My entire life I’ve dealt with snide comments about my masculinity. I’ve worried that my voice fluctuated oddly, making me less "man" than those around me. When I started caring about the clothes I was wearing, I worried that they’d be too feminine. The adolescent version of myself worried so much about these things that prove so unimportant when we rework what a man should be and what a woman should be.
I want a future where I can be a stay at home dad who stays at home and writes novels. I’ll drive a blue minivan around our suburban community as I drop my kids off at soccer practice. My wife returns home every night at 5 p.m. after a long day at work. I greet her with a kiss as I finish serving our kids Chinese food out of a takeout box because of my inability to cook.
This dream seems slightly absurd but that only because it’s a role reversal. There’s an established system that tells boys that they need to act in a certain way and that girls need to act in another way. The system is rigid and fails to recognize those individuals who may not feel genuine conforming to whatever pre-established gender roles they are bombarded with throughout their life. These gender roles have created generations of young people who’ve doubted their existence, honesty, and self-esteem. There are thousands of girls who’ve been forced to wear dresses which they never felt comfortable in. There are thousands of boys who’ve followed the trends of their classmates in fear of being called any combination of degrading names. This system constricts people to expectations of who they should be and it can be detrimental to the self-worth that will develop.
The beauty of things is that we’re moving forward and slowly dismantling this hurtful system. Target has already blown up headlines by moving in this direction as they removed gender labels in their toy sections. Moving towards a future that discards gender roles is not impossible and I can’t wait to be a part of it. My children will have the freedom to indulge in what they find comfortable and representative of them. As long as they are conscious and empathetic in their choices, they should be able to dress in any way they want and participate in whatever habits they choose. There’s no reason my children should have to endure the reality of having low self-esteem because of outdated, irrelevant systems of gender norms. When I fall asleep reading" Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets" to my kids, I’ll be able to rest easy knowing they’re living in a world that accepts the choices that make them happy above all.
