Posts Tagged by Words
What You Say About Children In Public
| May 24, 2012 | Posted by Issa under Parenting |
A few weeks ago Joshua, Dylan, and I ran an errand that involved a significant bit of driving. Sometimes this goes smoothly with Dylan, sometimes it brilliantly lines up with a nap, and then on the other hand, sometimes he gets really upset at being in the carseat for so long. This trip involved the latter. We were headed back from our errand, but it was clear that he wasn’t going to fall asleep and wasn’t going to make it home without a lot of crying. We needed to stop for awhile. Joshua and I were hungry, so it made sense to stop somewhere and eat. We were in a small town mostly unknown to us, so we didn’t really know where to look for food. We found a small restaurant and stopped.
The restaurant was dimly lit and nicely decorated. Fuck. NOT the kind of place I prefer to eat with a baby.
Every time I read or hear a conversation about children in public, there’s someone on hand to bitch about babies in restaurants. Babies who are spoiling your night out. Spoiling the meal you paid dearly for.
All those conversations and voices slammed into me as I attempted to help Dylan wait for our food to arrive. There – that little sound he made there – is that the “crying baby” people are always bitching about? Oh shit, he’s banging silverware on the table. Is he ruining those people’s meals? What he really needed was to run around. There was no one seated anywhere near us, but when I put him on the floor to let him walk around, I could imagine the protests about “letting her child run loose in the restaurant”.
I took him to the bathroom. I figured we couldn’t bother anyone there. But all he wanted to do was slam doors and lids, and I was sure it could be heard in the dining room. We went outside, instead. Never mind that it was too cold, and we weren’t really dressed for that.
Needless to say, it was a miserable meal for me, and wasn’t that great for Dylan or Joshua, either.
This morning I was at another restaurant with Dylan. A man approached me and told me that he was there from church, which was mostly older people. But he said that a few people with babies had started to come to church recently, and the babies often made noise during the service. He said, “Isn’t that a wonderful noise? Such a blessing.”
Several of the older people who seemed to be eating out here together stopped by the table to say hi to Dylan. I felt very welcome and not at all concerned that we might be messing up someone’s meal.
The next time I’m running imaginary commentary in my mind, maybe I can summon their voices instead of the other ones.
I encourage you to think about ways you welcome parents and their children in public or the ways you push them away. When you say things about children or parents, someone is listening.
Sometimes your future self is the one who’s listening.
When I used to work in a restaurant, oh, 14 years ago or so, I used to bitch about the mess that children left on the floor. I was completely dumbfounded how such an immense amount of food could end up on the floor, and weren’t those people so rude! Fast forward, and now I have a child who leaves a truly amazing amount of food on the floor sometimes. Sometimes I try to clean it up, because the critical voice in my head is mine, but it’s really kind of silly. It’s silly for me to pick up food crumbs by hand, when there’s an employee nearby who has a broom, has to sweep the place anyway, and gets paid for the time either way.
The truth is that children are messy sometimes. And loud sometimes. And they run around sometimes. And they bang on things and drop things. And they and their parents should still be welcome in public spaces.
To attempt to eradicate the noise and the mess and the motion is actually an attempt to eradicate the presence of parents and children from public life.
If that’s what you mean to do, then you’re an asshole, and I’m not really talking to you.
If that’s not what you mean to do, give your words a second thought the next time you’re talking about children in public. Are your words welcoming? Or are your words the ones that send us to hide in the bathroom and push us out in the cold?
Ou – Gender-Neutral Pronoun
| December 23, 2011 | Posted by Issa under Counter/Culture |
Three things have come together for me over the last year or so.
- As I started writing about children and parenting, I found myself regularly referring to a single child whose sex and/or gender is unknown, such as the future baby in a pregnancy post, or when writing generally about a hypothetical reader’s child.
- I have become more conscious of the issues facing transgender people and people not on the gender binary, which makes me want to do a lot less assuming when it comes to people’s gender.
- My feminist consciousness has grown, and when I’m talking about professional people I haven’t met yet, like a new doctor or a mechanic, I don’t want to accidentally enforce gender stereotypes with my language by assigning that person a gendered pronoun.
For all of these reasons, I decided it was time to take the plunge and pick a gender-neutral pronoun.
I chose “ou”.
I first used the word “ou” in my first Baby Bellyaching post. Here’s the exaplanation I included:
It’s hard to talk about babies without using pronouns, and since you don’t know the gender of the child in question, the available pronouns really bug the shit out of me. So, I’m finally jumping off the cliff and picking a gender-neutral pronoun. I’ve decided to go with ou, which has the benefit of not being completely made up. Look it up if you like, and expect to see more of it around here.
