It is not about the how.
It is not about the how.
But I am not sure it matters.
Yesterday I gave a talk for a company about “Parenting beyond gender bias”. I love this talk, but because of time restraints, instead of being the usual 90 or 60 mins we only had 45. I tried to squeeze a lot of info and bite my tongue a million times, stopping me from going into a rabbit hole of data and research to prove my points. I felt that every topic deserved 45 mins on its own. The one thing that I would never compromise on is the Q&A, especially on a topic where a lot of people feel lonely. The safe space to ask and share is so important.
One of the questions was “How do I explain this to my husband, who keeps telling our son that boys don’t cry?” and I hope that my answer wasn’t dissapointing. But I told her the truth… that I didn’t know.
The truth is that I don’t know her, or her husband. I don’t know if he is the kind of person that would resonate with story telling and hearing real stories or if he is mad about statistics and hardcore data. I don’t know how they share their children’s responsibilities, or how much headspace she has to hand hold and go back to basics. I don’t know how ingrained gender stereotypes are in him or why. So I can’t help.
But I also don’t think that matters, because the how will change and probably be a mix of subtle conversations, long explanations, forwarding some good articles and the odd “fuck off” between teeth when he says something completely out of order. The journey might be long and include arguments, or might be easier than expected. I don’t think she knows either. How could I?
But what I could help was with the Why. Which is the only thing that really matters.
We have those conversations, we arm ourselves with data, we listen to stories, we risk being outcasted as different and we endure the same discussions over and over because we know the why.
We buy books with better representation and veto some programmes on TV, we bite our tongue when we want to say something that we know is harmful in the long run and we find it in us to role model things that we didn’t know we were able to because we know WHY. Because we care about the impact of not doing it.
We know that we are failing every kid with this strict binary approach to childhood. We are limiting their skillsets and their opportunities for the future. We are crippling women’s confidence and men’s emotional intelligence, both key pillars to a happy life. We are invisibilising non binary folks. We are hiding fun activities for everyone, directing their hobbies, their interests, eroding their personalities when too much of the “other” thing shows up. We are telling them to carry expectations that are not theirs. We are limiting them.
That is WHY we do what we do. And then we figure out the how to get our partners on board, and our in-laws, and our parents and our friends. That is why we keep reading about it, and talking about it, because we need to keep unlearning and relearning to help ourselves and those around us to do know better to do better.
Sometimes I speak with my kid’s teachers, sometimes I call in people, sometimes I use bad behaviour as examples to spark conversation with my children, sometimes I decide to let things slip because we can’t die on every hill. Sometimes I shout, and sometimes I cry. Sometimes I quote fascinating studies, or ask people “tell me more about it” when they surprise me with some bullshit freshly out of a cavern. I don’t really know about the how because I couldn’t even tell you how I got here in the first place.
Well, I guess I could. I think at some point I saw the why.
That is the only how.
