Last Sunday, in my weekly girls’ club meetings, we discussed the difference between sex and gender. Now this can be a complicated subject in English, let alone trying to explain the difference between these two concepts with my basic Spanish vocabulary. But somehow, my girls group and I found a way. We always find a way.
The reason for this discussion/lesson is because I wanted to get the girls thinking about what is sex (male, female, our individual body parts ect.) and what is gender, moreover our gender roles (how society expects men and women to act)? I had them do a simple exercise where I put two pieces of paper on the wall, one with word hombre –man- written big on the top; and the other with mujer- woman. The girls had to come up with characteristics about both men and women, including physical features. It was fairly amusing, because at first they wrote only negative things on the man side and only positive traits on the woman side- which made me realize that we spend a lot of time in our weekly meetings man bashing. However, quickly I convinced them to be more objective about the issue and we continued on with the exercise. After we finished with a pretty fair list for both men and women, I then covered the word hombre with another piece of paper that said mujer and the same for mujer to hombre. Now all the characteristics that the girls gave to men were assigned to the woman and vice-versa.
The interesting thing (and what I was hoping for) is that even having reversed the characteristics, they were nearly identical to each other. For both women and men the girls said they are: intelligent, hard-working, beautiful/handsome, sensitive, jealous, deceptive and controlling. Some good, some bad for both sexes. The only thing, of course that couldn’t be interchanged between sexes was our anatomy (woman having breasts, vaginas and carrying babies and men having penises etc.).
The question then became, what defines you as a female? What makes you different from any man here in La Caya? Your gender or your sex? And just because you are a woman doesn’t mean you don’t have the same power, intelligence or flaws as a man. Just look at the lists.
There’s a common Dominican saying that translates roughly to, “Lock up your hens, because my rooster is out on the loose.” In training, nearly two-years ago, we discussed what it means to live in a society that believes in this kind of creed. The phrase has so many meanings that many viewpoints can be taken from it including: 1)don’t let girls out of the house because men are dangerous 2)if you want your girls to be kept virginal and pure you won’t let them go out at all 3)we can’t control men and men can’t control their urges- but we can control women, so keep them in the house.
I have heard this phrase used often in all kinds of different situations and circumstances. It breaks the ice when another unmarried girl is pregnant and it attempts to explain why some men would rather spend time at the local pool hall instead of with their families. But every time I hear this phrase it comes from the same people: women. Women are the ones justifying the poor decisions and behaviors of others. Is that our burden, as women, to always try to make those around us, especially our own family members, seem incapable of doing wrong?
I don’t know the answer to that question, or even if it is an appropriate question to ask. But I do know that Marimelba, who works at my center, had a baby boy seven days ago. I went to go see him yesterday at her house, and he is skinny and long- just like her and pretty much adorable. He’s “indio,” as Dominicans call it, or rather someone who is not white like European white, but not black and also is blessed with that wonderful thing called pelo bueno – good hair. I guess Dominican “indios” resemble Native Americans most in their appearance.
The new baby has no father. Well, he has one and Marimelba is claiming it’s a man who lives up the road from her. This man is vehemently denying it, either because it is the truth or because if he denies fatherhood for long enough, eventually everyone else will give up and he’ll be off the hook. Evading fatherhood is as easy as saying no.
Which brings me to Angel. Angel is probably my best friend in La Caya. He’ll turn five in March. He is Silvia’s grandson and also does not have a father. But like Marimelba’s son will be, Angel is surrounded by all of his family in every kind of relation you can imagine: aunts, uncles, grandparents, great-grandparents, great aunts and uncles, second cousins etc. Angel’s mom lives in Santiago and comes back to La Caya almost every weekend. Angel’s dad was the high school sweetheart of his mom who refuses to recognize him as his son. In the meantime, a.k.a. Angel’s childhood, he is being raised by his grandma and grandpa, Silvia and Juan Ramon who I eat lunch with everyday.
Yesterday Angel brought out a puzzle of the Disney Princesses (you know, Belle, Snow White, Cinderella). He asked Silvia if he could play with it and she gave him a quick, hard and loud NO! He opened it up anyway (which is basically how everything works with him) and poured out all the pieces on the table. A few minutes later, he and I both were putting it together. Silvia walked out from the kitchen and sort of went crazy. She grabbed all the pieces and shoved them into the box and then starting yelling how he is a boy and how boys can only play with boy toys and never with girl toys.
I tried to defend him; saying that Angel could care less what the picture was, because what he really enjoyed was trying to make the pieces fit together (which is a very stereotypical boy thing to do, in my opinion). But Silvia started to then yell at me a bit. She said that if you let a boy play with one girl toy, soon he’ll only want to play with girl toys, then he will only be interested in only girl things (like cooking and cleaning) and after that he’ll be interested in what big girls are interested in, and that of course is men.
Moral of the story: by letting Angel play with one puzzle of the Disney Princesses, it’s a slippery slope right into Angel being gay. And if Angel is gay, whose fault is it? Silvia’s, because she raised him.
So no matter what, it’s somebody else’s fault. If the girls in my group don’t become successful individuals, it’s because men prohibited it. If Marimelba’s son’s father never takes responsibility, it’s because no one ever really expected him to, and if Angel were gay, it’s Silvia’s fault for letting him play with girl toys as a kid.
I like the part better when we can write our traits and characteristics on two pieces of paper, and aside from our physical make-up, we can really start to see not how unalike we are as men and women, but how similar.
Because the more we make excuse for ourselves, whether we are human beings, hens or roosters- the more we let crazy things happen, like not letting a 5-year-old play with a puzzle. I’m pretty positive my girls group discussion about gender and sex didn’t accomplish great feats of change within La Caya. However, maybe it did spark a few teenage girls to start thinking about the kind of person they want to be. About the kind of mother they can be (when they are ready and willing) and more than that, the kind of woman they deserve to be. I’m right there with them, figuring it out as we go.
2 comments:
Great post as always, Stacie! It's interesting how your dona's interest in keeping the genders being well defined is related to homophobia. I hope as Dominicans learn that homosexuality is biological and not a factor of environment or choice that some of that will loosen up. Your post also reminded me of something I read once about feminist thought that gender equality is closely related to shared male-female child rearing. the idea is that because women do the vast majority of child rearing, they are held responsible for the children's outcome and cause femininity to be associated with parenthood, so that, for example, men dislike female bosses because they are unaccustomed to them exerting authority outside the home or because they remind them of their mothers. Thus the feeling of men in the workplace being "henpecked." Basically, the idea is that if children continue growing up seeing femininity alone in the home that they will continue to have issues with women in other roles outside the home. Sometimes the blame mom situation reminds me of the way people criticize leaders - because they're doing something rather than sitting on their ass, they get criticized for their actions while others avoid blame.
This post is a great one. This is one of those topics that Dominicans/hispanics are forced to believe in. Men are the almight who can't do no wrong and the women are the ones who carry all of the burdens for the men's mistakes. It's sad enough for a child to not grow up with a father in their life but its far worse to know that he lives down the street but doesn't acknowledge you. Then there's the gay issue that people are so afraid of. Even though I grew up in a Dominican household, I don't think like a dominican in many aspects. I let my kids play with whatever they choose to even if its gender specific. They don't understand until someone tells them its wrong to play with it because it made for the opposite sex. Equal rights for everyone!! lol.
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