Excerpt from "Hearts Afire," a book about my opus, Moonwhistle School.

             GENDER LOVING CARE

            The sweet, simple rituals of the donut rope usually landed us at the park in a buoyant mood, and we were often greeted at the gate by other park regulars, moms with kids, nannies with babies, and Peter, the Park Rec jock.

            "Hey, Melissa!" There was my favorite Douglass Park friend, who, when I first met her, had a sweet little boy and a big belly, then another sweet little boy, then another fat belly and another sweet little boy. She was as happy mothering as I was Moonwhistling, so being at the park together with all our gorgeous kids was a sunny treat. As she approached, I saw a woman charging up close behind her.

            "Where did you get these wonderful children?" the woman said. Turned out she was talking to me. She said two of my older kids had just mediated a dispute between her child and a playmate, saving her the trouble.

            "They are wonderful kids," I said. "I'm very lucky."

            "But they're so happy, and so kind to each other!" she said. "I've never seen anything like it."

            "Yes," I said. "Notice anything else?"

            Just then I noticed something myself that pulled me away from the curious woman. A group of five bigger boys, maybe seven years old, were storming the playground, shooting imaginary guns, chasing each other wildly up the climber and flying down the slide, hollering coarse, macho invectives. Mothers, nannies, Melissa and I, too, ran to pull toddlers out of the way, as these kids were dodging too close, all but knocking them down. I turned around and there stood my four-year-olds Connor and Francis, like statues, staring at the big boys with mouths agape; you could almost hear the wheels turning.

            Here was something Francis and Connor may not have seen before: boys so confident, so powerful they could make women scurry, make other children forget their own play, even conceding the playground. My kids were stunned, and for good reason. The marauding of the big boys had brought a whole scene crashing down: the everyday motion, chatter and laughter of Douglass Park. Even more weird, no adult had exercised the slightest control, or even complained. Instead, we had turned away as if distracted by other things. 

            "Hey, who wants to pick blackberries?" I gandered.

            "I do!" some of my kids replied. When I walked over and handed buckets to Connor and Francis, they snapped out of their frozen state. On the way across the big field to the berry bushes, I remembered a time in my childhood when I had been frozen.

            I'd gone with a bunch of my cousins to the highway department garage where their dad worked as a mechanic. Uncle Joe, round, bald and jocular, was the wild man of the family. Going anywhere with him was an adventure. We all jumped in the back of his pickup truck, giggling at each other's hair blowing crazy.

            I can still see the inside of that garage, vacant, dark and greasy. Stepping wide over a hose, we followed my uncle into, what?— his office! Uncle Joe wasn't an office kind of guy, but sure enough, there was his very own desk and right above it a giant poster of a beautiful woman, stark raving naked. I froze.

            Compared with today's pornography, her pose was downright modest; but it was 1958, and I a little Catholic girl with a solid education in shame. I could not take my eyes off the naked woman, nor could I respond to the two girl cousins, about my age, who kept prodding, "Hey, Lee! What do you think?" Still frozen. My uncle came in and told us to go out in the garage, where we had a long wait while he did whatever he had come there to do. By now my cousins were asking "What's wrong?"

            "Nothing," I would shrug. But something was so wrong. My brain was a slow burn of neon questions. Who was she? How did she get in this...this...predicament, where men she doesn't even know stare at her naked body? What do they say about her? Ah, who cares? Why be embarrassed for a woman I would never meet? Of course, all women are naked under their clothes, so do men say things about all women, about how they would look without any clothes? Oh my god! I was going to end up a woman. NOOOO! I held back tears.

            In one huge moment I got it that humiliation came with having a woman's body. I sensed it had to do with other things I'd never understood about how adults behaved, if I could just think it through. Like that woman, Marilyn Monroe, whose appearance on TV always embarrassed me. Oh, I had so much more to think about, if only I could be alone. But there were all these cousins, and they were staring at me. "Are you okay?" (Well, no. I've got the heebie-jeebies forever now.) How would I look my uncle in the face again? I felt myself shrinking...

            "Lee-Lee, Connor and Francis are way up there!" I snapped out of reverie to see my two guys climbing higher on the cliff than usual (Douglass Park is located in an old quarry), higher than I could safely supervise. I called them down, aware that they were probably working over what they had witnessed moments before: a version of boyhood all about power, entitlement, segregation. It occurred to me that the wild scene on the playground had also touched the girls, probably even the toddlers. Gender coding, instantaneous as a photo flash. Was it indelible, I wondered? Connor and Francis were clearly exhilarated—expanding before my very eyes. Isn't this what gender coding is about: empowering males and diminishing females?

            How it clashed with the truth! Connor, athletically developed beyond his years, was nevertheless one of the most compassionate children I'd ever known. He loved babies and was always the one to alert me when anyone was sad or hurt. Francis loved nature, animals, and his growing knowledge about them; also, beautiful fabrics; and he loved to draw—hardly the swashbuckling pirate.

            Of course, I wanted all my kids to explore their wild sides. But this time it was a macho thing, which made it about gender. I hoped it wouldn't fling the barriers up, like that time Isabelle came to school with a whole bag of Barbie Dolls and announced (as the children crowded around the bag), "No, Matt. Barbies are for girls!" The boys withdrew, then regrouped, cranking the volume and velocity of their play. And the Moonwhistle kids were two separate, captious factions for almost a week. I wondered how long the effects would last this time. The visible ones, that is.

