Don’t Project Sexual Identity Onto Young Children.
The smiling baby boy is not a “lady killer.” A toddler offering a cookie to an adult is not flirting. Literally nothing that a child does should turn into a romantic moment, so let’s stop saying things that mean otherwise.
It is extremely strange to imply that babies press on each other or even on adults, but this happens all the time. Gender is gradually freed from rigid binarity, and human sexuality manifests itself in a wide range of desires. You have no idea who this charming lump will grow up to. So why does it so often pretend that children who hardly know how to talk are in love with each other ?
Sexualizing children is always inappropriate; It doesn’t really matter how you do it, but more often than not it happens as a way to establish heterosexual norms. Earlier this year, I saw a natural couple talking to a mother with their child. Five minutes later, the man pretended that a newborn with a drooping jaw was trying to fight him so that he could “talk” with his hot girlfriend.
The child will not remember this interaction, but it is probably one of the many messages that the child and any other child receive as they grow up that they are absolutely expected to be heterosexual, even before they even know who they are. All of this, of course, is just part of the control over people’s gender and sexual identity, and it starts early.
It’s also part of how we culturally view friendship between men and women, viewing even the most innocent interactions between children as proof of sexual chemistry. Boys and girls can just be friends, as children and as adults, but especially as children. Instead of asking a 5 year old boy, “Is that your girlfriend?” about the girl he is playing on the swing with, say, “Your buddy seems cool.”
She. This is why they are friends. Plus, they haven’t even reached puberty yet.