Or is it?
I'm not like that with male colleagues. If a male colleague is expecting a child with his partner ... well, I hardly ever know because despite Canada's reasonable (note I didn't say generous) parental leave policy, men hardly ever take leave. But even if I did know that someone -- male -- was expecting a baby, I probably wouldn't talk about it the same way.
It's not even that she's pregnant and I'm being effusive about her pregnant belly; it's her wife who's having the child, their second together. I haven't seen her wife while pregnant. I expect it would be the same if they were adopting, for any mother adopting.
The fact is that I am more comfortable gushing woman to woman about babies than I would be woman to man. Which is weird, given that I know full well that my own father and my own partner are no lesser as parents just because of their sex. I know The Man talks about The Boy to his friends and colleagues; I know they like to spend time together. My own father is more effusive about his love for me and my sister than my mother ever is.
So I don't know. I never really thought my reactions were sexist, but they kind of are. Is this just me? Or do you gush to expectant mothers more than to fathers?
3 comments:
I think, sometimes, we have to distinguish between "reacting to someone's gender" and "sexism". I mean, often those things overlap or are the same, of course. But is it reasonable, or morally justified, even, for us to expect that gender will have no impact on our interaction with another person? Especially basic things like "Is the person the same gender as me?" or "do I feel that our respective personal histories are more similar than dissimilar in some specific way, because of our gender?". You may be more comfortable being gushy about babies with another woman; would a father be more comfortable gushing about babies with another man? Is that wrong? (Note -- I'm assuming here that "sexism" is a negative thing, of course). It is definitely a reaction to gender -- but is that sexism? Equality does NOT mean sameness, and I don't think that in every case, we should expect ourselves to treat everyone exactly the SAME, regardless of who they are.
All that said, I wrestle with similar questions myself... one obvious answer is that the world is still so heavily gendered that to expect perfect non-gendered behaviour from ourselves is ridiculous; we should focus on things that negatively affect others or ourselves, and not stress over the details of every interaction.
Which isn't meant as a criticism, of course -- I'm just thinking out loud, because I find this an interesting question.
Hmm. Interesting.
I think I tend to be pretty gushy about babies with everybody, but it's true that often with other women there's more ... mutual gushiness, I guess. My own personal husband is worse than I am in this respect ;^) -- if we're at a party with a baby and I've managed to get my hands on her/him, he's the one hanging at my elbow making silly faces at the baby and hinting that if my arms were to get tired, he'd be happy to take a turn -- but I've noticed that not all male persons are like this.
In offices, I find visiting babies do tend to attract mostly female crowds of admirers. There's often an age factor, too, though: the said crowds also tend to be thirty and up, while the twentysomethings are more likely to just look in briefly on their way to the coffee machine. I've worked with some bachelor uncles who get pretty gushy about their little nieces and nephews, though :) Of course, my sample's badly skewed, because I've worked for almost the 15 years almost exclusively with women -- in my current workplace and the part-time workplace that preceded it -- and the few men in those offices have perhaps tended to adapt their behaviour to their environment.
Anyway, I think the previous commenter is quite right that it's unreasonable to expect gender to have no impact on our social interactions. But maybe part of it's just a pre-emptive worry about the other person's reaction -- we don't gush to male colleagues because we (perhaps subconsciously) expect them not to want, or to be able, to participate in that kind of conversation -- and maybe we should try it more often and see what happens...
Male or female, I most just offer my commiserations. ;)
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