            The children by this time had created a castle in the berry bushes, and were negotiating some kind of agreement, using blackberries for money.    

            "Where did you get them?" came a voice. "I swear I've never seen such happy, adorable children." It was that woman again. Her kids had just joined mine in the "castle," where they were being fed blackberries one by one and protected from some ogre called Big Zo.

            "When was the last time you saw girls and boys play together?" I asked her.

            "Oh my gosh, I never thought of it!" she said, then turned and looked all around the park. My eyes followed her progress. There were the big boys still chasing each other around the playground, another bunch playing basketball. Little boys together with trucks or large toys to ride on, making engine noises. And in other little groups were girls, claiming less space, making less noise, playing with smaller toys.

            "I can't believe I never noticed the difference," she said. "I've watched your kids so many times and never noticed. How do you get the boys to play with the girls like that? My older son wouldn't be caught dead playing with a girl, and I don't think he ever has."

            Interesting the way she put that, I thought. How do I get the boys to play with girls, as if we all agree that boys are okay but girls have cooties. I told the woman a bit about Moonwhistle—how we questioned whether children would segregate by gender if adults didn't impress the idea on them. I told her how we had begun carefully observing our own words and behaviors and those of other adults around kids. How people routinely and thoughtlessly push girls toward passivity and pleasing others. How as a culture we reinforce the development of power and cockiness in boys. Virtually all adults do it in dozens of ways, so that each kid gets probably thousands of exposures to the gender code over the first few years of life. And how, when we consciously pulled the plug on all this propaganda, our children created, as they grew up together, something more like a matrix of friendship, instead of two sides. Segregating by gender didn't occur to them. Her eyes were like stop watches. I could hear them ticking, "You're off your rocker."

            Well, too bad, it was time to head back to Moonwhistle for lunch. I said goodbye, knowing the woman was about to launch into the argument that her daughter and her sons really are soooo different. But I wanted her to think about what I had said while she was still watching my kids. No question she liked what she saw. Instant gender decoding. Indelible? Didn't I wish. I hollered to the kids "five minutes!" then walked back to the clubhouse to find the donut rope and backpack.

            A new family comes to visit Moonwhistle. They're looking for day care for their three-year-old boy. The child stands watching for awhile, gradually gets comfortable, begins to play. The mother removes his coat to reveal a Batman cape.

            Next thing I know, the boy is intoning the first two syllables of the theme song "Bat-maan," then running from the southeast corner through the greatroom, down the hall, to the northwest corner of the nap room, where he crashes into the wall, turns, and does it again, back the other way.

            In seconds he has everyone's attention, and my two older boys join him. Apparently this is the only action the kid can ascribe to Batman, so the game becomes like a broken record. It isn't exactly play as we know it around here. It's awkward. There's a role you're supposed to play, and nobody really knows the role, not even the Batman kid.

            Still, their fascination with it seems complete, and it threatens to go on forever; except I have a rule about running in the house, and I make them stop. "Oh, maan!" they whine. Apparently I have ruined the most fun they have ever had.

            So the new boy initiates another game. This time it's guns. Each of them gets a block to use for a gun, and the play turns to some kind of sniper attack with leaping and crouching and a lot of noise. Oh barf. I don't feel like being the heavy again, so I excuse myself to make a snack in the kitchen. From there I can listen and intervene if I need to. (Maybe I'll figure out what to do.)

            This play turns out to be as devoid of connection as the Batman play was. The children are caught in some preconceived notion of a role they can't quite grasp, so it isn't like play at all. It doesn't develop. It goes chase, aim, shoot (loudly), stop, repeat. More like posing than playing: I'm a Man! I kill!

            I don't hear any girls' voices.

            I walk into the greatroom and look around. The boys now occupy the middle of the room, where they're jumping off the couch, crouching behind tables, chasing each other, and shooting their make-believe guns.

            Stationed around the edges of the room at one end are the girls, each standing with her back to the action, facing the wall. Each one handling a doll, silently and without interest, as if watching the boys through eyes in the back of her head. The girls are not even interacting with each other! I've never seen my kids like this before.

            The boys have taken everything: all the physical space, plus all the psychological space, the relative calm that allows people to move around, engage here and there, converse, play, and be who they are.

            It occurs to me the girls may be imitating me! Hadn't I retreated from the violence and assigned my body some domestic task while my mind hovered? If I had stayed, would the girls have joined the action? Or had they received some "boys only" signal? Anyway, I now have two separate groups of children that look nothing like the Moonwhistle kids.

            A little later I thanked the prospective clients for coming and showed them the door. As they went down the stairs, I flipped the deadbolt. Mental note: figure out how to keep this kind of kid out of my school.

                                                                                    From my journal, July 1992

            The gender work turned out to be one sort-of-sensational difference between Moonwhistle and any other day care I ever heard of. When I made my arguments, which I did often, anywhere, people thought I was nuts. But when they saw my kids, so many people said that funny line, "Where did you get these children?" Uh—designer genes, yeah, that's the ticket. Where did I get them... What they meant was, how did we teach them to be so kind to each other, to love each other so much, to play so well together? How did we keep them so happy?

