Lindsay King-Miller recently wrote a wonderful piece for website Into, in which she seeks to "interrogate femmephobia as a queer parent". King-Miller co-parents her child with her genderqueer partner, and is evidently conscious of challenging stereotypes where she sees them. However, she admits to feeling a frisson of relief and even pride when her daughter gravitates more toward playing with dinosaurs than she does princesses. This bothers her, she writes, because she recognises it stems from her own internalised femmephobia. Loading “We live in an intensely femmephobic culture, in a world that derides anything linked to girlhood or womanhood as embarrassing, trivial, silly... On some level, I still see my femininity as a little bit of weakness, and I’m afraid of passing it on to my child.” This derision for femininity isn’t created by those who exhibit it, but by the world we live in: one that is patriarchal, but also transphobic and homophobic.

King-Miller points to the double bind in particular that reinforces cissexist (discriminatory against transgender people) ideas of feminine expression in girls. “Femininity is required but derided,” she writes. “Masculinity is vaunted but off-limits.” One of the most obvious examples of how casually held this derisive view of femininity is can be seen in the way the phrase "like a girl" is often added as an insulting descriptor for things. You run like a girl, you play like a girl, you hit like a girl – all of these things denote weakness and insufficiency. To exhibit things that align you with femininity, is to admit some kind of fault within yourself. Is it any wonder that some of us who recognise this double bind want to protect our children from it, even when it’s clear to us that we’re reinforcing sexist values? Still, I've long resented that "femininity" in children – and girls especially – is seen as basic and unevolved. Gender neutral clothing in a lot of people's minds so often means "girls can wear boys clothes" rather than all clothes will be considered appropriate sources of expression for all people. As King-Miller observes, “Femininity is so marked, so alternately fetishised and degraded, that it’s almost never considered neutral… Genderless clothing could mean comfy sweats or tailored suits, but it seldom means a tasteful pencil skirt.”

When I was a girl, I loved everything considered "traditionally feminine". I had mountains of Barbie dolls, clothes and sparkly things. I even slept in a pink room. I never understood what the appeal of trucks were, but I have met all too many women who offer their historical preference for this kind of toy with a barely concealed thread of pride, as if it distinguishes them somehow from a class of people who are otherwise understood to be sub-par. Rejecting the more derided elements of femininity – pink, dolls and "vanity", for example – is one of the ways women learn they can potentially shield themselves from the impact of sexism. Loading To be a conventionally hot woman (because this only works if you still conform to the aesthetic expectations of a woman’s "natural beauty") who views herself really more like "one of the guys" is to win the jackpot of superficiality. To be "like a girl" is to be deficient in some way. But to be like a guy… well, that’s just like getting a promotion. I am facing many of the same questions as King-Miller, except that in our home we’re raising a son. I want him to see feminine expression as something just as valid and beautiful as masculine expression, and to know that it is just as available to him as the things outside society will seek to reduce him to. That he is just as entitled to wear the tasteful pencil skirt as he is the pants, and that this can mean as much or as little as he chooses it to.