Another Child Post!

I know I said, back when I first posted on the birth of my child, that I would write about revolutionary parenthood on another blog.  The problem, however, is that this other blog has failed to develop; the other two parents involved, who have more experience than me, haven't yet posted anything.  And since parenthood has now become a massive part of my life, I cannot just pretend that it does not exist.  No, I'm not planning on making these kinds of posts normative here (really, this is mainly just pressure to launch that other blog), but I feel like, in lieu of a proper platform, I should write something about my the importance of raising a child as a communist.

First of all, I feel the need to discuss the problem of raising a child who is nominally a girl (because she has two x chromosomes and because of this will be socialized as "female" and thus will be perceived as "female" until if and when she decides otherwise) in the context of the vestigial ideological determination of patriarchy.  For even if my daughter ends up establishing that she is not a daughter and adopts the identity of a trans man rather than a cis woman, until this possible moment emerges she will be socialized as a she by family members and society as a whole.  And since there are serious and chauvinist problems associated with the gender socialization of perceived female subjects, my child is already facing an uphill battle.

This picture is two months out of date, and she looks differently now,  but I just felt the need to post it due to the communist onesie!

In my initial post about my kid I jokingly complained about the more banal aspects of gender socialization such as the colour pink and girly-girl clothing.  Unfortunately, we have been unable to avoid colourization and now are awash with pink and gendered clothing.  And since we have to be careful with money, as much as we would like to dress our child eternally in gender neutral clothing we are also more than happy to accept free clothing from otherwise well-meaning family members who have so far been providing a wardrobe for our kid––indeed, we haven't bought any clothing for our daughter so far and are admittedly happy to have avoided this expense.

(But thankfully we have also received free clothing from our friends and comrades who have handed down the boy-gendered clothing of their kids and so our child has as many boy overalls as she does girl dresses!  Yay for variety!  Unfortunately, our child is now wearing a pink fun-furry winter cap for her outdoor walks––but this is only because we can't find the brown hat with bear ears that we would otherwise prefer and vanished in the mess that is our house last week.)

So at this point we are less annoyed with the pink (hey, pink is also the radical queer colour) or dresses and skirts (combine them with some other colours and punk neckerchiefs and we've got riot grrl fashion!) than we are with the whole princess/ballerina bullshit.  Economic necessity and exhaustion forces you to sift through the gifts, recognize that it is idealist to hold out against a certain level of socialization in this intensely gendered society, and focus on what is the most essentially virulent aspect of gendered socialization.  And it is not the colours or the general fashion that is the problem––these can be detourned and overcome through clever juxtaposition––but those gifts that specifically promote patriarchal ideology.

I am talking about those gifts hidden within xmas gift bags decorated with Disney princesses so that you know, without peeking under the tissue paper, that your child is being fucked over by some virulent gift designed to undermine her potential as a human subject.  Because under that tissue paper is a fucking doll because you know that girls are expected to be socialized into understanding themselves as mothers as early as possible.  (We were grateful for the clothes, because clothes are necessary, but we made the family member who gave us the doll return it immediately.)  Other toys designed to socialize our child into a demure woman are sure to follow––I am sure that we will eventually receive an e-z-bake oven––so many things designed to transform are child into a "proper" and domesticated woman.

Almost a year ago my partner and her friend inspected and open house when they were out on a walk.  In the boy's room of this marketed house they discovered the possibility of a subject who could become something significant: novels, creative lego sets, and a clear excitement with the world.  In the girl's room they were met with dolls, a lack of books, and nothing more than the display of prettiness––the deformation of the human subject.  The family as at fault insofar as they were uncritically adopting the "common sense" morés of society as a whole; the problem goes deeper because it is a problem foisted upon every parent regardless of their intentions.  Family is already inundating with us with this gendered shit; once school and my daughter's friends at school become involved the problem becomes even more difficult––for how can I easily inform Samiya that it is wrong to want to be a princess and play with barbies when all of her friends are engaging in this practice?  After all, we are social beings and I cannot hope that my influence will trump the influence of her friends.  And I know it is going to be difficult to teach a five or six year old that what she wants is something designed to teach her to be demure, passive, subordinate.

Good lord: I can't even walk into the childrens clothing section of a store without being shocked by the gendered division of fashion.  For the boys: cool clothing that is age appropriate.  For the girls: mini-skirts and heels at the age of one!

Beyond the problem of the vicious genderization my child will face, however, is the problem of child-care and how it affects my organizational life.  Needless to say, I have become a rather dormant political subject since my daughter was born.  My attendance at meetings has been marginal; my agitation has been pitiful; my engagement in campaigns has been non-existent.  Between work and child-care there has been little time to do anything else and I look forward to the day when my daughter is less homebound and can be taken with me to political events.

After almost four months of being a parent I am under the impression that any left-wing heterosexual man who is able to keep his involvement in political work the same as it was before becoming a father for the first year of his child's existence is someone who is not approaching child-care in an equitable manner.  Those men who continue organizing in the same manner as they did before their child was born are those men whose parenthood is dependent on the gendered division of labour––fathers who assume that the mothers will do most of the work and can persist as political subjects while their counterparts are relegated to the private sphere.  This is because children take up a fuck of a lot of time, are dependent upon your care every hour of the day, and to practice the same political life in this context is to be someone who has the privilege of a stay-at-home partner or other care-giver: this is a privileged position and it needs to be recognized as such.

It's not that there's a lack of child friendly spaces, just that this early in the game, when my partner is having problems pumping and is always exhausted from feeding our kid and would prefer to stay home or simply spend her out-of-home time on mindless walks and enjoyable trips, I can't really take my kid to a meeting when she needs to feed every two hours and I lack the ability to feed her––and now, after months of breast-feeding, she refuses to take formula.

In any case, what I once understood abstractly I now understand concretely: children usually remove female cadre from political life while male cadre, expecting their female counterparts to do most of the child care, possess the privilege of remaining complete political subjects.  Indeed, Hisila Yami discussed this problem in People's War and Women's Liberation in Nepal: where fathers continued to work for revolution, mothers dropped out of militias and party activity during and after pregnancy because it was assumed that they would be the primary care-givers.  This happens everywhere and now I can understand why it happens having experienced the weight of child-care and, doing my best to be an equal care-giver and not abandon my partner when it is convenient, also experiencing how this act of caring devours my time.  (God I look forward to when she is eating solids and I can just transport her all over the place!)  I have a lot of time at home on the computer but not a lot of time out of the home; I can't just bugger off and, using my inability to feed my daughter as an excuse, leave her while I continue on with an actual life––politically and socially.

Moreover, I want my child to grow up with parents who provide her with a progressive model of gender dynamics and so I need to demonstrate this model in practice.  A dad who talks about gender equity should be a dad who spends as much time as possible sharing domestic work––which obviously has not yet been socialized but, in lieu of a communist revolution, is still relegated to the private sphere.

And now my daughter has woken up and needs to be changed (which is my primary domestic duty since I don't do the feeding) and this gives me the perfect excuse to end this meandering post…