While I suggested that people look it up, there’s not that much information available about it. I first got the idea from s.e. smith at this ain’t livin’. Ou prefers “ou” as a pronoun for ouself, and I learned from ou that “ou” is an archaic English word. The idea of using an existing English word makes the most sense to me, even if it’s centuries out of date. I don’t like any of the recently invented gender-neutral pronouns, so “ou” was a welcome idea.
The Wikipedia article on “she” turns up this information:
In 1789, William H. Marshall records the existence of a dialectal English epicene pronoun, singular “ou”: “‘Ou will’ expresses either he will, she will, or it will.”
 |
In some of my early posts using this word, I have used “ou” as you might use he or she and “ou’s” as you might use his or hers. However, I have recently begun to read s.e. smith on G+, and there, ou offers this sentence: ”Ou took ou car to the carwash, and amazed ouself by finding enough quarters for the machine wedged into the seatback cushion.” Possessive “ou” is still “ou”.
Another question you might have is how to pronounce it. I don’t have an authoritative answer on that. I looked up some Middle English pronunciation guides and settled on the “oo” sound like in “you”. I am open to correction if you have a source for a different pronunciation. I think because of the sound similarity to the word “you”, “ou” slips easily into my spoken words as well. It’s not jarring to the ears the way some invented pronouns are.
Every time I write a sentence that will contain “ou”, I hesitate. My writing would be more easily understood and more readily accepted by the most readers if I stuck to words and ideas that were already familiar. I have the urge to change the wording and make it less weird. But this idea is important. Not all people have a gender. Not everyone fits into the two common genders. I don’t know everyone’s gender. Gender should not be such a this-way-or-that-way-and-no-other-option kind of thing. I believe that ideas begin with language and are rooted in language. If I want something different from the way my culture treats gender, the first thing I can do is change my language.
Ou.
Revisiting Gender
| September 2, 2011 | Posted by Issa under Counter/Culture, Parenting |
Before Dylan was born, I posted a heartfelt look at my thoughts about Gender and My Baby. So far that’s my post with the most comments, so it brought out a lot of thoughts in other people, too. Now that Dylan is actually here, I want to talk about what has changed in my mind and what has stayed the same.
The easy part to talk about is the clothes: I had a small panic one day when I tried to buy clothes at WalMart. Dylan had some blue and purple pants (my favorite colors) and a bunch of white onesies, plus a neighbor bought him some brown and blue onesies. His clothes were drab and what reads as boyish, so I was looking for pretty flowers and butterflies to round him out and so he looked more like what I think any happy baby ought to look like. At WalMart, though, everything I found was either sports or machines on one side or covered in ruffles on the other. I don’t like sports, monster trucks, or ruffles. At all. Big fail. Later I checked Target and lucky for me Gerber makes some adorable onesies in pinks, oranges, greens, and purples with butterflies, hearts, and flowers, but no lace or ruffles in sight. Perfect!
When I’m out in public, sometimes I tell people Dylan is a girl and sometimes I tell them Dylan’s a boy. I like to dress him in pink on days I’m going to say he’s a boy. Lately I’ve noticed that people have stopped asking and they all assume he’s a boy. He’s usually in the Moby wrap where they can’t usually see his clothes so I wondered why they all thought boy. It’s not the Moby, because it’s pink-ish. I’m guessing it’s just because his hair has come in and I haven’t stuck a bow on it. Which I won’t ever do.
Just the other day, you could see his shirt out the top of the Moby, and it was a onesie covered in pink and orange flowers, with pink trim around the collar. Here’s how the conversation went at the checkout counter:
“How old is she?”
“He’s 11 weeks.”
“She’s 11 weeks?”
“Yes, he’s 11 weeks.”
<Evil glare> “But you have that baby in pink!”
<Big friendly smile> “Yep, cute little flowers for a cute little baby!”
The woman continued to glare at me like I had spit in her drink.
But calling him a girl to strangers sometimes feels like a game. It feels like an interesting thing I do to see people’s reactions or to play with perceptions. I think of Dylan as a boy. I always call him a him when I’m talking to people who know us. Joshua and I have not once used ou as a pronoun for post-birth Dylan when we talk about him at home.
So I’ve been trying to figure out what’s up with that, and I’ve finally come up with something, I think.
I have a deep, obsessive desire to address people the right way. I have cared so much about my own name that in 1998 I paid $500 to have it legally changed to something else. Then this year I did it again.
