Allison+S’s+2018+OpEd+Article

=Girls And Boys= 

When I was little, I loved Legos. In fact, I still love Legos. Legos were the foundation for my creativity. One of the main contributors to my lego obsession were my brothers. My older brothers were obsessed with legos. I tended to follow in the footsteps of their hobbies, and having no other siblings, I tended to take interest in activities that they enjoyed. I never considered myself a tom boy, I was just a human being doing what I enjoyed. I didn’t think there was a separation between girl things and boy things, I just thought hey, I like Legos, my brothers like legos, that must mean legos are pretty cool. I started to notice the differences between me and my classmates in elementary school. I would wake up extra early before school to play “Oblivion” on the Playstation while my other friends were waking up early to play with their dolls. I didn’t think anything of it, we just had different hobbies, so what? Another thing I began to notice was the difference in gifts my brothers and I would receive. Every year, holidays would come around and relatives would send gifts for my brothers and I. As I aged, I grew increasingly more irritated by the fact that every gift my outside family sent my brothers and I were always separated by our gender. Every year, my brothers would get identical presents and I would get something totally separate.

For example, most of the time my brothers received an identical Lego set. I would watch them open their gifts and I would get excited when I saw that they got the same Lego set, because I thought, “omg that must mean I got the same Lego set then!!”. Because what’s the difference between my brothers and I? Apparently a lot. Because no, I didn’t get the Lego set. I got a pink fucking hairbrush. And this irritated the shit out of me.

Don’t get me wrong, hairbrushes are cool and so are the endless amount of barbies I received every year, but that’s not what I enjoyed. Although I gave blatant hints to everyone in my outside family that my interest correlated with my brothers, I couldn’t blame them for sending me a gift solely based on my gender. They went through the trouble of getting me a gift in the first place, so I never showed my distaste.

After awhile, I grew up and the gifts stopped coming and I forgot about the whole thing. My legos got packed away and I lost touch with a lot of family members.

And only two hours ago has this suppressed bullshit been reignited.

Today I came home to see a package on our front door step. My mom told me it was from my aunt. I have no idea why she chose to send us a gift, but she did, and I was excited to open it.

She sent us three shirts, two for both my brothers, and one for me. Two were blue and one was pink.

Can you guess who the pink was for? Don’t get me wrong, pink is a pretty color, but blue is my favorite fucking color. And while my brothers can walk around in matching shirts, I have to be separated off from them in some neon pink bullshit.

The whole point of this story is to say that we should just raise boys and girls the same. If a boy wants to wake up extra early to play with his doll house, let him play with his mother fucking doll house.

And don’t differentiate chores based on gender. Dishes and laundry shouldn’t just be assigned to the daughter, and labor in the garden or lawn shouldn’t just be for the son. By doing this you are setting up a boundary of skill sets defined to a gender stereotype.

Just because you have a Niece, doesn’t mean you should just highlight everything pink. In turn, not every nephew will want video games and legos. Hobbies and interests shouldn’t be characterized by a gender. This might be a random thing to rant about but ever since that pink T-shirt came in, I’ve been thinking about this more. Because no, I don’t like the T-shirt even more because you put some perceived female color on it. But do you know what would make me like the shirt even more? If it was blue. Because blue is my favorite color. But alas no. My brothers can walk around in their blue glory, twinning and bonding over their identical shirts, but you just had to make mine pink because I’m a girl. I want a blue shirt for God’s sake and there was no reason why you had to put in the extra effort to make my shirt pink. You could have just ordered the three shirts in the same color, but no, you had to make sure I knew, and everyone else knew, that I was a girl and not the same as my brothers. Right? I’m not the same as my brothers, that’s why you had to make mine pink. And I agree that I’m not the same as my brothers, and frankly (no offense) I’m glad I’m not the same as my brothers. And I know based on stereotypes and societal standards, the chances of me liking pink is higher. But can we just stop that. Can boys and girls just grow up without an expectation as to what they should enjoy. Can boys like nail polish and girls like football. Is it really that hard to just fucking accept the fact that we are all human who have human interests that aren’t merely defined by the societal standards bound to a reproductive organ.