Tag: parenting

mascpriv:

oksoweredointhis:

mascpriv:

this local woman who has a tomboy kid reached out to my butch group to see if a few of us wouldn’t mind having brunch with her family and a couple more of the girls tomboy friends, cuz she read that it’s important for your development to have adult versions of “people like you” in your life when you’re growing up. which is definitely true. so we’re going over tomorrow. can you believe that? like, I’m gonna cry.

Op how did it go if I may ask?

Hi! Figure I’ll answer everyone at once here. It was kinda incredible… it was three little tomboy kids, 5 adult butch pals, and a couple of the parents, eating pancakes and muffins and playing games for a few hours. Learned a lot about each other and told each other stories, both good and bad. We lent the kind of advice that these good natured straight parents just don’t have the frame of reference for, and we talked about what we did for work and school, learned about what sports they play, suggested reading Tamora Pierce. Colored some protest posters too — the kids came up with all the words on their own, stuff like “were here whether you like it or not!”

It is awful to think about all the BS that these children have had to go through already — weird to think that we (the adult butches) know these stories of exclusion and hostility so VISCERALLY from our own and each other’s lives and childhoods, but hearing them come out of the mouth of a 10 year old girl is… something else. they have had to learn how to stand up for themselves, and they’ve got such thick skin now, but… most of us learn that so much later, or lose it as we leave childhood, and I’m so confident that at least THESE KIDS have a very real support system, parents who love them for who they are and want to encourage them to be happy and healthy even if it means life in the outside world will be harder. I dunno. I feel really hopeful.

spiralstreesandcupsoftea:

maski:

“We [Fraction and his wife, Kelly Sue DeConnick] were pregnant at the time, and while I was out there I started to realize that if I had a daughter, there would come a day when I would have to apologize to her for my profession. I would have to apologize for the way it treats and speaks to women readers, and the way it treats its female characters. I knew that if we had a daughter, because I know my wife and I know the kind of girl she wants to raise and I know the kind of girl I want to raise, she was going to look at what I did for a living and want to know how the fuck I could stomach it. How could I sell her out like that?” Fraction continued. “That conversation is still coming, and I’m bracing for it in the way that some dads brace for their daughter’s first date or boyfriend. I became acutely aware that I had sort of done that thing that lots of privileged hetero cisgendered white dudes do. ‘I’m cool with women, and that’s enough.’ It’s not enough. It’s embarrassing to say, because we somehow have attached shame to learning and evolving our opinions, culturally, but I became aware that there was a deficiency of and to women in my work, and all I could do at that moment was take care of my side of the street.”

— Writer Matt Fraction on his role on expanding the profile of female characters in the Marvel Universe. (via goodmanw)

better late than never, dude. we can always learn and always do better.