Aibu to think my child is called a boy because of her race

[OnlyFoolsnMothers]

This may be petty to a few but this is really starting to get to me. I have mixed race daughters- and a mixed race niece- all of them have continually been mistaken for boys in their early years. It’s got to me more today as a woman approached me in a playgroup and apologised for calling my two year old a boy and said it was down to her clothes- light blue jeans and a cardigan with birds on it.
I don’t put her in dresses daily because we’re often in a park or soft play, but joggers and a T-shirt with a bunny or bird on it is pretty standard. I also see plenty of girls in leggings and jeans etc.

I’m now starting to think it’s unconscious racism- and it’s predominantly down to hair.
White/ Asian girls hair grows downwards. Black girls I know of have twists and plaits that are deemed “girly” hairstyles.

My daughters hair is in an Afro- it’s combed and oiled daily and well cared for but I don’t routinely plait it because it won’t hold.
My niece was always called a boy, and when her hair was corn rowed was called a boy.
Apparently if you don’t subscribe to the Caucasian aesthetic that makes you masculine.
Aibu?

For those who say, "it's just hair" this may help to enlighten:
www.law.com/international-edition/2021/10/28/black-hair-is-never-just-hair-a-closer-look-at-afro-discrimination-in-the-workplace/?slreturn=20221019153229

Sadly that's a locked article so I can't read it.

I absolutely know discrimination of afro and braided hair in the workplace is a real thing. But it's really not the same situation as the op. The fact is we do not know why the ops child was misgendered. Op and others have drawn their own conclusions, but the only person that may know is the person who misgendered.

Overreliance of clothing stereotypes
Overreliance of hair stereotypes
Overreliance of behavioural stereotypes
Assumption of size/comparing with own children
Not knowing and going for the option they think causes least offence (we know a boy being called a girl is considered an insult, a girl labelled a boy levelling up)

It could be any of those reasons, as illustrated by people on this thread. I know my own son is constantly misgendered in most of these ways because you can see patterns in hair, clothes, growth spurts, activities and how others react. But I could be wrong in my assessments.

Op cannot say whether or not it was racism because op cannot read the mind of the misgenderer.

And gotta say, I tend to veer towards boy rather than girl if I don't know just because parents who are invested in gender stereotypes who think you've just called their child a 'sissy boy' are scary.

I once had the misfortune to compliment a little boy on his manners and sharing. No misgendering, he was obviously kitted out boy. The venom I got from mother for commenting on him being lovely and gentle was baffling. Even more baffling was how he got to be that way when he obviously wasn't encouraged to. Must have just had a lovely natural temperament.

Honestly I don't think race has anything to do with it. I do think people see certain hairstyles on children and assume gender based on that alone. I don't believe it relates to racism , far more likely that it's sexism

I do get where you're coming from OP with the hair, especially if this has crossed into other little members of your family.
I'm a white woman and my white daughter was constantly called a boy because her hair just didnt grow. She was pretty bald until she got to around 2 and a half. Everyone would comment on what a handsome boy she was. I got bored of correcting them and just nodded and smiled.
I refused to put her in pink or frilly shite. She was always dressed in neutral tones with blues which apparently I shouldn't have done because with no hair you can't tell the sex 🙄

Also how gives a shit what gender some stranger thinks your child is, it happens all the time, if they thought they could touch your child’s hair now that would be unacceptable.

What this thread shows me is that as parents we are often quite self-indulgent about wanting to play dressing up with our babies to satisfy our creative urge and this extends to naming also. The very popular girl names often end in 'a' or 'y' and have gentle consonants. Boy names often have hard consonants and are brief and strong - sounding. Considering we are also committed, usually, to individual self-expression, I'm not sure that we think enough about what the child might want later, when growing up. I wonder whether if it matters whether our young children look like the sex they are not. Why is it that at this age - the baby stage - we are so invested in wanting our kids to be characteristic of a stereotype of anything?

Lots of mums have come on this thread to say that they and their kids have been mistaken for the opposite sex, and, therefore, isn't it likely that toddlers are androgenous? After all, nature doesn't intend sexual reproduction to happen until the teenage years at earliest and it is in readiness for that that the body starts to achieve its gender-specific curves and appendages.

In Victorian England, pink was the colour for boys and they always wore dresses until about the age of five and always wore long ringlets. Google Queen Victoria's family, or Robert Louis Stevenson, to see. I don't think it was supposed by society or those who shaped society's manners, that boys and girls did acquire different characteristics at that age. Boy toys and girl activities came later. I postulate that that trend was shaped by how nature works things.