            A good part of the answer is: our kids didn't know about two separate childhoods, a male one and a female one. By extension, they didn't know about a world all carved up by differences masquerading as worth. All they knew about hierarchy was that it felt special to get the blue donut or the purple chair, and maybe that bigger kids were faster and more articulate, which gave them some power. But basically, our kids didn't have to scratch their way to the top. Knowing so little about gender expectations, they all built block masterpieces, all raced trucks down ramps, all wiggled through obstacle courses, all had their infatuations with dresses that swirl when you twirl, all climbed hills, loved babies, cooked, and they all chose each other as playmates based on the fascination of the moment, which was hardly ever gender. It meant the Moonwhistle kids had twice as much cool stuff to discover about the world and themselves as children raised under the myth of sexism, and twice the pool of friends to choose from. Yes, most of them were pretty darned happy. Here's how we pulled it off:

            First, I had to learn to recruit parents who were willing to question the status quo—not that they were all of one mind. Some probably thought I was pretty wacked. But most were mothers and fathers who had found common ground in their marriages and so may have had their own doubts about whether male and female are, by nature, diametrically opposed. Some were gay couples who had to work just as hard for common ground in their relationships, which really raises the question what's gender got to do with it? Overall, the Moonwhistle parents were smart, gutsy people willing to ignore the pop-psyche du jour, which was way retro on gender about then. (One author around that time became a household name on the straight-faced assertion that men and women come from different planets. Geez Louise....)

            Starting with families who were at least willing to try something new, I used the newsletter to hash out my thoughts about traditional gender teaching, and to suggest a new approach for Moonwhistle.

            Okay, now I'm ready for Father's Day... (two weeks late)

            I'm one of those people who can be paralyzed by a Hallmark holiday. Still, I run a school, and we did celebrate Mother's Day. But I hardly ever see any fathers. Is Father's Day to fathers what Mother's Day is to mothers? Are fathers to children what mothers are? Are fathers to boys what mothers are to girls? Do fathers want recognition for that role, or would they just as soon keep it under wraps until, you know, until Little League kicks in?

            So, I got all confused about fathers and fathering and, finally, some of you probably got a glob of painted plaster, and some didn't, depending on which day that week your kid came to school, and what particular mood was surrounding my confusion that day.

            Well, I just read a book that makes me feel a lot better about this father stuff, a lot clearer about how critical your role is, how much your children, your partners, and our society need you to play it. Brace yourselves, this book has some new ideas, some really big ones. It's called, Boys Will Be Boys (Breaking the Link Between Masculinity and Violence), by Myriam Miedzian.

            This author has found a parallel between men's and women's experience in this last part of the 20th century that seems so obvious, of course, it's overlooked. In 1964 Betty Friedan named something she claimed had "succeeded in burying millions of American women alive." It was The Feminine Mystique. Miedzian describes it this way:

            "Nurturing, caring, sensitivity, a sense of connectedness with others, a concern with one's physical environment, were turned into childlike, empty-headed dependency, passivity, baby-producing, and homemaking, all geared toward consumerism."

            Here's the parallel she's drawing in men:

            "Initiative, action, independence, curiosity, courage, competitiveness, abstract thinking, were molded into toughness, insensitivity, eagerness to fight and to seek out danger, callous attitudes toward sex, thinking detached from goal or purpose, all of it geared toward an egocentric and often obsessive need to be dominant and to win—whether it be wars, women, or higher ranks in the social pecking order."

            The masculine mystique.

            Like its counterpart, it's a distortion of the positive male traits into something we really can't live with much longer.

            It sells a lot of guns and B movies, though...

            Anyway, it is the author's proof, through research, and lots of it, that the antidote to male violence is nurturing, which makes this book terribly important. Boys who are nurtured by fathers become empathic, able to see the humanity in others and to feel for them. This is proven to discourage violence. Even more to the point, boys who are nurtured by fathers are free to identify with their nurturers. That means they do not later need to struggle to differentiate themselves: they don't have to prove their masculinity; they're already comfortable with it.

            And, to whatever extent their parents' nurturing might have been flawed, nevertheless, it does not build up in them a hatred for women, later to be expressed in violence.

            Miedzian's book is well researched and loaded with hope, because the male violence around us is not a function of nature, but rather a direct result of our mistakes in child rearing, as a culture. The author covers politics, sports, TV and movies, plus detailed descriptions of some educational attempts that have had striking results. Once you know what the mistakes are, and what's already been tried successfully, things can look a lot brighter.

            Miedzian also responds to many of the usual arguments, like the catharssus theory, which states that violence in movies and TV is helpful—lets 'em blow off steam in fantasy so they won't go out and commit crimes.

            Wrong. We do not, as a culture, lack research in this area. Violence on TV and in movies begets violence.

            Boys Will Be Boys made me think about the fathers I know—how hard your job is in these strange times. How self-assured you have to be to stay connected to your children in any meaningful way. And how the things you do that will make the most difference—feeding, changing diapers, spending time with kids—are the things for which you will get the least recognition.

            Happy Father's Day. You really matter.

