"And she still wants to wear a dress...."

I am about to tell you a story, a true story. You may not like the story and you may disapprove of what it is about but I am going to tell the story.

I went to law school a long time ago now. Law school can be a fairly conservative sort of place. Law itself is filled with all sorts of traditions. I went to law school because my day job was telling me I was going to need to know some law, international law,  tort law, social welfare law, human rights law, planning law and more. All those kept popping up in my "voluntary" day job - not the one for which the funding had just finished but the other one. I was also trying to get the United Nations interested in an international year and do enough tutoring to keep me in milk and mice. 

I did not have much time to notice what was going on around me. I most certainly wasn't taking much notice of what we called "the bib and braces brigade" or "rad fems" (radical feminists) . These were the generally outspoken group of women who wore bib and brace overalls as a sort of uniform and had, for the most part, far left credentials. Some of them were doing law as "mature age" students, others were doing subjects like politics and government. They had their sights set on changing the world. Quite a number of them had children  (but not necessarily male partners) and they were attempting to bring them up in the same way. I admit to avoiding them where possible. So did many other students. It was easy enough to do as they tended to sit with each other. We avoided them simply because they were so argumentative.

One morning however one of them stormed (and I use the word advisedly on this occasion) into the law school canteen.  She flung her books down on the table we were using to prepare for the tutorial (they were group affairs) and raged, "I don't know. I've done everything possible and she still wants to wear a dress to school!" She went on to complain about the battle she had fought that morning with her daughter, a child who had just started school. She wanted her daughter to go to school wearing boy's overalls. The little girl wanted to be dressed like all the other little girls in the school's uniform. 

It was not because they were poor and these were hand me downs. She was actually well off, indeed very well off. Her reasons were far more to do with what she considered to be the "right way" to bring her daughter up. I remember her saying things like "I want her to stand out. I want her to be an individual. I want her to know that she doesn't have to be like every other child in the place."

She finally stopped to draw breath. It was then that another student, someone who also happened to be a Senator in our national parliament, spoke quietly and said,"You are doing your child untold harm. Your daughter is unique now but she also wants to fit in and be accepted."

Ms Bib and Braces glared at her, picked up her books and walked off. She said absolutely nothing throughout the tutorial when it was held about an hour later. It was clear she was still fuming. 

A week or so later this same woman left law school. She had committed one of the acts we had been specifically warned against when we started. We had been told by the Dean in his welcoming speech about the standard of behaviour expected of law students. It was a high standard, like that expected in a court of law. Women were expected to thank a man if he opened the door for them. Equally women were expected to hold the door open for a man if he came in with an armload of books - and he would be expected to thank them.

Instead of thanking the man this woman had sworn at him. He just happened to be a very senior member of the law school staff. Someone said, "That was a step too far" but I thought to myself that she had taken that step much earlier when she tried to insist her child wear boy's overalls.

One of our current Senators has just complained because our ABC Play School program recently featured a drag queen reading a book about a little girl who wants to wear a suit (The Spectacular Suit by Kat Patrick if you want to look it up). The ABC producers have tried to defend this by saying it was "just a story about dressing up". No, it is more than that. It is a book about gender and identity. I don't think it is a great book. I wouldn't choose to buy it but I wouldn't ban it. Using a drag queen to read the book however was sending another message. It was a deliberate attempt to "educate" children about gender. No doubt the mother of the child who did not want to wear boy's overalls would have cheered loudly.  

Me? I am on the side of the child. As the once child who was different I just want to say "It is better just to fit in sometimes."