Gender Ideologies are engrained in you at birth. You are taught by your parents at a very young age how you should behave, what toys you should be playing with, what cartoons you should be watching that are gender appropriate, etc. I don’t think some parents ever even stop to think how harmful this can be to their children.
Growing up, my dad wanted a boy so badly. He wanted a boy so terribly bad he had 10 daughters before he had his first son. Yes, 10! He had 6 with a previous marriage and then the other 4 with my mom, and then came my brother. From the moment he was born, he was treated differently. Us girls had to cook and clean and wait on my dad and brother hand and foot. He had to do nothing. He got to play all day and learn to be a lazy, entitled little shit. We would have to wake up Saturday mornings super early to clean the house, but he was allowed to stay in bed and sleep in.
There is no doubt that since birth children are treated differently based on their gender. Our culture also had a lot to do with it. There are tons of “machismo” that goes on in the Latino culture. From birth men get waited on hand and foot by the women. They get to go out and enjoy the bars and life out with their friends while the women stay home tending to the children and all the house chores.
My poor brother was surrounded by females. I remember he would pick up our barbies and my dad would slap them out of his hand and say those were for girls and “men” didn’t play with girl toys. My brother would cry, and he would give him a car instead. My brother was so damn spoiled I assume we resented it so we would dress him up in our dresses when we were bored and make him put on performances for us as a girl. We would make him sing and dance for us and we would just die from laughter. We knew we were so wrong, but we didn’t care. It was our way of getting back at dad even though he had no idea we were doing that to his boy.
It’s interesting how one’s ideologies of how a boy or a girl should behave is influenced from birth and socialized into your life. The culture provides you with the norms and values necessary for you to fit in with that society and with your environment.
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