[quote=CA renter]
And women absolutely do pass on the misogyny. You have no idea how many times I’ve heard women say:
“I have such a GREAT relationship with my son. There is nothing like the relationship between a mother and her son. Boys are just so special.”
[/quote]
Thinking boys are special is not misogyny.
[quote=CA renter]
It’s like having boys makes women feel like they’ve gained access to the “penis club,” and since women have had to compete for men throughout history (because men — either husbands or sons — were key to their survival), they exclude other women from this “club” every chance they get. Women with sons tend to associate with one another, to the exclusion of women with girls.
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It appears you’ve got issues. I don’t say that to be mean. We’ve all got issues. But think about it.
[quote=CA renter]
And women who have both sons and daughters will often go on and on about their sons, while largely skipping over the importance of their daughters, or just mention the girls as a side story or talk about how they like to go shopping together — but rarely talk about their girls’ achievements in the same way they do their sons’ achievements, even when the daughters are more accomplished. I’ve had women tell me, point blank, that they don’t really like their daughters, but they love their sons because of this supposed “mother and son” relationship. I used to think that Freud was off his rocker, until I started noticing these behaviors. It’s creepy.
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Only a person wearing misogyny-tinted glasses would see something like that, especially to that extent. Most of our daughter’s friends have other-gender siblings, and I’ve never once seen anything like that.
[quote=CA renter]
My own mother told me and my sister all the time that she wished so badly for a son instead of the daughters she got because boys and men were so powerful. Once I got married, she shoved me out of the way to get to my husband whom she insisted on calling “son,” instead of calling him by his name.
[/quote]
It seems obvious to me that this is the root of your issue. A parent’s attitude is an extremely powerful thing in shaping a child’s psyche.
[quote=CA renter]
This male-worship is not uncommon among women. My MIL is the same way. Every time when I was pregnant, she would tell me how much she hoped for a grandson, and was clearly disappointed when we kept having girls. My own mother did the same thing, too.
[/quote]
Lots of grandmothers hope for granddaughters, too. But your misogyny-tinted glasses filter that out.
[quote=CA renter]
The push to segregate often involves both the mothers and the fathers, with the fathers spending all their time on “boys’ activities” with their sons, and the mothers dragging their daughters around to shopping malls and nail parlors. All too often, the family refuses to socialize together because they don’t want to mix the genders together. I kid you not.
[/quote]
Dragging? Are you sure the daughters don’t want to go to shopping malls and nail parlors? If boys like “boys’ activities” (spoiler alert – they do), and girls like girls activities (again…), then why wouldn’t you take them to those places? I’ve never seen, or even heard of, a parent in our circle of friends discourage any of their children from doing activities that are generally associated with the other gender. Are my friends superior to yours? Obviously not. Do they behave much differently? Probably not. Do you and I see different things? Apparently so. Why is that? I honestly want to say this with a kind, gentle tone: Check your glasses.
[quote=CA renter]
But the ultimate goal in every case is to keep their sons from becoming “feminized.” One time, when we went out to eat with another family who had both a son and daughter, the father tried to insist that the boy sit with the adults so that he wouldn’t have to sit with the girls. I had another mother insist that she wouldn’t dress her son in pastel blue outfits because they were “too girly,” so she would dress him in plain white onesies with dark blue pants.
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I seriously doubt that’s the ultimate goal in every case. Maybe the father knew that the boy didn’t want to sit with the girls. Maybe the other boy’s mom knew he didn’t like pastel blue.
In any case, I don’t think that most parents think that integrating the genders would result in the boys being feminized. Why would it? That’s not a rhetorical question – I’m curious why you think that. Boys were around girls for millennia before we came along. They certainly weren’t feminized by that. Why would they be?
[quote=CA renter]
If a parent has a new baby, and it’s a boy, all you hear is “my son…my son…my son…my boy…my boy.” When people have a daughter, they tend not to mention the gender as often, usually just referring to gender when it would seem unnatural to do otherwise.
[/quote]
You really do go on and on with your misogyny-tinted views. I’ve never seen anything like that reaction from new parents.
Seriously, CA renter, you obviously have issues seeing misogyny everywhere when it’s actually much rarer than what you’re seeing. And, while I’m no psychologist, it seems painfully obvious that your mother’s attitude has almost everything to do with that. My mother was a fine woman, as I’m sure yours was or is, but she was a bit of a 1970s-style man-hater when that was in vogue. Which has caused me my share of issues. One of which (my confidence-with-guy-friends issue) I’d been carrying around my whole life without even realizing it was, at least in part, caused by her attitude until this thread (and some input from a friend about this thread) came along. So I know what it’s like. It’s not your fault; parents have been causing their children issues since probably shortly after humans developed the ability to speak (or maybe even before). But it is up to you to recognize and overcome this issue. And I hope the discussion on this thread will help you like it’s helped me. Good luck.
