11 month old Joshua and i greatly enjoy doing a Sainsbury's shop together. we discuss what we need to get from the shopping list in my head. Or rather I talk as i wheel him around in the trolley and he sits there gurgling and smiling sweetly at anyone whose eye he can catch. At the checkout, as I tried to fish out my credit card, the lady caught his eye, he smiled and giggled and she said " what a gorgeous little girl".
er..he's a boy said I. She corrected herself and repeated "what a gorgeous little boy " several times just to make sure I realised that she realised that my son and heir is not a girl. The problem, of course, is that the Mrs insisted on dressing him that morning in dungarees with thin red and white stripes. The stripes are so thin that your first impression is that his dungarees are pink. So he's a girl right?
It is not just the pink it is the dungarees. Sure Kevin Rowland from Dexy's wore them as do male folks in the Waltons but I associate them with my sisters and the other little girls at my grandparent's Prep School Knighton House or with Bananarama or with rather butch female protesters at Greenham Common. The Mrs has a pair but they are rather fetching, as of course, were Banaarama. But overall, Dungarees are clearly for girls and so is pink. I am not bringing up my son to have options about whether he wants to identify as a boy or a girl, he is a boy full stop.
And so, on our return from the shops, we played with his soft football while watching a word at war video. And I am trying to explain to the Mrs that I'd rather not have a trans baby with gender confusion issues. Its time to buy him some toy guns and more blue trousers methinks.