                                                                                    Whistle-Me-Moon, July, 1993

            Miedzian's writing on gender hit the spot for me the way Pearce's writing on brain development had. I enlisted the parents' support in creating an environment as close to nonsexist as we could make it. We began with obvious things like the book collection, and making sure everybody got lots of ball play.

            Operation SEX CHANGE is on!! Got your attention, huh? It's like this. At least 51 percent of the population is female, but if you start at one end of a shelf of children's books and work your way to the other end, I bet you'll find fewer than 20 percent of the characters female.

            Even characters like monsters, animals, I kid you not, even inanimate objects are called "he." We have a story in which a little bird (male) teaches a little bear (male) to play hide and seek. The bear likes it so much, he plays hide and seek with the moon, and even the moon is male! The words "he," "his," and "him" appear thirty-two times in this toddler-length book.

            How do I know? I'm the one that tinkered with 'em, that's how I know. In fact I did go from one end of our book shelf to the other inking in reminders to readers, like this: The baby in this story can be female or male. Please consider your audience.

            I also wrote, parenthetically, "she" and "her" above the words "he," "his" and "him" wherever it seemed gender was open to interpretation, to remind all of us that it's okay to choose, and not okay to present an all-male world to any of our children.

            If you start looking at which females are represented, you can get crazy. In the animal world, all animals are male except mothers with broods. As for humans, most women are shown in the background, mothering. If there's a great kid doing anything cool, it's usually a boy.

            I think it's serious enough to warrant intervention, so I'm asking my staff to remember that the bookshelf represents the world to a child. Presenting, at Moonwhistle, a world where female is as present and as positive as male may not be true to our present socio-political circumstances, but at least it gives our children a few years to imagine a full range of possibilities for themselves before they figure out that half of them are frowned on.

            In addition, I'll be shopping harder for books with strong female characters. It's easier if you shop for new books, because the publishers are beginning to redress the balance. But new books are very expensive. Feel free to help if you can.

                                                                                    Newsletter, June 1992

            I still struggle with this decision. As a writer and an American, I disapprove of censoring or doctoring books to make them politically correct. But as a teacher and a citizen of the world, I can't pass on the sexist ideas that so many otherwise good books carry.  Even some of our most distinguished children's writers routinely pepper their stories with sexist put-downs boy-to-girl and vice-versa, supposedly bringing an emotional reality to their story. That's okay if the injustice is addressed in the story; but too often it's simply jotted in as background, which is to say, insidious cultural conditioning. Same goes for the rough-and-tumble, boys-will-be-boys cliche. It's standard fare, and not fair. Stereotypes based on gender discourage all children from investing in their unique selves. They end up gauging themselves against models that are wrong-headed and impossibly shallow. 

            It's not going to be easy to raise girls who like themselves. One way to start is to unlearn the habit of fussing about a girl's appearance. I know this is hard to do. But if we consistently ooh and aah over a little girl's hair, her shoes, her new dress, how can she not learn to value her outside more than her inside?

            Girls need us to call attention to their achievements, their creativity, their physical capabilities. Here's a book that helps a little: I Like Me by Nancy Carlson. It's about a girl pig who says she's her own best friend. She tells us all the things she likes about herself, including her "round tummy"; how she takes care of herself; and how she pulls herself together after disappointment. The kids love it when she looks in the mirror and says, "Hi, Good Lookin'!"

                                                                                    Whistle-Me-Moon, February 1992

            Ball handling is a potent kind of play. It develops the body, because it's physically demanding; the brain, because it involves so many skills, including eye-hand coordination, intuitive understanding of physics (gravity, velocity, spin, bounce, etc.), and judgment. It also develops communications skills related to sharing and teamwork.

            Or does it?

            Well, it would, but... Ball play, that is, playing with balls—you know, as if they were toys—that hardly ever happens. Instead, we use balls for gender indoctrination. If the baby is a boy, he gets basketballs, footballs, baseballs, sometimes even as shower gifts! His skill training starts while he's in diapers, his sports viewing by three, he wears team insignias to preschool, and as a result...

            He's a ball hog! The kid can't see a ball without wanting to possess it and show his stuff. (There are exceptions, of course...)

            If the baby is a girl, she's lucky if she owns a ball and really lucky if anybody tosses it to her. First time she meets the ball hog she decides she doesn't like balls. The end.

            Okay, these are stereotypes, but you recognize them, right? The amazing thing is that most people insist this is an expression of nature!! That means they didn't see themselves pushing their sons toward balls and their daughters away. But they did it.

            Be that as it may, we crazies at Moonwhistle have the idea that ball play could be fun! That all children need to learn the physics and skill lessons that balls teach. And that the self-restraint involved in sharing a ball with friends is worth it, because ball games are fun.

            Of course, this puts burdens on teachers of young children. How do you reverse the attitudes already so strongly in place? Well, hell, I don't know. I think it has to do with creating games that are really fun, where the skills contest is not between children, but between each child and the ball. And creating rules that work. Example: Emma is running her heart out to retrieve a ball that just whizzed by her. A ball hog sees his chance. He's bigger, faster, and very skilled. Zoom—"I'll get it!" he helpfully offers. And he does. Emma says, "Come on, Jenny, let's go swing."

            You need a rule right there. Puts an uncomfortable burden on the adult. You could feel like a cop. But our job is and always was to protect kids.

