get out your barf bags, matt walsh is tweeting about gender
Oh hi! I have bad news and good news.
Bad news: Matt Walsh still has fingers, so, yeah. He's still tweeting.
Good news! His tweets remain both hateful and, like, so stupid.
This morning he has thoughts about gender.
Well, he’s trying to have thoughts about gender. Poor lamb. Reminds me of a kid at a spelling bee who tries to spell “Incontinence” and shits his pants instead.
Anyway, I have some thoughts to share while he get cleaned up backstage.
Hi, Matt.
Mom of two little boys here. They both like green, dinosaurs, and Pokemon. They both also like glitter, nail polish, and My Little Pony.
My 7-year-old’s understanding of himself doesn’t change whether he’s watching Pokemon or My Little Pony. The only thing that changes based on a child’s interests is their relationship with gender norms, and therefore their compliance with what most of the adults around them think of as “expected behavior” for a “boy” or “girl.”
A kid who likes puppies, pink, dresses, & dolls is a product of a socially constructed gender binary in which pink dolls are the ONLY tools we give kids to express femininity (or traits that we closely associate with femininity: emotionality, collaboration, politeness, body decoration.)
Similarly, predators, machines, and weapons are the tools we give kids to express masculinity (or traits we closely associate with masculinity: dominance, aggression, strength, stoicism.) Trucks aren’t inherently masculine, and neither is anger, just like dolls aren’t inherently feminine, and neither is crying. Those are all inherently human traits.
Your tweet is a great example of a huge issue around your average layperson’s discussions of gender:
Because of how we were raised and how gender has always been discussed, we continue to frame discussions about gender on a foundational assumption that gender is fixed, gender is biologically expressed through genitals, gender is binary, and gender is SUPER IMPORTANT for people to know.
Even if you’re a person (like me) who supports trans and NB people, chances are pretty high that you may still think of a trans man in the context of what his genitals are, or that he “switched” genders, or that his gender is important for you to know so you can have the appropriate chit chat with him over bagels at the office breakfast.
I once read that if you learn a new language after a certain age, it doesn’t matter how long you study it or how long you speak it, you will ALWAYS speak that language with an accent. I think that concept applies to the mainstream discussion around gender. No matter how much I practice or how long I commit to using inclusive language, I’ll always speak NB with an accent. For me, that looks like this:
“Okay, honey, say thank you to the nice man! WAIT I mean, um, say thank you to the nice person!”
Or, when my son asks me if the person they see is a boy or a girl:
“I don’t know and it doesn’t really matter, does it? Maybe girl, maybe boy, maybe both, maybe neither. There are so many kinds of people. The most important thing is that person living their truth, and we support that person living their truth, and we treat all people with respect and we always include everybody, even if we’re not sure, and sometimes it’s okay to ask someone what their pronouns are but other times it’s just kind of performative, so in this situation I think it would be best to just smile and move on with our day because we don’t want to put that person on the spot, right?”
(My child stopped listening after “I don’t know.”)
Some of us (not you, Matt) are trying to deepen our understanding while operating within the limitations of two powerful frameworks: first, the culture into which we were born, which is very clear about what a girl is, what a boy is, and what girls and boys are NOT; and second, the language we use to discuss gender, which is still developing nuanced and inclusive diction, and which still relies heavily on the culturally coded terminology around what’s “feminine,” (pink, dresses, crying) or “masculine.” (blue, trucks, anger).
(PS, if you're getting all puffed up at the idea that people associate masculinity with anger and getting ready to NOTALLMEN at me, I want you to first, not do that; and second, sit with it and recognize that you too are trying to bust out of gender norms and restrictive constructs that diminish your humanity to a single nonsense trait.)
In your own Tweet, you say, “Every time someone tries to prove that a little boy is actually a little girl, they always always mention that he likes dresses, dolls, and pink.” You’re trying to shove a peacock into a hamster cage, then getting mad when its feathers keep sneaking out through the bars. Dude, it doesn’t fit. Stop trying. Instead of blaming the peacock for being born with feathers, ask yourself why it’s so fucking important that you put it in a cage? Why are you even carrying a hamster cage around? Calm down. Let it live.
So when a parent explains that their child loves dolls, dresses, and pink, understand that the child is expressing femininity with the only tools we’ve ever given that child to code their identity. All of us, even those who are trying so hard not to, still operate within the limitations of those hamster cage power structures.
The child’s interest in dolls may be inherent, BUT it may also be an expression of the child’s interest in their identity, which they recognize is shared by kids that other people see as “girls,” people whom they see playing with dolls, wearing dresses, and loving pink.
It’s actually quite simple to hold both these ideas in your head: “a child is communicating a gender identity to me using the only tools we give children to communicate gender,” and “the tools we’ve given children to communicate gender identity are laughably simplistic and in dire need of a 21st-century update.”
You can do it! Give it a try!
No? Too hard? Still going rage-blank at the idea that “boy” “girl” “doll” and “who the fuck cares go live your own life Matthew” could all live in the same sentence?
Okay, try it this way: “We always eat turkey for Thanksgiving dinner,” and “Turkey is a suboptimal feast meat because it dries out so easily and I wouldn’t mind a 21st-century update. I don’t know, maybe game hens. Or enchiladas!” Go big, I’m saying. The world is full of feast food and people you may not quite understand, but your argument that children should be immune from the society that raised them if we are to take their internal lives seriously? That’s nonsense.
A couple of things:
1. Please follow me on Twitter! I retweet so many funny people & sometimes tee off on Matt Walsh when I’m feeling frisky.
2. Don't tell me not to feed the trolls. Matt Walsh is a garbage person on every level and I do not expect that anything short of a visit from three ghosts on Christmas Eve will EVER transform him into anything but a rat king in a skin suit. But other people read the things he says and sometimes they might think, "Huh, I never thought about it like that. He makes some good points, actually." I don't push back to change his mind. I push back for the people reading at home, so they can see those "good points" are "not that," and then join me in a rousing chorus of "Matt Walsh is a hateful bunion," to the tune of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song.
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