What a great, old thread. Thanks for pointing it out, Greenie. (Think I'll call you that, too.)
Now get ready for a bunch of words...
I was raised in a fairly traditional, extremely overprotective household. I'm the youngest of three, and my two older brothers seemed to have so many more privileges than I did. They could play outside without supervision, stay out later and drive cars while I did none of that until much later, our ages being relative. This had less to do with chauvanism than it did fear that I would somehow be hurt if I did any of those things. Being an extremely shy, introverted child to begin with, this overprotectiveness certainly delayed my social and emotional growth. As a result, I grew up being fearful as well. I was a Brownie for all of five minutes and never tried to become a Girl Scout because I was afraid to socialize with the others. I visited my brothers at Boy Scout summer camp rather than attend a summer camp myself. I was content simply to do well in school, which I did. Period. I was not an unattractive kid, but I didn't date. I didn't attend my prom, despite being asked (albeit, by a geeky guy from my physics class). I didn't get my driver's license until much, much later in life, though that's also, in part, attributable to the fact that I didn't need to, living in NYC. I didn't move out of my parents' home until...well, let's just say it was way, way too late. I didn’t leave the house to get married, as both my brothers did. I just left. Finally. It wasn't until my very late teens/early 20's that I started to rebel. In a sense, I still am.
Somehow, though, I managed to become fiercely independent, if not always capably so. I rarely want anyone’s help, male or female. There was a hint of that in me as a kid, as I would often refuse to allow my mother, a high school English teacher, to assist me with any of my projects the way she would her own students. In more recent years, when I finally learned to drive (a stick, no less) and bought my first car (an old ’79 Jeep CJ-7), I learned to change my own oil, rotor, sparkplugs, even installed new seatbelts and a fan. This is something neither of my brothers ever bothered to do as my father was not a grease monkey by any means. I became quite handy, in fact, doing such useful things as chainsawing trees, building fires, tilling soil and creating a successful vegetable garden, building birdhouses, shooting guns (accurately, I might add), etc. When I moved back to the city after a short stint upstate, I did it entirely by myself, driving a 14’ truck to Queens and assembling all the furniture myself. This is stuff my folks would never have dreamed of teaching me, in part, because they didn’t do these things themselves. I’m a bit of an anomaly in my family. The one stereotypically female thing I’ve always enjoyed and excelled at is cooking.
As for letting guys open doors for me...I allow it, but didn’t always. I wouldn’t get angry about it, but I preferred to do it myself. I believe in being polite to people, regardless of their gender, so I hold open doors for everyone. I’ve also always been unnaturally strong for someone my size, so I can lift and carry just about anything myself. The only time I can recall this being an issue was when I took a computer hardware course a couple of years ago and the instructor – a guy I happened to find attractive – was dumbfounded when I told him I had no problem carrying monitors and getting my hands and knees dirty by wiring things under the desk. I insist on doing these things myself, not because I’m a raging feminist (which I’m not), but because I just like doing that sort of thing. A recurring joke for me over the past few years has been to say that I enjoy heavy lifting, and I do! My little nieces and nephews even like to kid that I have the strength of ten men. They’ve witnessed it.
Bottom line: let boys and girls do what they would do naturally, but encourage them to pursue what might still be perceived as non-traditional activities for their gender. They will be better served for it.
