Your child is human.

After seeing a CNN piece on the matter, I decided I needed to get some things off my chest about the now viral blog post from a Kansas City mother who let her 5 year old son dress as Daphne from Scooby Doo for Halloween. I have several thoughts on this, spurred on by the post itself, the CNN reporting on its million-hit popularity, as well as the comments and reactions I've seen from both gay and straight people to the child's costume.

1. The article is really about gender, not sexuality. High heels and wigs, though beloved of draq queens who frequently feature at gay nightspots, have as much to do with homosexuality as hammers and nails have to do with heterosexuality. Ie: some gay people partake, just as some straight people use hammers and nails, but frankly they are a non-essential part of the sexual practices and identity of the individual. (Though, there might be some really freaky people out there who are into "hammers and nails play", but I'd rather not dwell on that too long). So, while people often conflate "femininity", or whatever, with homosexuality, the two are not intrinsically linked. Duh.

2. People are more scared of gender rule violations than they are of two dudes getting it on. In fact, I think a lot of people's discomfort with the latter, stems from their viewing it as a gender rule violation. Not entirely, but it definitely is a part of the visceral negative reactions. The gender binary structures a lot of the way we think of ourselves and the social world: violations of it cause deep feelings of discomfort in a lot of people. Even gays. Example: the gay men who think the T doesn't belong with LGB, or who call themselves "straight acting" in their online dating profiles. This is silly, and stupid.
Violations of these gender rules by people with penises are more threatening to people today, for some reason. (Edit: Of course people are more scared of boys "acting like girls" than vice versa; women and feminine things are BAD, or at least inferior to men and masculine things. Silly me for missing that connection from Feminism 101!) Examples: the mother's point that girls dressing as Batman cause no consternation, while a boy dressing as a female character is beyond the pale. CNN covering this child's Halloween costume, and the blog reactions to it, is a fine example of the way people freak the fuck out over gender stuff. Calm down.

3. We can know nothing of this child's gender identification, nor of his sexual leanings, from his 5 year old choice of Halloween costume. Kids dress up on Halloween as things they aren't in normal life. If every boy who clomped around in their mom's high heels at 5 years old turned out to be gay, or transgender, there would be exactly seven straight males in the whole of the country. Also, gay guys who are whooping and calling the kid a "5 year old diva", give it a rest. He's not a diva, nor budding drag queen (not necessarily, anyway). He is FIVE and it was Halloween, stop reading into it: it's called youthful imagination and child's play. The CNN psychologist's chiding the mother for "outing" her five year old is beyond ridiculous, for all of the above reasons.

4. Everyone is a little mix of genders anyway. Nowadays plenty of men do things that were once considered "women's work". Like, cooking for their families, or cleaning, or generally no longer acting like they are helpless infants once inside the familial home. Women wear pants, and go to work, and lead countries. Some do all three!  These things were once transgressions of gender norms. Now, they aren't.  In the 18th Century, upper class Western European men wore long wigs, high heels, and face powder, and were considered paragons of masculinity. Gender, and the attributes assigned to each one, are contested, continually changing, and highly dependent on social context.

5. People need to chill the fuck out. If the kid grows up to marry a guy, whatever. If he grows up with a lifelong love of heels, whatever. More than likely, he grows up to be a fairly average guy who might cringe, or be somewhat amused, when he considers his mother's splashing his 5 year old Halloween pics on the internet. Let's hope by then, society will be a little more flexible in what it allows its members to do and express, and stops trying to cram everyone into two rigidly defined and enforced categories of existence. One can dream.

Grow up, America, it's only a costume.

Full disclosure: I dressed up as the Wicked Witch of the West for Halloween as a kid. I freaking loved that character. Looking back, I don't think this had anything to do with being gay, nor even identifying with the misunderstood outsider a la Wicked. I think I just found her green skin and abilities to both fly and marshal the aid of monkey minions really kind of awesome.