            If you're getting the idea that I don't support "athletics" for young children, you're right. Young children need ball play. Sports is for later, after age seven. Can anybody name one thing young children have to gain by competing? 'Cause I can name some very big things they stand to lose!

            _____

            Idea: If your kids are exposed to men's sports on TV, tape some women's basketball or tennis. Then, for every hour of men's sports viewing, play one hour of this tape. All kids need to see images of women with balls. So to speak.

                                                                                    Whistle-Me-Moon, February 1996

           

            Later I took on some bigger stuff, like trying to convince parents to shield their children from the media until they were seven and could understand logic. Eventually I began screening incoming families for their willingness to support this policy. A few families gave only lip service to the idea because they didn't buy into the philosophy but really wanted their kids in Moonwhistle. Once in, the deception was obvious, partly because their kids talked a lot about videos and Disney characters; but also because their play was often different from that of the other Moonwhistle kids. All the children in this category happened to be girls, and their play frequently reflected traditional sexist values. It tended to be less physically active and often involved less initiative, more following. In make-believe play and even in dance, these girls often confined themselves to roles involving prettiness, passivity, and being rescued.

            At one point a media-influenced kid was the oldest girl in my group, and I noticed something interesting. She liked to cast herself over and over as a victim needing rescue. When she did, the boys would react by becoming more aggressive, more active, and louder. In other words, one older girl (age four or five) going ultra-femme could trigger gender segregation and machismo in the boys!

            In the end, I wasn't sorry that a few skeptic families had slipped past the gatekeeper. It gave me a broader range of behaviors to observe, and made me see the issues more clearly. It told me I had to keep working, keep reading, and keep writing about gender.  

            Some parents have expressed concern about the influence of "very girl" fashions on their girls. I'll go on record as saying clothes do carry messages, and they do play a role in child development. When little girls are concerned about their looks, we have to be concerned about their self-esteem. No matter what they actually look like, the very idea of a beauty standard is destructive to girls, because even a girl who seems to match that standard very seldom thinks so herself. If she believes in beauty as a value, she probably has a lot of doubts about her looks.

            I do my best to undermine beauty as a value. Even if you've got it, it does little to support self-esteem, and much to challenge it. And if a girl is actually able to enjoy her looks, does she think most of the people around her are inferior? Better to teach them to love being themselves, period. That includes their looks, but how about a wellness and fitness standard instead of beauty? Where clothes are concerned, how about comfort, safety, practicality vis a vís the most desirable activities for the age group—like climbing, digging, painting, sliding in dirt, hiking through berry bushes? Dresses and girly shoes are sure to impose limits on play, and for what?

                                                                                    Whistle-Me-Moon, March 1994

            Moonwhistle School was probably one of the few places in the world where one could have made the following observation:    

            Who likes to climb cliffs and trees, jump from high places, and stray off the trail into the rough? It's the kids wearing jeans, sweatshirts and athletic shoes with wide, treaded soles. If, outside of Moonwhistle, gender appears to be a factor, it's merely de facto: most boys are dressed for active play, and most girls aren't. It's one more way in which our children's development is limited by arbitrary norms.

I was standing with two of the "park moms," and we were all watching our kids run across the big field. One mother suddenly said, "Look at him. Always with a stick in his hand." The other one said, "It's instinct, I know it. They try to tell you boys and girls are the same, but look at that." Not ten feet behind the boys were two of my girls, charging along with sticks in their hands. The two women didn't even notice. 

                                                                                    From my journal, 1994

            Oh, here I go again. A year ago it was Boys Will Be Boys I was after you to read. Now it's Failing At Fairness by Myra and David Sadker. If I had all the money in the world, I would distribute these two books as a set to all parents and teachers in America.

            In Failing At Fairness the focus is on girls and inequities built into the educational system. You may be astonished by the breadth and depth of the problem, which has, until now, been kept almost completely under the rug (except at Moonwhistle). But the problem itself? the scenario in which it unfolds? You know it like the back of your hand! We all know this stuff, but are jolted to find it has a name. We thought it was just life.

            You hear a little boy on the playground say "Get away from me. I don't play with girls." You thought it was just natural, maybe even kind of cute. But he was taught that, and it will grow and do real damage—maybe to your daughter. So it's time to see misogyny the way we see racism. We know that children of color can't thrive in a hostile environment. Girls can't either. They never have.

            Where would we be now if we hadn't systematically snuffed one-half of our human talent? And the better question: if we work on our schools, if we challenge our teachers and administrators to correct the imbalance, if we put the other fifty percent of talent back into the culture, what might we achieve?

                                                                                    Whistle-Me-Moon, March 1994

            Well, there's another good book on gender. This one is called The Difference (Growing Up Female in America) by Judy Mann. It goes right to the heart of the matter. How, exactly, are girls and boys different, and how much of that difference is inborn, how much taught, however unconsciously?

            If, as a culture, we magnify the natural differences or create unnatural ones, what are the consequences? Well, how about a divorce rate of fifty percent? That's the most glaring and probably the most tragic result. After that, nothing works right. Without strong families it's hard to raise healthy human beings.

            But really there's a complicated matrix of social problems that can all be traced back to artificial delineation by gender. This book gets at them in a way that is thoughtful and very readable.

