Gender Calculus

“I want to paint my room pink,” announces my daughter. I cringe.

My daughter’s bedroom is painted green. When she was little, we avoided Easy Bake Ovens in favor of chemistry sets and recipes for goop, glop and flubber. We dressed her in both her male and female cousins’ hand-me-downs. We encouraged her to hunt for bugs and to get muddy. We earnestly coupled every comment on her looks with praise for how smart she was. And, although she was still just a toddler, we developed damage-control strategies for the inevitable day when she would be given a Barbie Doll for her birthday or Christmas.

I was, after all, born in 1963: the year Russia put the first woman into space, Congress voted to guarantee women equal pay for equal work, Martin Luther King Jr. made his “I have a dream” speech, and Betty Friedan ushered in a new wave of feminism with the publication of The Feminine Mystique.

So I will confess to you now that I took a certain amount of smug, feminist pride in the fact that my toddler randomly assigned gender pronouns to the people we met. She would call men “she,” women “he” and there seemed to be no rule governing the application of “his” or “hers.” I felt proud that gender categories didn’t seem to matter to her, that she didn’t seem to get caught up in how boys or girls, men or women were “supposed” to behave or look. “Hah! Take that Patriarchal Hegemonic Order!” I thought to myself, “We can raise children without caving to preconceived gender constructs!”

And while I congratulated myself on my enlightened parenting, other adults would gently correct Eliza, explaining in simple toddler terms that they were either male or female, him or her. Depending on their age, children were less gentle when they corrected her, often punctuating their points by yelling, hitting, or refusing to play anymore. Usually, I just let her errors go unless I could see that the other person was upset, in which case I would gently supply the correct gender pronoun. It’s not that I wanted my child to be a social misfit; it’s just that I assumed that it was inevitable that as she got a little older she would sort it out.

But years passed and all the correcting, guiding, and prodding had no effect; Eliza did not sort it out. What I had attributed to my brilliant gender-neutral parenting, was in fact my child’s Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Autism Spectrum Disorders, including such things as Asperger Syndrome, Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS), and High-Functioning Autism, currently affect 1 in 110 children in the United States, and rates are rising. In my own state of Oregon, rates have been estimated to be as high as 1 in 87 children.

And now, with an 8 year-old daughter, I find myself in the humbling position of trying to teach my child to assign genders to the people she meets based upon the very gender stereotypes I had tried so hard to avoid during her baby and toddler years.

Gender is what social scientists call a “master status trait,” meaning that gender is key to determining how we act and react to each other socially. When we meet a stranger we very quickly and unconsciously evaluate that person and assign “it” certain master status traits, including a gender. Most of the time, we are completely unaware that we are even performing this sort of social reconnaissance until we encounter a person who, for whatever reason, we cannot categorize. Remember “Pat” from Saturday Night Live or your own discomfort the last time you encountered an ambiguously gendered person?

For my daughter, and many children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, every encounter requires that she consciously and deliberately determine the gender of the person she is speaking with. And it is harder than you would think because all of our decision-making rules have exceptions, caveats and loop holes. Long hair = girl? Obviously that rule will not satisfy. Big = boy? Again, imperfect. Facial hair = boy? Equally problematic -- especially when we are talking about 8 year-olds. Make-up = girl? Her own mother doesn’t own any. It’s worse than when you had to memorize irregular verb conjugations in French class. With each new encounter, Eliza has to actively and consciously perform an elaborate calculus to determine the gender of the person she is speaking with and then she has to test her conclusion to see if she has gotten it right or wrong.


She gets it wrong a lot. And now that Eliza is older, adults are offended by her gender mis-assignments. Men do not find it cute to be called “she” by a child they believe should know better, and often respond by teasingly referring to Eliza as boy, which leaves her completely befuddled. Women tend to take her mis-labeling as commentary on their appearance – thinking that they must be looking somehow “mannish” that day. When Eliza directly asked her female, but tall, thin, and short-haired pediatrician, “Are you a man or woman?” the doctor looked at me and asked, “She’s joking, right?” She wasn’t.

And it doesn’t stop at gender assignments. All day, every day we all base our social interactions on subtle cues, gestures and innuendo that are completely lost on my daughter. The “social and communication challenges” that came with her diagnosis don’t just mean – as I had initially thought – that she is bad at small talk and a disaster at parties, though she is these things too. What it means is that she needs all the small social rules of behavior spelled out explicitly and logically.

This would be okay, except that our “rules” defy logic. Let’s take body parts for example. There is, in fact, one pretty efficient way to determine the gender of the person with whom you are speaking but, as Eliza now knows, checking for a penis will get you suspended from school. But just try to explain why that is to an 8 year-old using logic and rational thought:

Me: “We don’t look at or touch other people’s private parts.”
Her: “Why not?”
Me: “It’s just a social rule.”
Her: “We don’t ever look at other people’s private parts?”
Me: “Well, no, kids don’t. Grown-ups sometimes do, and movies do, and advertisers do, but we don’t do it at school.”
Her: “Which parts are private parts?”
Me: “Anything that your swimsuit covers.”
Her: “The part of my shoulder that is under the strap is a private part?”
Me: “No, not that part.”
Her: “Boys don’t have tops to their swimsuits.”
Me: “Right.”
Her: “What is the difference between their top and mine?”
Me. “Nothing. But someday you will have breasts and they are a private part.”
Her: “But can I take my shirt off now?”
Me: “No.”
Her: “Why not?”
Me: “I have no idea.”

