After a professional life established on knowing a very small amount about a great many subjects, it now turns out I am something of an expert, but on a most unlikely subject. In fact, I would go so far as to challenge you to ask me anything – anything at all – about my now special area of expertise. Try me.
I can tell you everything you ever need to know about front-end loaders, excavators (large, mini and long-reach), graders, dump trucks, skid steers and luffing jibs. I just need to see the telltale flash of high-visibility yellow out of the corner of my eye and I can pretty much identify the piece of heavy equipment it will turn out to be.
I can describe all the characteristics of this machinery in minute detail and I can make the sounds that go with each one. I can crawl across the floor and be a digger or a dumper. I can even open and close my hands to show flashing lights and make high-pitched reversing “beeps” on command. Daniel Grollo doesn’t realise this yet, but he needs me on his staff.
The nurture/nature debate in our house was over before it even started. My son was not even up to proper one-syllable utterances when he first formed his fat little forefinger into a pointer and exclaimed in delight at the cement mixer that ambled up our street. From that moment on, his life was dedicated to the early sighting of and vocalising about earth-moving equipment and heavy machinery. Days are punctuated by the cheery cry of “truck!” “truck!”, and language development has been dictated by the nouns, and then verbs, of commercial construction. You have no idea how many “action” words can be associated with a demolition site.
I’ve never fussed about the whole male-female, pink-blue gender straitjacket. If they want dolls, if they want cars, they can have them, and I’m not interested in pushing some agenda – an agenda of any kind – on a child who is simply fascinated by the world. I know well-meaning parents who gave boys dolls and girls trucks, but considering the grab-before-you-think world of the baby, I just always figured that, if they were interested in it, they would go for it, and no social engineering was going to change that.
My son was given a little hand-me-down dolly by his cousin and he was rather fond of it, but it was quickly snatched away by the small daughter of a friend and he never missed it. He now talks with genuine curiosity about one doll in a particular picture book, so it seems the time might be right to see if he wants one to join his menagerie of soft toys.
Those friends who tried to encourage another world view on gendered toys almost all failed in their high-minded endeavours: the boys always ended up with the rough stuff and for reasons that no one can ever quite explain, the girls, from the moment they can speak, mostly always want in everything in pink.
Now, I know there are exceptions, many exceptions, to this rule (so settle down), but I think this is a general experience of boy and girl children. But nonetheless I would like to raise a child free of gender stereotypes, open to all possibilities and respectful of others.
I’ve decided the toys don’t matter, the colour doesn’t matter – but language matters, and how we treat each other matters enormously. When I see a young man wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the rap lyric, “Bitch, don’t kill my vibe” I’m going to explain to my boy why that makes me so angry. I’m going to refer to animals as “she” as well as “he” and I’m going to make sure he understands that some of those trucks he loves so much might even be driven by a woman.
