Raising a Son

            This post can relate to my previous post in that it talks about raising children. However, I'm going to talk exclusively about raising a son. Jess Wells talked about the advantages of lesbians raising sons. There are multiple. These include sensitivity, nonviolence, strong feminist concepts, and self-sufficiency. These are wonderful but I disagree with her statements that only sons raised in lesbian households are taught these traits.

            My brother was raised in a patriarchal household and is extremely self-sufficient, sensitive, and nonviolent. He can bake (very well I might add) as well as hammer a nail. My dad does nearly all of the cooking in our house. If anything, don't even bother trying to get my stepmom to cook because it will come out horrible.

I think Wells uses her own stereotypes in saying that boys raised in patriarchal households cannot have the traits she listed. While she argues for teaching sons the equality of people, she herself sets up a stereotype that I have firsthand experience does not always exist. Stereotypes in essence are saying that people are not equal. Perhaps she needs to lift the veil some more and see that sons don't have to be raised by lesbians to have feminist qualities.