I don't think that anyone wants to misgender a child, and the best thing to come out of this thread would be for everyone to just say - 'your child', not fumble around for the likeliest designation.

A lot of Indian families don’t cut boys hair until somewhere between 1-7. My son is constantly mistaken for a girl because he has long hair - despite wearing the most boyish outfits you can imagine.

I think the talk about long blonde hair and blue eyes being a feminine ideal is all nonsense. The Viking males were blond and masculine with flowing locks.

In surveys of males, brunettes with dark eyes usually come out as the most popular look and I would very much say that the most feted female beauties of our age happen to be those who combine the characteristics of an individual whose race is mixed or indeterminate: Maya Jamal; Vic Hope; Beyonce; Kim Kardashian; Rochelle Hume.

I think, as a white woman, that it is sad that if a Caucasian poster says something designed to reassure: 'It happened to me too', for instance, they get a host of replies saying what do you white people know about it; it's not the same for you.

I used to think that individuals were striving for understanding and recognition of the truth that we are all brothers and sisters under the skin and all of the one human race, but, since I've been on Mumsnet, I don't think this any more. I think saying things like ' a load of white people saying...' only shows me that there is this barrier that I, personally, would never ever be able to remove. Good intentions and empathy count for nothing at all, if the person trying to understand is Caucasian.

But @Diverseopinions - do you get that it’s sort of like a woman saying to a man, say, “I don’t like walking home alone, I feel scared”.

And then a man replying, “oh yes, me too - I know exactly how you feel.” …?

He’s being ‘empathetic’ and ‘understanding’. But he has no idea how it feels for a woman, and that no matter how scared he might feel, a woman - who has zero chance of taking an attacker on - will feel a whole different level of ‘scaredness’.

When a man tries to say he knows how it feels for us, it’s patronising. We know they have no real insight - because they can’t.

Good intentions and empathy count for nothing at all…

’The road to hell…’, as they say

And what are your good intentions with this comment then? The road to... heaven?

NurseBernard

I appreciate what you are explaining.

Is this thread one that the OP intended to be posted on a board dedicated to chat topics specifically relevant to black mumsnetters? ( I believe that there is one such board). If so, it would seem to be inappropriate for white posters to contradict the consensus and would, no doubt, come across, to some, as patronising.

The question posed by the OP was about whether race played a part in the misgendering of toddlers. It came across to me as wondering and speculating, rather than insisting. White posters are answering the question posed and saying that they don't think so, since it has happened, very frequently, to their white child, also.

I take on board the analogy about the man walking home alone, at night. However, I would say that I have listened with empathy when male friends and acquaintances of mine who are cab drivers have talked of having a constant worry, at the back of their minds, about a female passenger accusing them of sexual inappropriateness, a fear made worse by the fact that there are no cameras or evidence either way in the vehicle. ( I bet black can drivers appreciate the screen which separates them from the customer). I suppose that male teachers and teaching assistant are concerned about being accused of impropriety, since that happens more with men than women. So I think that men and women can have similar vulnerabilities - even though the cause of this vulnerability may be different.

I have never felt like telling one of these cab driver acquaintances that they are out of order for suggesting that women don't have a monopoly on vulnerability.

Drivers of black cab traditional taxis.

I know a number of mothers of girls who are in their late teens and early twenties, who are having difficulty with their mental health and discussing with their therapists issues to do with growing up and family expectations and feeling pressured. I am hearing it from the parent's perspective, so I am listening to the parent's impression that they are being blamed, retrospectively for everything, and all their good intentions and carefulnesses with choice of school, etc., are being thrown back in their face.

The relevance to this thread is that I think we do our children a disservice by wanting them to conform to gender stereotypes; wanting them, at a very young age, to be thought boyish or girlish. Shouldn't we a bit more laid back? It feels that concern about how an androgynous pre-schooler comes across is the start of feeling anxious and, possibly, the start of communicating to the child priorities and anxieties (from the family) about what they are achieving.

It is what it is, when strangers guess the wrong sex, and there isn't much you can do about their mistake - except model the idea, to everybody, of saying 'your child' rather than specifying the sex. How babies and children look bears little relationship to how they will look as adults. Wouldn't it be better if we accepted that males and females have a mixture of attributes and that being confident and happy to express themselves is what truly matters?