            "Networks, goaded by research that shows girls would watch male cartoon heroes but boys would not watch female heroines, long since abandoned any pretense of offering girls heroic role models. So from the time girls understand that they are girls, they do not see themselves reflected as powerful or even important characters in the entertainment they are most likely to watch. ...In the world of kids' TV, women are all but invisible supporting players. It is the beginning of what Betty Friedan calls "symbolic annihilation."

            "The undermining of girls and the false empowering of boys at the expense of girls begins at a much earlier age than previously thought. The process is completed by...adulthood. For girls, much of their early adult life is one of recovery, of getting back on their feet, of trying to become whole again, of becoming comfortable with who they are and with learning how to exercise personal and political power."

            One of our Moonwhistle moms told me she mentioned Failing At Fairness to a friend who dismissed it with, "Thank God I have boys and don't have to worry about that!" Every boy's parents want him to thrive and grow strong, successful, happy. They need to know that to get that result now, in this culture, they will have to raise their boys differently from the way most of us were raised. After all, that gave us a fifty percent failure rate in marriage, an epidemic in domestic violence, and the highest child homicide and suicide rates in the history of the world.

                                                                                    Newsletter, November 1994

            As you can see, I never let up because the pressure on me to give in to the old pink and blue never let up. Still, I had a lot of control over what kind of exposure kids got in my care. Parents, on the other hand, had to battle the media and the marketplace from day to day in ways I could only imagine. Here's what happened when I took a walk in their shoes.

            What if the preponderance of commercial messages a child receives carry a certain ideology and the child's parents disapprove? Who wins out, parents or the marketplace?

            This is what I'm worried about. I'm a teacher. On the off chance that my voice is not quite as powerful as Madison Avenue, I decided to check out the competition. I went to Toys R Us. Now, I saw a lot of very nice toys there. But there's a certain huge section of the store that I believe should be moved to a back room, the way pornography is segregated in some video stores. (Yes, what a good analogy.)

            A person of any age, even one or two, cannot escape the glaring two-sided political message in the middle of this toy store: Masculine means violent./Feminine means passive.

            First, I tried to see toy packages the way young children might, so I looked for pictures. This is all kids have to do to figure out that some toys are for boys and others are for girls. The promising words "Official Firefighter Deluxe Rescue Set" drew me to a package that had at least eight images of male firefighters on it, but no females. And the "Police Academy Cadet Set" showed twelve photographs of boys, none of girls.

            A 55-piece tool set, which any kid I've ever met would go nuts for, was called "Billy Builder" and featured only boys on the package. Then there were baseball, basketball, hockey, and golf sets. Only for boys, sorry.

            If you're a girl, you've just had half an education in what the culture sees fit for you. You are not to aspire to activities that involve action, physical prowess, heroism, public service, or even building with tools.

            Turn the corner, and you are in Pinksville, where you obviously belong—a blonde, blue-eyed girl on nearly every package. And inside, a doll. "Pretty and Me!" "Baby Needs Me" (with magical Mommy watch!) and "Cuddle My Dolly," to name a few. It is very clear that boys are not welcome here. The sheer pinkness of it all wards them off like a bad odor.

            Besides, if there is a boy in the store, he has found the aisles (plural) marked "Action Figures." This section blinded me. I cannot adequately describe it, because it was hard to concentrate or even to differentiate. These toys number in the hundreds, I think. Every one of them represents male intimidation, domination, and violence. You should go look, dads. I don't think it represents you.

            By the way, I still haven't seen the movie Aladdin, but I have seen the line of toys it spawned. "Evil Genie Jafar" with staff striking action and twisting tail! "Final Battle" playset. "Palace Guard Rasoul" twists at the waist and throws a punch! Of course, there are the princess versions, too. These are located in the Pink and feature three of the wonderful outfits the princess wore in her big moments! Thank you, Disney. For boys, violence. For girls, fashion.

            Then there was the rifle rack, featuring some sixty rifles free of packaging, so you could pick them up and take aim. I found one whole aisle of assault-style weapons. They make them to hold water so maybe adults will be distracted by their own fond memories of squirt guns and not notice that these look exactly like the ones on the evening news, the ones that kill people. They have names like "Eliminator" and "Stealth Force Assault Uzi and Play Knife Set."

            I wonder if the families of Polly Klaas and the Long Island Railroad victims would feel the way I do in Toys R Us. Isn't teaching boys to aspire to violence and girls to aspire to pleasing others too dangerous even to contemplate?

            Are we nuts?

                                                                                    Newsletter, December 1994

After that one, parents were always asking me for advice on what to buy for the holidays or birthdays:

            Another idea for holiday shopping: it's a good time to check your child's toy and book collection for bias. It's not about political correctness. Boys whose toys are all about action and motion and building really need some of those things that trigger the emotional side of play: dolls, kitchen stuff, soft things. Emotional literacy has to be cultivated.

            And girls really need the building toys and the moving things like trucks and balls. Traditionally, boys get an advantage in sports, math, and science because they have intuitive understandings of physical things. These are based on early play experiences and years of interacting with moving objects.

            What no kid ever needs is the packaging. Commercial toys come covered with messages about who should play with them and how. I really recommend you toss this stuff. Santa doesn't want all those square corners in his bag anyway.