Every parent of a 3 year-old is used to the “why” phase, but for most parents it passes in a few months or a year. For our family, it is a way of life. All parents have to teach their children the rules of polite, social behavior. Every time a mother exclaims “Gross – that was a stinker – get outta here,” in response to her child’s gas, she is giving a little lesson in social acceptability. But such subtle lessons are completely lost on many kids with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). So, it is the deliberateness and intentionality with which lessons are taught that sets mothering ASD kids apart.

Sometimes Eliza’s inability to pick up on social rules is funny. For example, for years my husband and I have been engaged in a full-on assault to try to get Eliza to use silverware; we scold, we correct, we cajole, we bribe. If she so much as touches her fork, even if it is an accidental grazing while her hand is on its way to her plate, we heap on the praise. And yet, it makes little sense to any of us. Sure, if you have soup, you need a spoon, but since Eliza’s New Year’s resolution to eat soup disintegrated with her first sip of chicken noodle, soup spoons rarely grace the table in our house. For solid food, fingers really do a pretty good job. What’s more, if you use your fingers, you don’t have to wash the silverware afterwards, making eating with your hands the green and sustainable choice. Most of us already eat some things with our hands – sandwiches, chips, hotdogs -- what rule governs whether something is to be eaten with hands or with silverware?

We sit in a restaurant and Eliza is delivered a plate containing scrambled eggs and toast. She stares at the plate, and then reaches for the toast with her hand. Everything seems to be going well until she uses that same hand to reach for the eggs and I stop her. How do I know that it is okay to use hands for the toast but not for the egg? And would I have let her eat the toast with her hands if the egg was on top of the toast instead of next to it? “If the toast is cut in triangles and is balanced on the side of the plate, you can eat it with your hands; everything else gets a fork,” I offer as a guiding principle. We are feeling good about this new rule and going back to eating just as the waitress drops of a small plate with our side dish: two pieces of bacon.

Sometimes Eliza’s inability to distinguish social cues is heart breaking, like the time she introduced me to her “friends” on the playground, the trio of 8th grade girls who a few weeks ago told her to say “fuck” in class because it would make the other kids laugh. These same “friends” had gotten Eliza suspended just the week before by suggesting that she pull her pants down in front of her teachers. Because they talk with her, Eliza thinks they are her friends. Because they are bigger, older, she assumes that they are taking care of her. When kids in class laugh at her, she thinks they are all having fun together and are friends. “It’s good to make kids laugh, Mama,” she tells me when I ask her why she pulled her pants down in class. “When they laugh they are happy and I like to make them happy,” she explains simply. And, of course, she is right: they were happy, and potty talk and naked butts can be funny – just ask Howard Stern.

When I try to explain that the older girls are being mean to her, she assures me that they are her friends because they talk with her on recess. True enough -- friends are people who talk with you and if a person will not talk with you, it’s a good bet that person is not your friend. But these, albeit talkative, girls are not her friends. So what rule can I give to a little girl unable to understand complexities like jealousy, arrogance, insecurity, or cruelty?

The school of course has a very clear rule: pull your pants down in class and you get suspended. But even the school acknowledges that preventing an autistic child from going to math class does nothing to teach her to avoid being manipulated by others, or even to keep her pants up.

Sometimes Eliza’s social disability is extraordinarily frustrating. As a 46 year-old adult woman, I spend a good portion of my mental energy trying to get over my self-consciousness, embarrassment, and need to be accepted and liked. Yet, now I must try to instill this very same sense of self-consciousness, embarrassment and shame into my daughter. Because when our mothers told us to “just be ourselves,” they only sort of meant it. Every time Eliza farts in public or at the dinner table, I tell her that she needs to say “excuse me” and that people find farting embarrassing. She asks me why it is embarrassing, since she knows from her science encyclopedia that she will, in fact, die if she doesn’t pass gas, and everyone does it:

Me: “Right. We just pretend that we don’t fart and we try to only fart in private.”
Her: “Why?”
Me: “So we don’t make people feel uncomfortable or embarrassed.”
Her: “But they do it too, right?”
Me: “Right.”
Her: “But I don’t feel embarrassed”.
Me: “I know, but people expect you to pretend that you feel embarrassed.”
Her: “Okay, Mama. Am I blushing?”

To be fair, there is a certain liberty in living without embarrassment. Imagine how different your life might be if you didn’t worry about what other people thought of you. Eliza will never feel the same pressure to conform that her neuro-typical peers feel. But she will also never understand why she is consequently treated with such scorn, hostility and cruelty. She is hurt by unkindness, but at a loss as to how to prevent it.

I am a college professor and a typically decisive and directed person. But when it comes to my daughter’s inability to read gender cues, I find myself ambivalent and lost. At what point is freedom from embarrassment the same thing as complete social isolation? As mothers, what is the social contract we make with regard to socializing our children? Should I tell my daughter to “just be herself” when I know full well that this will lead to pain and suffering? Emotionally, I am not prepared to do this to her. But is it my responsibility as a parent to try to make her into someone she is not so that she will better fit into society, even if I object to the limitations, inequities and stereotypes that social system embodies?

So when Eliza tells me that she wants to paint her room pink, it is because she has read that girls like the color pink, and she is making an unaccustomed effort to follow what she understands to be the social rule. Up until now, she has always said that her favorite color is blue. And while I agree to paint her room, I honestly don’t know if I should be happy or sad.