to go out and buy a Disney princess one myself! As far as gifts, I think I may return to the "your presence is your present" policy for year five. By then, I think the girl will be old enough to understand the concept of having so much already and not needing more.