What are you?

"What are you?"  This is the question I asked my 5 year old daughter the other day.  As I expected, she answered, "A girl."  Even as I expected this answer, it bothered me.  My daughter identifies most strongly as her gender.  She does not immediately identify as human.  Gender exists among nearly all animal species on Earth (with a few exceptions).  My daughter identified herself as part of a group that comprises almost half of all animals.  She could have identified as human, which is much more specific.  She could have identified by her surname, which is even more narrow.  It bothered me (mildly) that she identifies herself first as female.

I suspect this is a result of language.  Boys are "he," and girls are "she" in English.  There is no singular neutral pronoun.  The consequence of this is that children learn very young that gender identity is essential to communication.  Now, I am not saying this is bad, though it is especially problematic to writers, who feel forced to either use very bad grammar (using "they" or "their" as a singular pronoun") or use ugly constructs like "he/she" or "his or her."  I am glad that my daughter identifies as female, because she is female.  I do not, however, feel comfortable that she identifies as female before anything else.

My daughter is 5 years old.  This is a difficult age, because she does not know what she wants to do with her life.  I am in my 30s, and my response to the question I posed to her might be "a computer scientist," "a video game developer," or any number of other things that I qualify as (maybe "a father" or "a husband" would be the most appropriate answers, though I might even say "a child of God" depending on my mood).  At 5 years old, it is pretty unusual to have enough experience in anything to identify yourself as a practitioner of that thing.  I suppose she could have said, "a kid," but that is even worse than "a girl," because it is transient, while gender is permanent (yes, we have procedures to change that, but none of them can change genetic gender).

As I said before, it only bothers me mildly that she identifies first as female (when I asked her again, she said "I don't know," which I am more comfortable with).  I think that identifying as a specific gender is healthy and important.  It is also good that she recognizes her gender, because gender is important in our culture (admittedly, even when it sometimes should not be).  Identifying with her gender is important to success, however, I think it would be better for her to identify as gender only after something else.  Maybe she could identify as a hard worker first.  That is definitely useful.  She might identify as being very intelligent and a good problem solver.  I would especially support this one.

While I think that gender is an essential trait, I do not think that is enough to justify it as a primary identifier.  Gender is something we have no control over.  I think it would be better to identify as something which we have control over.  I don't go around telling people this, but I am highly intelligent.  I do not believe that this is an accident.  Maybe I did get some genetic luck that is helping, but I choose to study things and do things that will make me smarter and better educated.  I know people who are genetically gifted but are still ultimately pretty dumb, because they do not choose to be smart (I know a guy with an IQ around 140 who is a deadbeat druggie with very little education, by choice).  On the other hand, while I do identify as male (secondary to many other things), I do not identify as "a man."  This is because, whenever I hear the phrase "be a man," it is typically said by someone who swears, drinks, and is rude and disrespectful to other people.  If that is a man, I am certainly not one.  I am genetically male though, so I do identify as male.  (Note that I do not "hang out with the guys," and nearly my entire life, I have had more female friends than male friends.  I tend to view men as jerks until the prove otherwise.)

What am I going to do about this?  Perhaps nothing.  In my experience, leading by example is far more effective, where it is possible.  I hope my daughter sees me identifying as many things beyond my gender.  I will probably tell her, at some point, that people who do science are scientists, and people who do electronics are electrical engineers, and so on.  I won't do this to convince her to identify as something other than her gender though.  I'll do this in the natural progression of teaching her, and I would have done it even if I had not had this experience.  Ultimately, I think that she will learn that she can choose what she wants to be and then identify as whatever that is.  What does bother me is that many parents encourage their children to identify as their gender.  I suspect much of the sexism and gender discrimination in our society (both ways) stem from people who identify as their gender before anything else.