            For toys that need containers, here's a chance to add a lot of texture and interest to your toy collection: baskets, interesting purses, bags made of wonderful fabrics. I buy them at garage sales all the time.

                                                                                    Whistle-Me-Moon, December 1995

            Sometimes I forget that there's more to doll play than nurturing. People buy dolls for boys all the time, without realizing it. After all, boys don't play with dolls... they play with Action Figures!  In other words, as long as the toy represents violence, it's okay for a boy. You can't make it any more blatant than that: masculinity equals violence.

            But let's get real. "Action figures" are dolls. Boys love dolls. Why? Because dolls are like people you can manipulate and control. Same reason girls love 'em. You can pick their clothes, make them go where you want them, and put words in their mouths—all the things you can't do with real people. You can work out how things would be if you were in charge of everything. And that's important!

            I guess the men who run the toy companies found out that boys really want dolls. So they figured out how to make it okay: dolls with bulging muscles, guns, bombs, hand grenades, swords, knives.

            Do you find this distressing and maybe a little embarrassing? I do. Anyway, dolls are only representations of people. Some look like babies. Most of my dolls look like kids. And then some dolls look like bimbos and goons—oh, excuse me, I mean, adults who are insecure about their sexuality. It takes all kinds, I guess.

            We're going to improve on our collection by adding more boy dolls, and maybe more grown-up dolls. I guess I'll have to make 'em. Where would I get dolls that don't make women and men look pathetic?

                                                                                    Newsletter, July 1993

            I like toys that don't do much and that don't come with a lot of cultural baggage. Paints, paper, scissors, clay, blocks, baby dolls, kid dolls, trucks, cars, balls, drums, books. All of these are gifts that grow with the child, because they become props in whatever play the child creates.

            Still, the toy companies will try to force you to buy their "must-haves." These I will warn you about, as there are extra costs with some of them.

            A lot of gimmicky toys promote sexism. I've already written about the might-is-right toys that promote male aggression. We're teaching our kids about the power of words, so I don't recommend the "hero" toys.

            Then there's Barbie. Not only does she now fear math, but she is and always has been a "boy toy," a centerfold, a male sexual fantasy. "Here, Honey, play with this and dream about growing up to tease and please men." Never mind that a Barbie body is unachievable through any means, including anorexia. That's what secures the dream (not to mention the bottom line for Mattel). If actual women could achieve Barbie's perfection, they'd soon learn how empty the promise was and move on to develop their own unique powers. But, since Barbie's beauty is just this much out of reach, and also ubiquitous, it consigns to the feminine spirit feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing—a treadmill, which leaves the playing field for real self-development to boys and men.

                                                                                    Whistle-Me-Moon, December 1992

            This was a lonely mission I was on. Most of the time I felt like a raving lunatic. And also like the boy with his finger in the dike. Even people who tended to agree with me didn't necessarily think it was important. And who wants to sound like a broken record? But I kept writing and kept talking to people. Once in awhile I got some encouraging feedback.

            Happy, surprise visit this week from one of our Little Pals graduates. Some of you may remember little Alex Rowson, now four. He and his mother, Cathy Willis, dropped in on a visit from NYC. It's fascinating to see a child we knew so well after a gap of two years. He talks! He's still very cute and funny, and so independent!

            Cathy and I talked over old times and, of course, what's new. She was very interested to know all about Moonwhistle. I began to tell her about some of the unusual angles my work has taken, e.g., my frustration with the culture's pressure to socialize children for hierarchical thinking, and especially for distorted sex roles.

            Cathy said, "You mean you're trying to figure out why boys come out the way they do?" She went right to guns, war games, and hating girls, or refusing to play with them. Then she said, "I guess it really is instinctive, because we sure didn't teach it to Alex, and that's the way he is."

            You can imagine my cool reserve as I said, "No, Cathy, I don't think it's instinctive," and then went on to enumerate the cultural influences in which a four-year-old has inevitably been immersed.

            All of a sudden Cathy said, "Wait a minute. What am I saying? I just remembered I once lived in an Alaskan village that had no electricity. Boys there weren't anything like this!" Then she excused herself to go to Alex, who wanted a push on the teeter-totter. After thinking for a moment, I caught up with her.

            "Cathy, what were they like?" I said.

            "Well, they were just children. The boys and girls all played together. They played games, like pretending they were animals, that sort of thing."

            They were just children.

                                                                                    Newsletter, January, 1994

            Then there was this story from Catherine, Nicolia's mother. She and Nicolia, age four at the time, showed up at Moonwhistle the morning of Halloween wanting to know what time we were going trick-or-treating. They were heading down to 24th Street, but they'd be back in time. Now, 24th Street is a pretty lively place any day of the year, but even more so on Halloween, as all the merchants give candy and lots of people bring their kids there to parade around in costumes and collect treats.

            Nicolia's choice that year was a pink, frothy princess dress. She had spotted it on a store rack weeks before the big day and couldn't wait to wear it. As it happened, just a day or two before Halloween, she also came into a new pair of red rubber rain boots and somehow conceived of a marriage between the two prize possessions. It did my heart good to see this unselfconscious little princess wearing the equivalent of barn boots. She flomped up our stairs with a big grin on her face, stayed just long enough to see who was what for the big day, then ran off with her mom.

