What Did She Say

Some days I think, “Yay humanity! We’ve evolved further than chickens!”

Then some days I lower my head and realize, nope. We are no better than chickens.

Have you ever heard the term “pecking order”? There’s a reason for that saying. Chickens pick on the ones they deem different or weak – whether it’s size or a deformity – and they peck them.  They gang up on the different ones and they peck them. Relentlessly. Sometimes to death.

I witnessed this first-hand as a young teen. We had a chickens and they picked on one in particular. We saved her, named her and she became our “pet chicken”. Belina had free-roam on our property. We drew the line at bringing her indoors, but she had much more freedom than her oppressors. In fact, when they became “hens of a certain age” and were no longer producing eggs regularly, they were send to Campbell’s soup.

All except one.

Belina.

Belina died of natural causes. She lived a good life.

But, I digress…

How have we not evolved beyond chickens?

How have we, with our empathic, compassionate, loving minds, not evolved any further than chickens?!

Our society still bullies/pecks those who are deemed different in any way. And I’m not just talking children here. In fact, a lot of the time, it’s not the kids who have the issues.

Why can’t we get past what we feel is acceptable and ‘normal’ and embrace differences?

Over 35 years ago Free to Be… You and Me was released and it has a wonderful message. You be whoever you are and we will love you for it.

That was almost four decades ago. Have we come any further? I’m not sure that we have. I’m kinda thinking we’ve regressed a bit. And I’m not the only one.

Kids are still bullied to death. All those suicides, really, are murder. How can one human being drive another human being to the point of wanting to die rather than face another minute of torment?

Why must we force people to fit into boxes so WE are comfortable?  True change and growth comes from being uncomfortable, yet we ridicule and punish those who challenge our thinking.

I love this song from Free to Be… You and Me. William’s Doll. It’s perfect. And it’s message, unfortunately, is still timely. I’ve heard parents worried, seriously worried, that their ONE year old boy is playing with dolls. There are so many issues with that I don’t know where to begin.

I don’t know if I could do what a Toronto couple is doing. They are keeping their third child’s gender from being broadcast. It’s not necessarily a secret, per se, but they’re not telling the world Storm’s gender, either. Their two other children both know – as do the midwives and a close family friend – but other than that, no one else knows. Not even Storm’s grandparents. They are also giving their other two children the freedom to dress, play with and keep their hair however they would like. And they are getting lambasted in the media. The comments they are getting are sometimes quite hateful in nature. I think we need to look at WHY. Why are they being attacked? I believe it takes strong people such as Witterick and Stocker to help bring change.

And we need change.

My daughter has a love of dinosaurs. She has since she was one. It’s never wavered. And I love she has a passion. She has closet full of dinosaur t-shirts. (Of course, I had to shop in the “boys” section, because where else would you find dinosaurs…?) And she used to wear them with pride. On her first day of Kindergarten she wore a dark blue dinosaur shirt “so all my new kid friends will know I like dinosaurs.”

Guess how many of those shirts she’ll wear now?

One. Because it’s pink. Because it’s “ok” for her to wear that one. I’m sad that she feels that way. That she thinks it’s ok for her to wear some things, but not others. That the shirts she previously loved and lived in on a daily basis now hang, unused, in her closet. It makes me sad. It makes me sad for the once-loved shirts. It makes me sad for my daughter. It makes me sad for our society.

The shirts are now seeing some love again, as my son has grown into them. But he doesn’t have as much of a love of dinosaurs as Baby Girl does.

When I hear someone complaining a pregnant woman is not revealing the baby’s sex and that, “How will I know what to buy?” I think, really? How caught up on gender are we?

Every day my husband and I make conscious choices about the words we use and have to fight against this wave of conformity. We try not to lump things into “girl things” and “boy things”.

The Boy and I were at McDonald’s one day and the cashier was showing him the choice of toys. She held the toys for him to see and then said, “Oh, you don’t want this one. It’s a girly toy.” I think she realized her words and saw my mouth slightly agape at the same time and ended up giving my son both the “girl” toy and the “boy” toy.

Every day we are bombarded with messages about what box a boy needs to fit into and what box a girl needs to fit into.

There are people that don’t fit these boxes.

There are people that take comfort in these boxes.

There are people that abhor these boxes.

There are people that will fight to the death to hold onto these boxes.

And there are people who will peck someone to death if he or she doesn’t conform to our vision of these boxes.

Can we make a conscious effort to rise above the chickens? Please?