From consumer to supplier

When my wife got pregnant I was hoping for a boy. Images of me and a little kid playing catch in the backyard or eating hot-dogs at a Mariners game started to fill my mind. When he grows older, I thought, maybe we could share a beer from time to time and he would ask me questions about life and stuff. Later in life, well, maybe it would be his time to take me to Mariners games.

But it turned out to be a girl. I didn't show any disappointment to my wife, but I confess the feeling was there. After wishing for a boy for a few months, the fact that it was a girl took me by surprise and I needed sometime to get used to the idea. I had to come to peace with the notion that instead of shopping for bats and gloves I would be looking for Barbies and kitchen sets for Christmas.

When my daughter was born, though, none of that mattered. Call it paternal instinct or whatever but at the very first moment I laid my eyes on that little baby girl I knew my life had taken a complete new meaning. Somebody told me once that we only know what real love is when we have kids and I'm inclined to think that's true. My daughter changed me completely.

And after a while the realization was clear. I was way happier with a daughter than I'd ever be with a son. The way girls look at you, or the way they jump at you when you come home from work, all the kissing and cuddling, it's amazing stuff. I realized that a great part in wishing for a son had to do with traditional lines of thinking instead of my personal views or preferences. You see it all the time in several cultures (Korean included), whenever a woman gets pregnant everybody hopes it's a boy.

Remember Luca Brasi? Before sleeping with the fishes he expresses deep wishes that Don Vito's daughter's first child be a masculine child. Or something like that. And when Michael Corleone gets news of his wife's miscarriage the first thing he asks is if it was a boy. So even in this thing our ours (well, theirs), the desire for a son is a deep rooted tradition.

I've done some writing about this before but I've had my share of punani in the past. I even think I may have got some from other people's shares. Some of my friends, in one instance or another, witnessed all that and the end result is that my reputation got bloated beyond proportion and is, at least when it comes to dealing with the women folk, not very flattering. And when they found out we were having a girl it wasn't surprising to hear jokes about it. The following were actual words said or written by some of my best friends and I will discuss them individually.

(1) So you're going from consumer to supplier?
Believe it or not, this was the most popular one and was used by both men and women. I don't have anything to say about it except that most of my friends are from Brazil and there is a clear and present element of misogyny in that country, evidenced by the exposition of several female body parts (nor disassembled nor bloody, of course) in the media. By the way, I would imagine that objectifying women is a cultural trace shared by other Latin countries like Mexico, Italy or Spain.

(2) Now God will make you pay for all your wrong doings.
This one was used by friends with a sense of karma. The same ones who would say stuff like "You pay in life for what you do in life" (I don't know if my free translation adequately relates the meaning of the Brazilian saying). Brazilians have a close relationship with God and He is invoked frequently in several different situations. Professional athletes often credit God after a good performance and He is also the one who brings punishment to Brazilian kids who don't behave. These friends were sorta insinuating God would transfer punishment to my daughter for my supposedly wrong doings with girls.

(3) Aren't you afraid she may meet a guy just like you?
This was the one that made me think the most. It made me think about what I want for my daughter but also made me evaluate my past a little bit. My conclusion about my daughter is that I don't worry a bit about who she meets in the future. I know she will be capable of taking care of herself. She is such a smart girl and she will be able to judge by herself what's right or wrong. And of course, some bumps along the way will only help make her stronger. I'm as loving as any parent out there but I don't see myself as someone who will always tell her what to do. I have complete confidence in my daughter because I have complete confidence in my capacity of raising her well.

Gee, it sounds I'm a little overconfident, huh?

The evaluation of my past will have to wait for another post. I'll probably write about it (or not, I'm not sure if it's interesting enough) but I'd like to finish this one with a thought. We all know there's a double standard when it comes to promiscuous boys and girls. If a guy sleeps with a lot of women he is cool and all that, but if a girl does the same thing she is a slut. On the other hand, there's also the idea that when a guy sleeps with a girl he is taking advantage of her. There's a tendency to victimize the girl and vilify the guy.

In some cultures (Brazilian and Korean, for instance), when you say "I ate her" it means "I fucked her". The idea of aggressor and victim is obviously present. Why is that? Why is the sex act an act of aggression? And why is that women are the victims most of the times?