DS, Let Me Explain The Whole Me-Not Wanting-A-Boy Thing.

Our start was rocky. I’ll admit that it was my fault. When I found out I was pregnant I immediately started manifesting that you would be a girl. I had a name, and I doodled it often inside of my notebook, because I read somewhere that if you wanted to make something true, it was best to write it down, look at it over and over again and believe it was going to come to pass. So naturally, when the doctor (who sensed my hesitation at finally knowing the truth) asked me if i was REALLY sure I wanted to know your sex, my heart sank to the bottom of my feet and it became very clear from the obvious dangling phallus on the ultrasound screen.

I cried.

No, I’m not proud of that either. I called your aunt and sobbed dramatically as she tried very hard to conceal her laughter and be supportive. After that, I moved to stage 2 of grief — anger. I was angry at everyone, angry that I couldn’t didn’t get what I wanted, angry that God was playing a cruel joke on me. Yes, I know it sounds ridiculous especially as in Nigeria, having a son is the ultimate “birthing achievement”. As you will find out when you are older, your mother is anything but typical.

Eventually, I accepted reality and moved on. You will never experience this, but, its very hard to ignore a pregnancy when it is happening to you. And when you were born, 9 days too late, and 10 ounces too big, it wasn’t really love at first sight. I was tired, I lost too much blood, I tore in places I shouldn’t mention, and I was in a world of pain like I never imagined. But you were here, and you weren’t going anywhere, and you were perfect, and I knew I would love you.

So fall in love with you I have; The way you open your big brown eyes in the morning and go from zero to a hundred, the way you always lift your little hand and touch my cheeks as if in wonder, the way you bury your face in my breasts and look so content, the way you know to cough to get my attention and unfortunately sometimes even puke, the way you are so curious about everything, your laugh, your cry, even your farts are wonderful to me. And the way you LOOK at me. You smell the sweetest, your hugs are the warmest and your kisses are the slimiest, and every day I cannot believe that I am so content with having a son that I do not secretly wish for a daughter.

I wonder about the kind of man you will grow up to be. It is no secret that I am not fond of the atrocities that women all over the world have suffered at the hands of your sex. I relished in the idea of raising a daughter that was going to be allowed to flout expectations in every way possible — if she so chose

I felt fully ready to raise a feminist daughter. I was going to handle her in a way my parents never did me; have candid open conversations with her about sex and femininity, teach her to be strong and confident, to not feel boxed in by gender expectations. I would have allowed her to be independent and taught her to trust her instincts. To know that autonomy was her right. She would have my unwavering support should she choose not to cave to the inevitable pressures — of marriage, of motherhood. To see her male counterparts as exactly what they were — her equals. That it was cool to be whatever the hell she chose to be, as long as it was her choice.

It may seem pretty obvious that all I have to do is raise you as I would have raised a daughter, but one cannot deny that there are unique challenges to raising a feminist son.

We are all, in varying percentages, made up of a balance of male and female. At some point along the way, as a man, you will almost be required, almost forced, to lose your femininity. It will be chipped away in different ways; for example, when people mock you for crying, or showing any sort of emotion that is considered “weak” but what they really mean is feminine. The message you will receive is the more “macho” you are, in other words, the more toxic your masculinity is, the more of a “man” you are. Traits like empathy and compassion will stop being a human requirement, and you will be lauded as a “sensitive” or “nice” guy if you exude them. You will receive special praise for doing things you ought to do anyway, and this will make you start to believe you are indeed different or special when you do those things. You will discover that by virtue of being born male, your world has been carefully curated in a way to help you succeed in some ways, but to fail in others. You will unfortunately be subject to the measure of your worth being linked to your financial standing. Every message you receive from every outlet will reassure you that sex is one of the basic male rights you are entitled to, and that you will be biologically and socially excused from mustering any modicum of self control or decency.

