What's a Gender Blender?

That was the question Crabkid asked me that this morning en route to school, as a winsome gender-neutral radio voice announced "Gender Blender!" a new show focused on helping gay and bisexual and polysexual and transsexual kids bump up their self-esteem. I thought I was on NPR until I realized I'd switched away from talk radio yesterday during a squabble with Crabkid, and had instead dialed into a local station whose African drumming music had drowned out the back seat back chat wonderfully well.

Returning to the gender blender question: I like to think I'm supremely tolerant and broad-minded but if anything is a yardstick for your truest values, it's parenthood. And while I tell myself I will be quite fine with any gender blending my child might one day be drawn to here in the epicenter of liberalism, the fact is I think I'm really only just capable of surviving lesbianism or bisexuality (the Lindsay Lohan sort please, with lipstick involved) and even then the concept of a lesbian/bisexual daughter gives me a slight vasovagal feeling, which is a cardiological term for feeling faint. If Crabkid starts walking around in a breast-binding shirt, shaves her head and listens to whatever future equivalent there is to Ani di Franco, I'll have to join a support group. And if Crabkid one day wants to be a full-on gender-blended Thomas Beattie, it may be too much for my socialized Victorian ways, ways inculcated in me by growing up South African during the 1980s, which in American years is like being a child in the 1930s. Seriously, in the land where races couldn't even blend, gender blending wasn't even a faint notion on the horizon. There were no gay people ever in South Africa when I lived there, not a single one. And the ones declaring themselves queer now? As far as I'm concerned it's just a phase they'll grow out of. (Cousin Paul, are you listening? SNAP OUT OF IT!)

So...what is it that makes me cool with the concept of a gay male child but uncomfortable with the idea of a lesbian/gender-blending daughter? I understand and relate to homosexuality and bisexuality on a conceptual level and as an atheist have zero religious or otherwise ideological issues with any of it. I can even see how I am just an unevolved human who has not allowed herself to branch out on the great sexual continuum because of my background and upbringing and a certain prudishness that is nothing to be valued.

Still, I'm not digging the possibility of a lezbo daughter even if some of my best friends are lesbians! Yup, we're all tolerant until we're proven hypocrites.

Crabkid, if you're older and you're reading this and you are by some chance gender blending, just remember that Mom loves you no matter what, but she's just a bit hysterical over that macho key chain thing hanging off the back of your flubby man-jeans. She'll get over it, but you have to give the dinosaur time.

Back to this morning, when my 4-year-old asked me "What's a gender blender?" my mind raced ahead to the many uncomfortable questions parents have to face whether they're ready for them or not. But obviously a 4-year-old doesn't need to know that Mom finds the question tricky. What she needed was a simple answer, so I told her the truth, which is to say I told her the first thing that came out of my mouth and that I thought sounded convincing:

"A gender blender is a very special type of coffee machine."

p.s. If you missed it, big competition happening this month with major cashmere involved!