Part of the Job
Posted
October 5, 2006 at
11:36 am by
Andrea
Can I admit to you that I am terrified of raising a daughter?
When a man breaks into a Denver classroom, chases out the boys, binds and sexually assaults the girls before shooting them–when another man breaks into an Amish one-room schoolhouse (apparently because it would be easy) and forces the boys out to bind and slaughter girls–then I think of Casey’s post at Expectant Waiting:
If my daughters are lucky, they’ll grow up with a vague awareness of the hate that surrounds them.
If they’re unlucky, a man will bust in on their classroom, rape them, and execute them.
And just in case I think I’m safe here, with those killings so far away, I will read about two boys in my own town who pinned a twelve-year-old girl to the ground and set her on fire with lighter fluid–as a lark.
I want to keep Frances safe; I also want her to be a full and self-confident person who will fearlessly find and demand her own place in the world. I can’t do both. It makes me crazy.
Finding an acceptable level of risk is, for me, the hardest part of this motherhood thing so far. According to some, no level of risk is ok: I’ve seen newspaper articles instructing parents not to use mechanized baby swings (they can trigger frenzied rages in dogs and cats, apparently), to bolt televisions to the stands, and to stay within arm’s reach of your children in a swimming pool or lake at all times. This seems extreme, but certainly by not doing these things I am accepting a slightly increased risk of harm.
This is hard enough–when I feel like I can assess the information and the probabilities and make a reasonable and informed choice–but hate? How do I control for hate? How do I assess the chances and outcomes of hate? I can’t. I can’t, and short of locking her in the basement (which would surely be more harmful to her than almost anything the world could do) there’s nothing I can do. Somehow, someday soon, I’ll have to open the front door and let her walk through it on her own, to find friends and make choices and work and build a life and possibly confront hate and be gunned down by a madman with a grudge against girls. Or lit on fire by her friends. I don’t want her to fear the world, so I will hold the door open for her with a smile.
And work, work, work my whole life against the hate that makes the world dangerous for her.
Tags: feminism, misogyny, school-shootings, Social Issues |
10 Responses to “Part of the Job”
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1. Jessica Carlson said:
October 5, 2006 @ 5:44 pm
I think it’s scary to raise small children in a such a violent world, period. I also think having boys is less scary as they get older, whereas you still have worry more about girls.
I don’t know if it’s so much as hate that drives people to kill or torture innocent and vulnerable children, it’s psychopathic, ya know? These people are not right or well, it’s not just hate, IMO.
2. wordgirl said:
October 5, 2006 @ 9:18 pm
I have three sons and I’m relieved that I don’t have daughters. This is true for many reasons, but the ones you named are among them. How can I explain to a daughter why she is unsafe–not because she is the weaker sex–but because the other gender tends to act violently and without thinking and without provocation? If I can’t explain it to myself, how can I explain it to a child?
3. Prescott said:
October 5, 2006 @ 10:27 pm
“but because the other gender tends to act violently and without thinking and without provocation”
That’s quite a sweeping statement that I somewhat take umbrage with. I’m curious, do other female readers of this blog feel that the men they know or encounter in daily life “tend to act violently”? I can only imagine the outcry if I made such a broad generalization about women.
4. Sonia said:
October 6, 2006 @ 9:53 am
I agree, and as my husband (who happens to be a wonderfully gentle and caring man) and I try to conceive baby #2, I fear that I may have girl. Sad to say that, because even with all the negative things I went through being a girl, I had a wonderful childhood and am a proud, strong and caring woman.
I am doing my best to raise my own son to be a caring, gentle and upright man & future father, like his own father. I think that’s the best I can do as a parent. And if you are lucky enough to enjoy parenting a son, as well as a daughter, you can see before you just what beauty and promise the future holds.
Oh, and we need to focus our society on teaching boys that they CAN talk about their feelings; that they are NOT meant to be strong and powerful all the time; that they are RESPONSIBLE for their own actions; and that everyone else in this world (including the female human beings beside them) IS NOT HERE TO BE DOMINATED BY THEM. I think that would stop this kind of behavior for good. But then some parents would actually have to talk to their children, and learn what they are all about.
An aside: kudos to you for choosing such a beautiful and strong name for your daughter!
5. marybethlynn said:
October 6, 2006 @ 1:41 pm
Chekc this out, there are people that have been voted into office (by who the heck knows), that want to legistlate it so that teachers in Wisconsin could carry handguns. Someone actually thinks that it might solve the problem if we ARM OUR TEACHERS.
Heaven help us all!
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=2532176&page=
6. Andrea said:
October 6, 2006 @ 6:07 pm
Prescott, no, I don’t–but training girls to be scared of men is one of the most common ways of trying to keep girls safe. You probably wouldn’t, for instance, try to keep your sons safe by telling them that it’s dangerous to go out after dark by themselves because they might be attacked by a strange woman. Or that he shouldn’t get drunk at a party because a group of girls might gang-rape him. And I think maybe that is what wordgirl was trying to get at–should a parent of a girl tell her children to be afraid of boys? Because they do, a lot.
Part of what growing up as a girl in N America today entails is being trained to be afraid of boys and men, and to change their behaviour to appease men (wearing the right kinds of clothes, not going to the wrong places at the wrong times, knowing the right boys and men, and so on) to try to stay safe. I don’t want that for Frances.
It shouldn’t be that way. It’s unfair to men and boys as well as to girls.
Sonia: thanks!
marybethlynn, I’d heard of that. I don’t even know what to say to the idea of putting guns in classrooms.
7. Jessica Carlson said:
October 6, 2006 @ 6:16 pm
But look at Adam Walsh. He was abducted, tortured and killed, so boys aren’t safe either.
However, Andrea, I do agree with you, but for different reasons. I take the un-feminist opinion that men and women are different, with different compulsions that may or may not become deviant or warped. What do you think of that? I’m actually interested to know what everybody thinks of that logic.
8. Izzy said:
October 7, 2006 @ 9:26 am
In a similar vein, my most recent post discusses how I cannot take hearing any more news about children, girls in particular, being molested, raped, kidnapped, murderered or otherwise victimized. I just can’t stomach any more of it. I don’t know if the world is a worse place than ever before or it just seems that way but the horrors I hear of daily, including the story you speak of, make me wish I hadn’t brought children into this twisted world.
9. Cristina said:
October 8, 2006 @ 12:37 am
Once, a friend told me she hopes her she never has a son because we have too many screwed up men in this world. I told her I couldn’t wait to have a son so I could raise a good, caring male who would be sensitive to women and to humans in general. Now, I do have a son and I hope that through my and my husband’s modeling of a good relationships and respect for each other that we will help mold him into a good man.
As for the killings of innocent children, I think there may be a combination of factors involved in motive that include both hate AND mental illness. In any case, you are right. It is a scary world - especially for girls. Though I also worry about my son. It’s just a scary world in general and, like you said, just when we think “it couldn’t happen to us”, something happens right in our hometown to make us realize we are just as vulnerable as the next person.
10. cbgaloot said:
October 16, 2006 @ 2:47 pm
Here’s a possible solution
A course, called Critical Incident Response, involves a training video that shows students throwing objects and then rushing and tackling a gunman.
Read more and see the video here.
Burleson Schools Training To Defend Against Gunmen
My comments here
http://www.givemetheinfo.com/blog/blogger.html