Happy Halloween!

Submitted by Mirra Watkins

     Halloween….  Known as a day of masquerading for children to trick or treat.  I have always known it to be such a day, to dress up and be whomever or whatever you admire and love: Captain Jack Sparrow, Princess Peach, Batman, Spiderman, etc.  However, due to most of us “doing gender,” I don’t think many realize how Halloween has contributed to the reinforcement of gender socialization (see how our society makes distinct differences in how children should dress for Halloween in the pictures below).  One mother’s decision in 2010 shook up this notion.

     Sarah Manley’s five-year-old son, Boo, decided to dress up as Daphne from Scooby Doo for his preschool Halloween party in 2010.  Much to my and his mother's surprise, it started an uproar.  To add more shock, the controversy did not start because of Boo’s fellow preschoolers teasing him for wearing, what many would assume, a "girl’s costume," which Boo (and I upon hearing the story) expected.  No, it wasn’t his friends who criticized him.  In fact, the children enjoyed his get-up.  The disgust and disapproval came from none other than the children’s parents.  Manley, retelling the incident on her blog, stated that “Two mothers went wide-eyed and made faces as if they smelled decomp…And Mom A says in disgust, ‘Did he ask to be that?!’…Mom B mostly just stood there in shock and dismay.”  Another mother found the audacity to tell Manley how Manley “should never have allowed this” and that she would have to put her foot down in years to come.  Sarah Manley received much backlash not only from the mothers at her son’s preschool but online as well after she vented about the issue on her blog.  In the New York Times online blog, Manley discussed how she “received some pretty terrible comments and name-calling about [her] 5-year-old that [she] couldn’t reprint.”  One individual went as far as tweeting Manley's husband’s police department in order to have her children taken away.

     What’s upsetting to me about this controversy is the hypocrisy of our society and their unrelenting ways to commit everyone to their very specific and limiting gender roles…even on a holiday made for dressing up and being someone that you're not!  What’s even sadder about this situation was the many negative comments Manley received about her son being gay or that she ‘outed’ Boo.  Despite the fact that young 5-year old Boo, as his mother said, has "no sexual conscious choice."  The negative comments further support the social belief that, as quoted in Sociology Matters, “men and women who deviate from traditional expectations about gender roles are often presumed to be gay."  Manley’s son, Boo, was expected to dress up as someone "masculine" for Halloween (most likely similar to the costumes above).  Because he didn't, he and his mother were chastised.  Far as our society’s homophobia and standards of gender roles goes, a boy dressing up as Daphne, Snow White, Storm, a Powerpuff Girl, or any other female character is a huge NO-NO and should be frowned upon and stopped.

     Many fail to realize and to understand that at such a young age, children do not know or understand sexual identity or sexual preference.  According to MSNBC, experts say that it is not unusual for boys under five to dress up in clothing or costumes usually associated with girls.  Not only that, however, many girls dress up as boys (or what’s typically associated with boys) and our society sees no problem with that! Manley said it best in her blog that if her daughter “had dressed as Batman, no one would have thought twice about it.  No one.”  What makes a girl dressing up as a male any different than a boy dressing up as a female?  Nothing.  As children see it, they are just having fun.  However to our society, it is a stigma.  A stigma so influential that children around five years of age become aware of the "differences" between our two genders and the desire to "cross-dress" disappears.

     Sadly, this issue came into light because of one Halloween costume.  I cannot imagine the difficulty our society will have with the larger issue of parents allowing their children to causally "cross-dress."  How will our society handle our children wanting to dress in everyday clothes that are stereotypically associated with the opposite sex?  Will we reprimand and scold our children in order to mold them into society’s acceptable and restrictive gender roles?  Or will we learn to accept, making our children’s happiness our top priority rather than our society’s standards and expectations?  Will we evolve and become a nation that does not subject its children to dimorphic genders?


To read Sarah Manley’s full blog post, go to http://nerdyapple.com/my-son-is-gay/