Very much worth sharing just for that, but I was struck by one thing in the reporting given by the NFL:
Grace’s father, Duane Trautner, served as cameraman and commentator.
“This started with Grace calling (the players at the combine) with long hair or earrings girls,” Duane, a Wisconsin native and huge Cheesehead, told Shutdown Corner. “Then, she just joined in on the fun.”
Obviously, it's wonderful that Grace thinks girls get to be highly-paid sporting professionals, and I hope that by the time she's old enough to compete in adult competitions, that will actually be true.
Of more concern is that, at the age of 3, Grace has already learned that boys do not wear earrings or have long hair, but girls do. It's difficult to know how you could address that: it seems positive in that she learned that girls can do sport too, but negative in that she has these stereotypes already. By explaining that boys can have long hair too, would her father have taken away from the other lesson?
Is it a problem, even? Well, yes, because form such small bricks is the house of Patriarchy built. Grace may or may not know already that a girl has lower value than a boy or that calling a boy something girl-related is the biggest insult, but she will learn those things in time, and then long hair or earrings will be a way that she learns to police gender.
But, I still hope that one day she becomes a 1st round draft pick, just like she says she will.
"Grace has already learned that boys do not wear earrings or have long hair, but girls do."
ReplyDeleteI didn't see the full report, so maybe there was something in it that supports this, but... from what you mentioned? Not necessarily. She just started calling the players with long hair and earrings girls.
Which doesn't necessarily mean that she sees those things as "girls only." It could also mean that she called them girls in order to find a way to identify as a player, which she wouldn't otherwise be able to do, given that none were there. Which is the kind of resilience and creative problem solving that children that age tend to show.
With due respect, I think that you're not taking enough account of the fact that she's a kid. Or of the capabilities that children have as agents, limited as they may be, even at that age.
That was pretty much all there was on it in the report.
DeleteI think it's a fair point that it might not be the way I read it (and I did acknowledge that it was a way to identify with the players in the OP) but at the same time, it's a problem because it tends to shape the way you see the world later, no?
Depends on how she's using it, which is why I brought that up. If she's able to take something that's normally a stereotype, a "girls only" thing, and use that to envision a sport as other than it is -- as having female bodies where there are none, and in spite of the fact that the player's builds aren't stereotypically female -- then that could set a precedent for resilience. For being able to reinterpret, for being able to navigate barriers better on down the line.
DeleteIn harsher cases, I've seen young children use similar techniques to re-vision their worlds while suffering from severe illness; if what Grace is doing here is developing a vision that can help her to see the world differently, even while looking at it as it is, that's to be encouraged.
These things can shape the ways in which we see the world, sure. But which model of vision are we going with? Consider something like James J. Gibson's approach (which, I think, is quite relevant here) and the consequences of that question become apparent.
That is a very interesting perspective and I do like to think that that could be what is happening. I just struggle to believe it. Or rather, I see it as both things happening at once because I don't see these things as that discretely packaged. The tools that one chooses to perform one task, end up affecting other things and affect the tasks that one is later able to perform . For instance, to expand further on the "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail", if I choose a hammer in order to nail something together, that reduces my ability to tighten screws later because I didn't choose a screwdriver). My feeling is that, if the tool she uses to identify with the athletes is a gendered perception of hair and jewellery, then that affects how she is able to use hair and jewellery later.
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