There’s no time like the time when you realize you’re an idiot.
For me, that time was the Spring of 1992 during my freshman year in college. Up until that point, I had spent my college career drinking beer, trying to throw a tiny rubber ball into a big net, drinking beer, failing my classes and drinking beer.
I wasn’t the most dedicated student around. Oh, and there were also those pesky race riots in LA just down the freeway from where I was going to school (and I use the phrase “going to school” loosely) that I was supposed to care about and be paying attention to.
Of course, being a white, straight male from the suburbs, I was clueless as to not only the significance of the race riots, but to any of my privileges. I was a dude, I didn’t like dudes, I wasn’t poor and I was as white as snow. I’d never really thought much of any of those identifiers before. Only because I never had to.
Until this one class I took in the Asian American Studies department. The class focused on how people are treated and/or perceived based on their race, class and gender. Why my eighteen-year-old alcoholic jock self decided to take such a high fallutin intellectual class like that is beyond me. Maybe I thought it’d be easy.
I never thought I’d actually learn something. Let alone learn something that would change the way I saw the world forever. Yeah, it was that significant, this class.
Of the twenty or so people in the class, about fifteen were Asian American women, a couple were white women, there was this other dude (also Asian) and then there was me, the lone white guy.
In one of the first classes, we all introduced ourselves. We told the class about our backgrounds and how our race, class and/or gender played a role in our identity. Most of the women told stories of their family’s immigration, trying to fit in to a predominately white culture, and yadayadayada. . . I stopped listening after a while, partly because it didn’t make any sense to me, partly because I had a massive hangover, and partly because I was trying to make eye contact with a cute girl on the far side of the room.
I probably should have listened a little closer because when it got around to my turn, with little other introduction than where I was from and that I was a freshman, I said, “I’ve always thought Filipino women were cute. I’ve had a crush on this one Filipino girl since like fifth grade. Yeah, she’s pretty hot.”
The comments I thought were endearing—maybe even respectful—to the women in the room were met with bemused, gaping jaws that said nothing other than, “Did he just say that?”
Yeah, I said that. To cut to the chase, let’s just say that I got a pretty good education in that class, one that I have not forgotten or failed to put into practice ever since.
Like with my daughter.
According to her, every single animal, action figure, character in a book, stuffy, or person on TV that isn’t clearly female, is a “he.”
“Look at the squirrel up on the wire.”
“What he doing, Daddy?”
“How do you know the squirrel’s a ‘he’?”
“What he doing, Daddy?”
“I don’t know what she’s doing.”
“No! He not she.”
In addition to being a masculinist, my daughter is also, apparently, an anatomist. She is pretty darn smart.
I’m conscious of using varying pronouns for different situations, and I refer to neutral or indeterminately sexed animals as “she” more often than not. Still, my daughter almost always corrects me.
“He not she.”
She doesn’t seem to want to accept that there may be female birds, or dogs, or flies, or pillow pals, or plastic rhinoceroses.
Or ladybugs! Come on it’s a ladybug! (FYI, I know there are male ladybugs, but she’s two!)
Nope! All “he”s. I’ve thought about explaining how the plastic rhinoceros wouldn’t even be here if there wasn’t a female plastic rhinoceros in the first place, but something tells me she’s too young to understand that kind of stuff.
So, instead, I get into raging back and forth arguments with her that go something like this:
“How do you know it’s not a she?”
“He not she.”
“Maybe she is she.”
“He NOT she. He NOT she. WAAAAAAAHHHHHH!”
“She could be she. How do you know?”
“He NOT she, Daddy! No like she-she.”
“No like she-she?”
“No like she, Daddy.”
“No like she-she? Like su-shi?”
(Smiling, suddenly) “Yeah! Like su-shi.”
“Okay, let’s go get some noodles.”
As she chomps down on her udon and I eat my sake, I think back to my freshman year in college. I wonder if my daughter will have to wait as long as I did to get the education I got in that class all those years ago.
Not if I have anything to do with it, she won’t.
About Jared Karol
Finally! A white guy who ADMITS to having been privileged and ignorant about said privileges. Though I do admit (as a Filipino Chinese woman) that I am quite sexist/racist. Did that come with trying to be assimilated into the white culture? No. It’s because I am also privileged and ignorant about said privileges. Next September, I’ll be going to college, and the first thing I will do is visit a race studies class and talk about how ethnicity has nothing to do with the shortcomings or situations of a family. It’s the values and attitude of the family that can make or break their future. I don’t know. Then again, I’m pretty darn racist.
Your daughter has the right idea. It’s only he because only men are allowed outside the kitchen. Watch next time an animal/toy is seen in your kitchen, ask her if it’s a he or a she, and she will most likely say she. [insert sarcasm here]
There’s probably a little bit of racism/sexism in all of us, yes?
And, you’re probably right. That’ll be an interesting experiment. Where do our kids get this from?
Twitter Name: lickthefridge