My son and his braid : queerness today
My inner dialogue (and ego) has been as active as ever, flying over the cuckoo’s nest and now rolling around in a discourse of gender and sexuality as it currently stands. I’m talking about the pronouns they/them, he/him, she/her and the way Generation Z folk require the inclusion of any such pronoun when making acquaintances – hi, my name is Chandani and I go by she/her. Also the queer and transgender culture and ideas about femininity; at times it seems like a performance rather than as an art of subtlety with which I have been taught as a straight, cis female. Why does Queer Eye work for five gay men to enlighten and reinvent helpless straight men while the same popularity is hard to conceive of five lesbian women with stereotypically male-centric hobbies and professions helping straight women get in touch with their masculinity. Or maybe, as I initially found Queer Eye to be before my adoration with the cast, is that it feels outdated in its overt gayness. It promotes this arguably outdated perception of what a gay man looks like, how he should act and the types of professions, characteristically seen as female-centric, he would do. And with the new language surrounding queerness, the show lacks inclusivity, promoting one very specific type of community with a specific type of image within the queer world. It’s just a bit old school but I guess this type of gayness is already well masticated and palpable for a broad audience on Netflix. The show charms and moves and is based on goodness. We have come a long way from the fag hag lingo, so let’s close our eyes and let it be.
As I grapple with answers to these thoughts, I do so with my children in mind. I consider myself always having had a liberal point of view, having made many nonconforming life choices and priding myself for my individuality. Now, I recognize over time that this liberalism comes within the limits of what I grew up with and my life experiences as a younger generation finds its own ways to speak up and speak out. I speak from the perspective of someone in a hetero normative set up – that is, a cis female married to a cis male and with the miracle of two small children. At the onset, my life seems as traditional as they come being 100% Punjabi Sikh married to a man who is of equal heritage. I like to remind peers slightly younger than me that I, too, am a millennial – a technicality I grasp onto tightly and that which humors my husband greatly. I get it! I want to shout! Been there, done that! I’d like to remind them because I don’t blast my life on social media. I suppose it’s my way of stating my cool factor, playing down my conventional family portrait, and creating a relatable space of discussion when at times I feel torn between two worlds of thinking. I still remember the fear of plagiarism and the consequences of being caught. Now, it is so easy to take what is not ours for our own agenda instantaneously and without batting an eye. I remember being encouraged by teachers to explore the physical world in search of original art and creativity. Now we argue that originality is dead. I remember when humility was considered a virtue when now self-labeling and self-proclaiming is all about self-awareness. And I remember when being a jack-of-all-trades and master of none was a case for someone who is noncommittal to their life career or passions. Now, it’s almost a sense of pride to be multi-hyphenated because the more that we can say we are, the more profoundly it defines depth in our existence.
These thoughts will make its way into part two of the reclaiming life series so I’ll continue my rant on gender and sexuality.
I have loved following Alok on Instagram, a transfeminine whose writings are beautiful and provocative. He is also one of the most thoughtful and eloquently expressed thinkers about queerness that I’ve encountered. I implore you to find time to listen to him speak on Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness. It educational, informative and worth every minute.
I am raising a Sikh boy and questioning my care or lack thereof when others refer to my son, whose hair we keep unshorn compliant with Sikh identity, as a little girl. Most of the time, I respond with some nonchalant affirmation of that pronoun – yes, she loves taxis. Oh thanks, everyone says she looks like me. Who cares, I think. I’m not bothered, and he is too young to understand gender and sadly, as he gets older, he’s anyway going to be “normalized” by his peers and irrevocably by what is clearly an outdated binary system. And so it begins. My laisez-faire attitude has come into question because in the last few months, my son has started assigning pronouns to people to showcase his knowledge of what it means to be a “he” and a “she.” Oh shite. The uncomfortable jitters start to show themselves in the form of a stomach pit. And for the first time recently, when a taxi driver referred to my son as a little lady, he paused and said – “mama, the driver said little lady” looking at me for confirmation. For a moment I found myself stuck, as I find myself more and more lately as a mother of a curious toddler, trying to decide in a split second how to answer a question that could possibly affect his thought process forever. Should I correct the driver or tell my son that it doesn’t matter anyway? I corrected the driver. The jitters faded but my ego as a self proclaimed open-minded citizen of the world was bruised.
But how could I explain the nuances of gender to my 3.5 year old to fit his short attention span or scope of theoretical thinking? In this broader spectrum of sexuality and the non-binary scope I continue to roll around in the water of its vast, trackless dimension. Sexuality is as broad, heavy and profound as the topic of race.
What does the utopian non-binary, gender-neutral world look like?
After the exchange in that taxi ride, some days later, I asked my son on the walk to school, “Do you understand what it means to be a he or she?”
He answered innocently, “No,” to which I replied, rhetorically, and probably more of a thought out loud, “Me neither. Does it even matter?”
I felt that I did something positive in that moment for oneness and equality but let’s be honest here. It is much easier to have rhetorical, esoteric banter with a 3.5 year old but the harder, more important duty is putting an authentic equality into practice. This starts at the home. When trying to decide on art to invest in our flat, my husband and I consider work by Sikh artists to not only support a community of underrepresented artists, but to incite curiosity about our culture and religion in our children. Recently, I have fallen in love with a particular piece of artwork by Babbu the Painter of two same sex Sikh adolescents kissing. I love the colors. I love the handwork. I love the simplicity. I really just love that piece of work especially because it is of two same sex, patka wearing kids going lip to lip. But does it give me pause to hang up in our home? Yes, it does. All in the instance of admitting this, my open-mindedness comes into question once again. Would I have it in my home if I didn’t have children? Absolutely. So what am I scared of? How can it be fear if this art gives me joy? Is it actually fear or is it just navigating the unknown? Unknown questions. Unknown reactions. I wonder if it will give any pause at all to my lipstick-wearing, web shooting Spider-Man, pink loving, car-obsessed and braid-rocking son. Either way, I have a role to play.
Ready or not.
