Feminist Family Christmas: Part One
A few snapshots of different sorts of feminists, their families and the festive season. I’m fortunate to have lots of lovely people in my circle, many of whom identify as feminists, and I was interested in what their Christmases looked like.
So, are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s begin.
TELL ME A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF.
My name is Phopey and I am a 37-year-old black lesbian CP’d (Civil Partnership) mother. I have a keen interest in politics: I wanted to be an MP but am re-evaluating that, I think I can be more of an agitator on local level! My pet subject at the moment is healthcare but it used to be education. I participate in healthcare consultancy in three boroughs – any I can get into, I go. I’m learning. I want to understand the policies on a local level, rather than having a whip telling me what to do.
WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS AT CHRISTMAS?
I’ve got church on Christmas Eve, I work with a youth group at my church. We’re doing a modern nativity where carols will be rapped *laughter*. After service we will drive to my partner’s family and we spend Christmas with them.
WHAT HAVE YOU BOUGHT?
It’s a tough time. Everything you see is sickly and exaggerated. And so expensive! The essence of what Christmas is about, love and giving, is lost. I made my daughter make Christmas cards this year for friends and family.
When I thought about books, she had to have books – I don’t understand those children who just have toys. My daughter has her own books on a shelf in the lounge, at her eye level. So if I want a book for her, I have to bend down. It’s about language and communicating at her level, not mine. Right now, the important things are about her adjusting to what her world is like, but to be a successful person.
I’ve got a book about two gay swans who fall in love, I’ve got another that’s about a girl who is mixed race and brought up by her grandmother so she can understand different family make-ups. I have got one princess book but it’s about a pig that’s doing ballet. My absolute favourite is about God, but God is a woman it’s called Big Mamas love.
HOW DO YOU BUY TOYS?
I start from an educational basis. When I needed her to understand colour, I bought a psychedelic toy. I like toys to be natural and sustainable, I hate plastic toys. If possible someone has given them to us, I like them to have that spirit of love. That’s important to me. Every toy I get is about stretching her skills: it’s not about something that she can do already.
I have got her a dolls house, but I haven’t got traditional figures in it. My partner’s father made it and we chose the colours for the rooms together. She has a Sindy doll that lives in there, called Princess. Her Russian princess doll lives in there as well. The figures that live in there are non-traditional. She doesn’t own mum and dad dolls.
I don’t do Lego – I don’t understand why children build something to destroy it – if someone has any thoughts on that let me know! *laughs* I don’t do baby dolls and prams. That is the oldest game in the world – the oldest toy in the world is a baby doll. The first game a child plays is to roleplay their mother. Says a lot about our responsibility, if the mother gets it wrong, that’s diabolical.
DO YOU FEEL A LOT OF RESPONSIBILITY?
Yes, my daughter is my partner’s egg. My partner is blonde with blue eyes. The donor is American Indian and Black American mix, born from me – a Black African woman. Whoa, have I got responsibility! *laughs* I chose that. Because I’m me, because I had the choice, and the dilemma was I wanted my wife’s child. I’d have to get donor sperm anyway. I watched a programme about surrogates and thought we could do that without giving the child back. We went to Harley Street and a very expensive time later she was born. I’ve got to make sure that everything around her is ordinary but unique.
WHAT PRESSURES HAVE YOU FELT?
I felt the pressure to normalise. I gave in to society’s pressure that she’s meant to eat all these sweet disgusting things. For the first two years she only ate things I made. I’ve also had people pressure me to not tell her how she was made: that she was such a mix. Because of British law, my partner had to formally adopt her, I have the rights over her, because I gave birth. Which is obviously an emotional trauma for my wife. Any legal moment I have to hand over my rights as a mother. But that’s changing, trust me!
WHAT IS YOUR OPINION ON TOYS FOR GIRLS?
Everything is pretty and plastic! In our society we’re all about facade, so toys are about that. Even baby dolls have designer Gap prams! None of the toys really build on that. It’s why I’m bringing her up Christian, I want her to have a sense of spirit and thinking about herself and consequences. The impact her actions have on people. I don’t think there’s any other way I can do that.
I *adored* Lego as a kid. “build something to destroy it” is, I think, looking at it the wrong way around. I didn’t build to destroy, I destroyed in order to build. I never wanted to take down the things I built – even 20 years later, I can still recall some of the things I built, and the games I played with them – but I had only so many pieces, and there were new things to build, and new games to play.
I could trace an absolutely massive influence for the better that playing with Lego had on my life, both professionally and creatively. It’d be fairly spurious, obviously – no one thing is responsible for the way people turn out – but it taught me about building from my imagination, about cooperation, when to follow the manual and when to deviate from it etc etc.
Lego is something I’d buy kids in preference to almost any other toy, now I think about it. A lot of the licensed/promoted sets are a bit gendered, but you can buy absolutely gender free boxes of bricks, and even within the more gendered stuff, the joy of Lego is that it’s more fun when you ignore the gendered instructions, and build whatever the hell is in your imagination.
I’m not sure why anyone would leap to seeing Lego as a destructive thing. It’s a reconfigurable geometric imagination tool. I don’t even see why the putting together needs to be any more ‘right’ than the taking apart. It’s Lego, not symbolism. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
For what it’s worth, most of my engineer friends seem to directly attribute their emerging mechanical adeptness and intuitive understanding of how things fit together to exposure to toys like Lego, Meccano, K’Nex.
Lego is the best learning toy ever, you can build anything you can imagine with it. Then you can take it apart and build the next thing you imagine. It’s the building that’s important, taking the thing apart is just preparing for the next time you play with it.
As adults, we make things, build things, create things, and the experience we had as children with Lego means that we understand how to build and create. Lego lets you build something, understand why it does or doesn’t stand up, work or make the right shape and helps you learn.
I agree – I loved my Duplo and Lego sets.
The only time I was ever aware of gender issues in my late 80s-early 90s Lego enjoyment was when I was given a pirate set with a ladypirate figure, who had a lipstick-print mouth and a “wenchier” outfit. There was only ever one of her in the set, and she was always listed on the contents leaflet as basically “the female one” (the others being simply “Pirate” – as in history, where women pirates existed but were certainly something of an anomaly, so in Lego, I suppose!). I used to wish she had some friends, but I remember being quite gratified that she was there.
I had this one; this appears to be a more recent version.
I used to swap the heads and bodies around so that the ladies got to wear the Captain’s costume! :)
But yeah, I’m a huge fan of Lego. What I find really disturbing is the way that some toystores at the moment seem to position the Lego in “boys'” areas. Lego is for everyone!