When I joined a Pagan community in Atlanta in 1999, I met lots of people who wanted to be addressed by something other than their legal name. Other people sometimes made fun of this, mocking how many different names someone had, that they didn’t make it legal, or thinking the name was silly. I consider misnaming someone an deliberate way to diminish them, and so I took very seriously what people wanted to be called. If you said you went by the Pagan name of Sparklebutt, then I was going to call you Sparklebutt every single time I addressed you and correct other people who didn’t.
I thought about names a lot during my time as a domestic worker, too. I pondered the divides of race and class that lead to the help being referred to by first names, even diminutives of their first names, while the employers and their peers are addressed more formally with Mr. or Mrs. and their last names.
I take using the right gender pronouns seriously, too. It’s sometimes hard, but so what? It’s harder on the person who’s being misgendered all the time. If you tell me you’re a he, I’m going to call you a he. If you say you’re a she, then you’re a she. If you tell me you’re a zir or a they, then that’s what I’m going to say. It’s not rocket science. It’s just doing the right thing. The respectful thing.
What does this have to do with Dylan? He can’t tell me his gender – that was part of the point of the other post. That was the whole reason for deciding on a gender-neutral pronoun. Well, it turns out that when I call him a she, I feel like I’m misnaming him. There’s 95-some-odd percent odds that Dylan is a him. I can’t un-know that. And it feels disingenuous to say otherwise.
It seems like there must be better ways to be open to the possibility that Dylan is a she than to misgender him his entire childhood if the more likely outcome comes to pass. And that’s the thing, I guess. There’s an extremely high probability that Dylan is a he. I am 95% likely to be misgendering him if I call him something other than a him. (I’m making that percent up – it’s kind of hard to know, but the number would be pretty high.)
Or maybe I’m just afraid to try too hard. I know that “It feels weird,” is too easily used as a cop-out. Either way, it does feel weird, and it feels like I’m calling him the wrong words for reasons other than who he is as a person when I use feminine pronouns.
Although I will continue to think about and worry about the social ideas surrounding gender as Dylan grows, there’s where my head is right now.
What My Dictionary Says About Me
| August 24, 2011 | Posted by Issa under Uncategorized |
Here’s something just for fun: I found the place in my cell phone where my custom dictionary is located. These are all the words I’ve entered into emails, text messages, and shopping lists that the phone didn’t already know. I was highly entertained by what I found there, which mostly fell into four categories.
Sex-related and curse words:
- ass, bitching, bitchy, cock, cum, fuck, fucked, and fucking (hmm, wonder what my favorite word is?), quickie, shit, shitty, slut-wear
Random sound words:
- erm, hah, haha, mwah, schoop, s000000, W00t, Wheeeeee
Fertility related:
- glucophage, hypothyroidism, ovulation, prometrium, progesterone
And the These Are Real Words, Dammit category:
- largish, smallish, lurv, moop-y, nomming, thingie, yum, yummy
So there’s vulgarity, random noises, trying to have a baby, and making shit up.
My phone knows all my secrets!
Parent Replacement Items
| August 11, 2011 | Posted by Issa under Parenting |
I have used the phrase Parent Replacement Items to describe a set of items for baby that are used in place of something traditionally provided by the parent. The big obvious one is the pacifier, of course, since the pacifier is explicitly designed to mimic the human body. Nearly everything you’re encouraged to buy for baby is a parent replacement item, though.
- A baby monitor replaces parents’ own eyes and ears on the baby.
- A crib holds a sleeping baby safely when a parent isn’t doing it themselves.
- Heartbeat toys replace the sound of the parents’ heartbeat as they hold baby chest to chest.
- Bouncy seats and swings replace the natural movement of a parent with baby along for the ride.
Parent replacement items are not just “baby gear” in general. A high chair isn’t a parent replacement item, for instance. And they aren’t just items that I think are stupid. I think baby bathtubs are stupid, for example, but baby bathtubs aren’t parent replacement items.
Parent replacement items are anything designed to hold baby while you walk away (bouncers, swings, saucers, play yards, cribs), anything designed to keep baby company while you walk away (heartbeat toys, mobiles, nightlights, loveys, etc), anything designed to facilitate separate sleep (monitors, cribs, much of the keep-baby-company stuff), and anything designed to copy human bodies (pacifiers, bottles, heartbeat toys).
When I first pondered the right term to use, I tried to think of something that sounded less like an insult. “Replacement” sounds so judgmental. And I don’t feel judgmental about all of these items. I don’t understand separate sleep for babies, so the things related to separate sleep bother me. But I like the “hold baby” category – those things let you set the baby down and also entertain the crap out of ou1. A monitor or a pacifier can be a life-saver now and then. I had trouble coming up with another term, though. These things are replacing the role of the parent, so it seemed the right word to use, even if it sounded a bit harsh.
