It was a typical day, well semi typical in that my wife had still yet to come home with our brand new daughter. Both are doing well in case anyone is curious, little one is sleeping and eating well and mom is in a very good recovery so far given the amazingly fast labor she had. Apparently the incredibly fast labor she had happens in a amazingly small percentages of pregnancy that the few complications she has is pretty incredible, at least according to the delivering doctor.
Anyway, so I had gotten my son off the bus from school and was going through the standard routine we've built with him in the last week for his first year of school. You know..get off the bus, get home, go through any papers sent home, review our day and then settle into the evening routine of prepping for the next day. This evening routine is pretty simple really, I feed my son, I play with my son, and then I prep my son.
It was during the prep event that I guess a teaching moment arose. My son is pretty gifted, he has been taking showers for 2 years now. He eschews a bath because as he puts it "Dad, I don't have my (insert electronic distraction) time if I stay in a bath for a long time".
So there I was assisting my son in his shower. As I said he is gifted, but at five years old he tends to forget the important parts, or as George Carlin so eloquently put....well here you go
So it was during this moment while I was assisting my son that he uttered a word to me that I had never said in his presence. Join me after the orange nipple for a quick explanation.
So there I was drying my son off when he said this in such a meek voice that I barely caught it....."Dad your such a boobie"
So yeah...boobie, its a pretty innocuous word right? To me not really, because up to that point I had never referenced this noun, as a Webster defined word of "a stupid awkward person : simpleton" but rather a slang word as per urban dictionary
(noun) (1) a goof, a jerk-off, an idiot
(2) circular object protruding off a female's chest. Usually used for feeding babies and in foreplay (not necessarily in that order). Each boob has a nipple, the little pointy thing on the end that pops up like an erection when brushed, massaged, or touched with an ice cube (or an icy wind). The bra is the device required to support a pair of boobs. See A-cup B-cup C-cup D-cup E-cup well, you get the idea. If she is British, the nipples will sit much lower than the Japanese standard of 8" between collarbone and nipple. Sports bras are for A-cup women, who have nipples but no boob.
urbandic
I remember back to my early years, which is funny considering that at 32 I still feel young and dumb when I crank the music in my Pontiac GTP and throw on some heavy metal music. Anyway I remember back to my early years and the various slang one would use to reference the various items in ones life, and I felt a moment where one could correct the course of history.
Words have power and words have deep meaning. I as a white male would never utter the N word, it would be indefensible to the, and forgive me here to the, Nth degree. We talk here about said items and often are aware of various code words, or what we call dog whistles that allow pundits and politicians to sound horns without blaring out exactly what they mean and intend.
But, there are also words which lay the groundwork for such codewords and acceptance of these dog whistles and I think they are laid early in our foundations, indeed well into our childhood. Which brings us to the word boobie, just so that we can come back full circle for the point of this diary lets go through the motions of my experience with my son.
I asked my son literally this exact question "Ronan, what is a boobie?"
His reply?
"Its when a girl has (insert reference to chest with hands) round things out to here and stuff"
At first, like I said it seems innocuous, but really as I joked with my wife later in the night, I saw it as a gateway word. I know I know, you are laughing at me right now. Seriously I can see you laughing at me through the screen, but please just follow me through this.
The minute my son accepts this supposedly innocuous word as benign, then that means that related words can also become acceptable. Maybe perhaps lets run down a list of those words.
An open question to any of you women out there really. Would you accept any of those phrases or words? Or rather put into context, would you accept it in a context where it was not typically accepted? We all know the scene, an attractive women walking past a galley of construction workers who then hoot and holler.
"Hey baby, nice knockers!"
So really out of that context what would ever make said word acceptable? Going back to that N word, is there ever a moment where it could be acceptable? As I said, words have power and each word comes with a variance of powerful forces behind it. Words also lay a groundwork, or a foundation that help to build an acceptance of those many dog whistles we call out on a daily basis.
Our schoolyard dalliances help to build our adult discourses, from the "boys will be boys" to the "girls are delicate creatures". Those preconceived notions are built up from years on years of reinforcement of seemingly innocuous words used in contexts which we accept as 'just growing up'. One need only look to Mitt Romney and his cutting the hair of a schoolmate really, taking in a true context this was assault as defined by law yet we ignore it as 'boys will be boys'.
Its time we stopped this weed, this nasty pervasive weed we have allowed to take root and grow like Kudzu over our nation. The weed takes many forms, from Racism to Sexism, to Classicism, but to stop this weed we need to kill it at the root; and that root starts with our children.
So it was with that in mind I started what I felt was a teaching moment for my son. I explained to him what he thought were 'boobies' are what we call breasts. I also informed him that everyone has breasts, even boys. I showed him my slightly toned...wow do I need to exercise more...breasts and explained that even boys have breasts but that people will often call them pecs...or pectoral muscles. I emphasized to him that if he hears someone call them boobies that he needs to confront and correct them, that they are not called boobies but breasts.
Perhaps I'm taking things just a tad to far. If I am I'll take my lashings and whippings in the comments and accept them as you see fit. But I would contend that the sexism we have in our world if you examine it at its core, really does start at an early age. It starts in the school yard and extends into our adulthood. Indeed all the inequality we see in the world starts in those young early years, from racism to classicism.
So it was with that in mind that I saw fit to correct my son. I hope that perhaps maybe I rooted a weed out that moment and planted a seed. Perhaps this seed will blossom and spread beyond the initial planting and grow beyond just my son's mind. Perhaps thirteen years from now when my son is close to graduation he will have affected a vast majority of people and I can look and see a beautiful garden of flowering plants.
I don't know, perhaps as I said I am taking things overboard..but as a parent I just like to err on the side of caution.
Can you blame me?
11:03 AM PT: Wow umm spotlight...I'm sitting in the lobby waiting for my son at the end of his schoolday and figured I would check and try to respond to a few your overboard comments.
That said a blackberry is the fail for anything other than cursory checks so when home later ill try to respond and clarify a little more.