            An hour or so later they came back and Catherine said, "I can't believe what just happened to us."

            "Are you okay?", I said.

            "Oh, yeah. Nothing really bad. Just weird, the weirdest thing."

            It seems they were walking along 24th Street like lots of other Halloween revelers, but people kept approaching Nicolia, sort of obsessing about her dress, and oh what a pretty little princess, and won't you grow up to be the prettiest lady. One woman in a store rushed out from behind her counter and into the street to pour it on until even Nicolia turned and said, "Mommy, what's going on?"

            That's your culture, kid. Just making sure you know your place. 

            Try as we might to create a nonsexist environment at Moonwhistle, there would always be the "real" world out there. Our kids were going to experience segregation and discrimination almost everywhere they went. The stakes got higher after we saw how different our kids were from others, and how much they loved each other. My conviction grew that it makes sense to fight sexism wherever you see it. It's no different from racism.

Dear Mr. Jackson,

            I met you in February, when I brought the children from my day care center to visit your fire station. I am writing now concerning some comments you made during that visit having to do with gender.

            When you first came out of the fire house, you greeted our group with the words, "What? All girls?" Maybe you noticed that everyone suddenly got very quiet. (Translation: Is there something wrong with us? Are girls not allowed? Have we made some embarrassing mistake? Will we have to leave?)

            Then you noticed two boys, and everything was okay again. (Whew! But what was wrong that now is okay?)

            You got out a hose, as we had expected. But your next words were, "We'll let the boys go first." Twelve females (including staff) shifted around so the two males could get to the front, but more than that: you now had girls and women physically backing away from you, from the hose, from the magic of the fire station adventure.

            You went on to explain: "I only say boys first because they're the ones who will grow up to be firefighters, most likely, not the girls." You might have noticed some of the girls now holding the legs of their teachers and not wanting to go near the hose. One of my teachers said to one of the girls, "Don't be afraid. You can handle the hose, too. Girls can be firefighters," to which you responded, "Yeah, well in a minute I'm going to let you hold the hose and then I'm going to turn it all the way up and we'll see how you handle that!" You might have noticed that your audience began to disperse. I withdrew to the bumper of a nearby truck, and several of the girls followed me. (Translation: he wants to humiliate us in front of this group, and then he's going to say, "See I told you firefighting is a man's job.")

            I didn't get the sense that you meant any harm to anyone, Mr. Jackson. You seemed like a friendly, likable guy. But your words didn't match your demeanor. They seemed to mean, Boys to the front! Boys to the future! Girls, outta the way. You don't belong.

            Well, I was upset. My little girls aren't even old enough to tie their shoes, and already somebody's telling them what they can't be because of how they were born. I wanted to defend them, but I'm no Rosa Parks. I lack that kind of courage. So I decided to try putting my thoughts on paper. My one wish was to write a letter that would help you really understand how gender discrimination feels to women and girls. For all I know, maybe you've felt something like it yourself. If so, that would put us on the same side, wouldn't it? I'll hold out that hope.

                                                                                    Sincerely,

                                                                                    Lee Marcus, Moonwhistle School

            One of the Moonwhistle dads was a fire chief, and he told me Mr. Jackson had been deeply disturbed by my letter, which was apparent in an apology he sent me. I had targeted an unlikely candidate. The man had a stellar reputation with his colleagues—generally thought to be one of the nicest guys anyone had ever known. My criticism came as a blow to him, and he showed the letter all over the firehouse, pleading for assurance: "I'm not a sexist, am I?" Poor Mr. Jackson, a good man who really cared. I had blind-sided him.

            This story is important because Mr. Jackson represents the best of us. He didn't mean to hurt anybody's feelings, that's for sure. He was merely expressing cultural norms, like we all do. And yes, they're sexist as hell.

            When you spend ten hours a day, five days a week trying to protect kids from a culture that swears by segregation, you tend to shake your head a lot. Why do we lie to the next generation about who they are? Even if, as children grow toward puberty, there are important distinctions that must be attributed to gender, why would we choose to amplify the differences instead of building on what they have in common? Aren't they all growing toward a single future—an adult world where they'll need each other's trust, respect, intelligence and creativity? Aren't we hoping they'll grow up to make sustainable families together?

            What frustrates me the most is how intractable is this belief in the gender code, even now. You know there's a lot at stake when people resort to nature as proof of their thesis, and I hear it all the time. The same tired story about "my son will make a gun out of anything, even a piece of bread he's eating..." and "you can't tell me there isn't a truck gene...I raised three boys and three girls, and believe me, little boys love trucks!" Yes, and if God had wanted short people to play basketball, He would have made the baskets lower!

            Okay, but is it important in the great scheme of things? Here's why I think so: once children get the hang of gender segregation, they see the world through a Who's Who lens. The fear of not being accepted makes school an emotional war zone. Heaven help you if your skin color doesn't match the majority. If you're short. Or chubby. Or gay. Tone deaf. Bug-eyed. Too smart. Or not smart enough. Or....

            And the old adage, children can be so cruel? Well, yeah, because half their psyches are lopped off by a pink or blue saw wielded by the people they have to depend on. Yeah, betrayal makes people cruel. No sense pinning this one on Mother Nature or God.