Although we’ve just met, I have to start off our meeting with a bad warning. You’re entering a world that is going to throw you a bundle of expectations that people of this world claim you have to meet in order to be accepted. These expectations are overwhelmingly strict and unfair, and, should you fall prey to them as nearly all boys and girls do, they will hurt you. I am here to help you weather the storm that comes with trying to live up to these expectations, and teach you that it’s O.K. to not do so.
Right as I bring you into the world, my family and close friends will begin to buy you cute clothes and toys, all of which will be blue and oriented around concepts that are deemed “masculine” such as cars and trucks, and army men. They will make comments on your strength, intellectual ability, and your “success with the ladies” (which is ridiculous that they’re thinking about that while you’re an infant).
As you begin to enter your toddler years, you will most likely become one of the 43 percent of children under the age of two that begin exposure to television and other forms of media. This new medium will further enforce gender stereotypes and expectations onto you; showing advertisements of strong, attractive, and wealthy men having all of the success in life, and advertisements for “boy” products that only have boys in them that exhibit “typical” boy characteristics, and vice versa for girls and “girl” products. This, combined with the pressure and influence from close family and friends, will lead to an understanding of “what’s for boys” and “what’s for girls”, and allow you to begin to inherently favor a blue and seemingly more masculine toy and eschew a pink and seemingly feminine toy by the time you are two years old.
By the time you enter school, you will have already had to battle forced gender expectations from close relatives and the media, but now you will be faced with a new foe: your same-aged peers. Not only will these people further enforce gender stereotypes onto you, but they will do it with violence. Nearly 3.2 million students are victims of bullying every year, and one out of four boys are bullied in school. Should you openly express any emotions about this, you will only be ridiculed further, and slowly learn how to suppress your emotions for fear of not appearing weak, which prompts an infinite amount of potential problems, including increased risk of having alcohol induced liver damage, increased risk of stress related heart issues, and possessing uncommunicative and unhealthy relationships throughout your lifetime.
Your teenage and young adult years will arguably be the most difficult time in your life for you. Your hormones are raging, and you will be experiencing many new feelings and desires that will seem foreign and shocking to you. With these new feelings comes more gendered stereotypes and expectations. You will be expected to play some sort of sport (that isn’t something like cheerleading or dancing, because those are deemed as being too “girly” and are not legally considered sports), and excel at it; you will be expected to show serious interest in girls, and be comfortable openly expressing your sexual desire towards girls; you will be expected to grow and keep some sort of facial and body hair, because it will project to the world that you are a “true man”, even though the development of boys’ facial and body hair is purely dependent on genes, and does not have a designated point at which to begin growing, if at all. Should you deviate from this track, you will be bullied and ridiculed beyond reform. You will most likely develop depression or another mental illness, as nearly six million men get diagnosed with depression every year. You will feel lost and alone; too scared to speak or act out in fear of retribution and alienation. The pressure will become too much for you, and you will most likely join the seven percent of males who drop out of high school, or the largely increasing amount of males who drop out of college. All of this, however, is dependent on whether or not you’re still alive, as approximately 23 out of every 100,000 males aged 18-24 commit suicide, and men die by suicide around three and a half times more than women.
My only hope is to prevent as much of this from happening as I can. I will hold no expectations for you when you enter this world (and encourage others to do the same), and let you chose what color clothes you want to wear and what kinds toys you play with. I will teach you that everything you see on TV should not be taken seriously, and that what the rest of the world says “makes” a man does not have to be what you ascribe to. I will encourage you to feel comfortable openly expressing your emotions, and raise you with enough confidence to not feel discouraged by bullies. Ultimately, I will let you be your true self, and love you no matter what.