You will discover that by virtue of being born male, your world has been carefully curated in a way to help you succeed in some ways, but to fail in others

My wish is for you to have a desire to do better when you are presented with the temptations that your privilege will afford you. I do not want to ever look at you and not recognize the man that you become, the boy I hope to raise. I want you to want to be a man who learns respect for himself and for everyone else, irrespective of their race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality or gender. I want you to understand that people being different is not a threat to your person, but rather a challenge to learn something new about someone new. I want to raise you to understand the intense societal pressures that girls and women are under, so you learn how to listen, understand and become our ally. To have empathy for the fears and dangers of being different, of being something society deems to be abnormal or even immoral. To know that people the right to live freely as you, and to befriend and defend those who do not have the same privileges that you do.

I will teach you about consent; How to avoid crowding a person’s personal space like it is your right, and how you should not have to cajole or coerce any girl into doing things she is not quite ready to do, which biologically, you may or may not be ready to do, but socially, you may be being pushed to do. You must learn that anything but an emphatic yes is a no. You must learn to ask before you take, and understand that permission that has been granted can also be withdrawn.

I hope you will understand what real confidence is; not false bravado or insecurities masked by over-sexualization or material wealth, but a mastered sense of self that does not demand the payment of some sort of social tax to belong to any group of people.

You are already a very strong boy, but you should know, that strength should never be used to bully, threaten, overpower, intimidate or cause physical harm.

I want you to dismiss any notions of learned gender roles. Disregard the illogical thought process that there are things you should and should not do because you are male, and there are things women should and should not do because they are female. I hope you will come to realize that a lot of things you think may be gender-based advantages are ultimately disadvantages, as this will also make you desire a world that moves towards neutrality and equality.I hope your father and I will set a good example in helping invalidate some of these stereotypes, and that you will be exposed to many inspirational male and female heroes in real life, who are shattering glass ceilings and living deliberately outside the box.

I hope you will come to realize that a lot of things that you may think are gender-based advantages are ultimately disadvantages, as this will also make you desire a world that moves towards neutrality and equality.

I always wished I knew my parents better. I’d like to know who they really were before they became who they are now. What their dreams were growing up, why they made the choices they made, how they learned the things that they learned. I wish they would tell me unabridged stories of their teenage years, navigating the world as 20 somethings, how their lives changed as society did. So I greedily soak in any stories they share of their days, living in a much different time and in a different way, growing up in Benin City, Ibadan, Jos and Lagos. Sometimes, I find it hard to believe they were once just like me, young and trying to figure it all out, making stupid mistakes and wanting something else out of life.

By the time you are an adult, I hope the world will be a place in which some of my experiences and advice will also seem outdated and ridiculous due to leaps in the advancement in thoughts, and human interactions. It is important we continue to cut our teeth and shed our skin on issues surrounding race, culture, tradition, religion, equality and sexuality.

So it’s imperative that you know me; because many men do not know the women in their lives and grow to be disconnected from the female experience (then begin to renege when they have daughters, forgetting that the women they have interacted with are also other people’s daughters). I hope that by being as honest and transparent as I can, I may teach you to be the kind of man who is prepared to be in a new and diverse world where things are not so black and white or male and female. Maybe if you understand that you have a mother who refused to suffer the affliction of ‘womanhood’ and all the crosses that come with it, you will understand why I brought you up to demand your freedom to be, and to not feel threatened when others do the same. You will understand that control is a tool for weak minds and conditioning is something that begins so early that we passionately deny that we are conditioned to see, act and feel a certain way.

Above everything, I just want you to be good, kind, curious and open minded, because if you have these traits, other things will naturally follow.

I hope to write you a series of these letters like these over time, and save them for you to read when you are older. I cannot determine who you will become; I cannot discount for you having your own unique personality that will make you to receive or reject some of what I offer;

But I can try.

Love,

Mom.

Thank you for reading. Please share & clap if you enjoyed this, and follow me to read more of my work , and my “Dear Son” series.