Now that I’m a parent, I’ve gotten a more intimate feel for why one might buy some of this stuff, and I finally thought of another way to word it: Parent Extension Item. When I give Dylan a pacifier or buy a special play chair to set him in, I’m looking to extend myself into places I can’t go or in ways that are difficult for me. I’ve given Dylan a pacifier when he’s riding in a carseat, for example, because I can’t get my nipple in there.
The pacifiers we own were all gifts, but a couple of weeks ago we purchased our first parent replacement/extension item – a bouncy seat. That was when I thought of the word extension, because I was specifically looking for a way to give myself a break. I wanted a way to set Dylan down and give my arms and back a rest. “Replacement” is still accurate, because I’m wanting an object to replace me for awhile. “Extension” is also accurate, because I’m wanting to extend and expand on the options for how I care for my baby.
In a fun twist, right now I’m looking around for the exact toy I made fun of on the last page of the ad in the This Is The Moment post. Dylan loves to be upright on his feet bouncing away. We can’t get one of the doorway jumpers because our log house doesn’t have the right kind of door frames for those. But the Jumperoo looks just right for him. I think he’s going to go nuts for it. That points to one of my problems with the parent replacement items: you’re encouraged to buy all of them, often before you’ve even had your baby and have learned ou’s preferences. Surely you don’t need a bouncer, a jumper, a saucer, a swing, a play mat, and a play yard for every kid! But once you’ve met your baby and figured out what ou likes and needs, some of these items could certainly come in handy.
I think I’m going to stick with parent replacement item as the term for this set of stuff, because I think it’s important to keep in mind what’s going on and what the risks are. If I think of them purely as extensions of myself, then the more I buy the bigger and better I get, which is not what happens. Instead, the more I buy, the more I’m replacing myself and the less and less I’m there interacting with my child. I want to use the words that remind me to buy less stuff and spend more time touching my baby.
- “Ou” is a non-gendered pronoun. ↩
I Feed My Baby
| August 2, 2011 | Posted by Issa under Parenting |
I have heard the phrase “breastfeeding on demand” used to describe how often a mother might breastfeed her child. I sometimes hear “on request” and “on cue”, too, but these are much less frequent. A Google search for “breastfeeding on request” only turns up 89 results (which is darn near zero in Google-land), and some those are a different context, like, “Room available for breastfeeding on request.”
I think about word usage a lot. And I hate this phrase “on demand”. Demand often has a negative connotation to us. How do we feel when someone demands something of us? We might get a little defensive, and reasonably so. If someone wants something from you, would you rather they request it or demand it? When we think of someone “making demands”, we might have a mental image of someone throwing their weight around, pressuring us, stomping their feet, or raising their voice.
Is that how we picture our hungry babies? What effect does calling it “on demand” have on how we view our children’s hunger or need for comfort?
Technically, I think the term demand is accurate. Mirriam-Webster online has as the first definition of demand as “an act of demanding or asking especially with authority” and “something claimed as due”. A baby communicating ou’s need to suckle at the breast is absolutely asking with authority for something that ou is most certainly due.
And yet, there’s that connotation. Our culture offers enough cues and nudges towards being adversarial with our children, I think, without us starting out calling our babies demanding.
Besides, the reason to say that you feed your baby “on demand” is to differentiate from those who feed on a schedule. And frankly, I’m not sure I’d want to acknowledge them when talking about how I feed my own baby. Schedule feeding is so strange to me. I guess I can understand, “Hey, it’s been three hours, let’s see if the baby wants to eat.” But the flipside, “Baby seems hungry but isn’t allowed to eat for another half hour,” …do people really do that?
I don’t even use the words “breastfeed” or “nurse” all that often. “Breastfeeding” sometimes seems like a long, clunky word, and “nurse” just isn’t part of my normal vocabulary.
At the end of the day, what I’m doing is normal and my language reflects that. I don’t really breastfeed, nurse, feed on demand, on request, on cue, without a schedule.
I just feed my baby.
***
I’m celebrating World Breastfeeding Week with Natural Parents Network!
You can, too — link up your breastfeeding posts from August 1-7 in the linky below, and enjoy reading, commenting on, and sharing the posts collected here and on Natural Parents Network.
***
I’m celebrating World Breastfeeding Week with Natural Parents Network!
You can, too — link up your breastfeeding posts from August 1-7 in the linky below, and enjoy reading, commenting on, and sharing the posts collected here and on Natural Parents Network.
