Gender Bender

Written about Monday

Pretty quiet day yestearday, considering how things usually are. In the morning, the Leci and I prepared all the patientes to see the Duk and then went to Yaruqui. When I was first figuring out my ICRP, I was going to work at the hospital in Yaruqui, but its much farther away so I settled on little Puembo. However, its number 14 of the 26 public hospitals in the province of Pichincha. Babies are born by Ceasarian, virus loads are counted, you can go to a psychologist or an OB-GYN. The bus ride there isn't long, you take the Puembo bus out to La Y and then the Yaruqui bus another 30 minutes east.

We went there to drop off spetum samples from the TB patients as well as requests for more mecication and supplies, and to get a new set of Hep B vaccines. It was exciting to be in a larger hospital with better division of labor. A pediatrician, a pharmacist, someone who just works with the endless charts spilling out of thier shelves, they all have thier jobs in Yaruqui. Those postions would be redundant in Puembo, of course, but it would certainly make life easier.

I'm also getting to know Leci better. We talk about our families or learning spanish or english or how hard the job is. She's working in Puembo on her Rural Year too, which I didn't know. She'll be looking for work in May. She hopes to keep working in a sub-centro in a rural area, maybe Latacunca or Ambato.

the most interesting/embarassing part of the day came as I was preparing a patient for the afternoon appotintments. It was a one month old baby and its mother wanted to open up a history and get a infant check-up.

I'll back up a little bit and explain what makes this just so embarassing. On Sunday, sitting in a park in Cuenca, we were talking about how here babies live very gendered lives. Little boys are almost always in blue and girls are in dresses or pink or yellow with lace and they always, always have thier ears pierced. From a very very yongue age. Often its done in the hospital, but we have had a few times when parents march in with a three-month-old and ask for the earrings to be shoved in, sans gun. So earrings are omnipresent among little girls and I was saying I didn't like it. First of all, taking care of your earrings is something we equate with maturity. Its sort of a sign of growing up, cleaning and turning the posts. Second, and most strong for me, is the gendered behavior of earrings. For me, a huge part of how I grew up was being comfortable with gender ambiguity. I know that's not everybody's story and that not everybody wants that, but I also know there was no way I could have pulled that off with gold hoops in my earlobes. When parents pierce thier little girls ears when they are very yongue, they are demanding that thier daughters will act like women the rest of thier lives and that they cannot hide thier gender in profile view.

So that's what I was thinking as this mother brought in her baby to fill out the forms. The admission form in pretty arduous and by the time I get to the easy questions I usually breeze along to give the parents a break "Gender....male....civil status....single." Because at least the last one is obvious for a baby. And I thought the first question was too, for a baby dressed all in blue with unmarred ear lobes.

Of course, I forgot to weigh and measure the patient when I filled out the forms, so it was a good ten minutes before the mom wrestled the diaper and put her child (named Dennis Joannah) on the scale. Little Dennis might only have been a month old, but I know a vagina when I see one, and she was in possession. But still I didn't want to believe it. I didn't believe that a mother would dress her baby in opposition to her gender. I didn't believe that a mother might choose ambiguity, or choose hand-me-downs from an older child, or just like the color blue and the name Dennis.

I still didn't believe it, so I asked for the vaccine card they give you at birth: pink, niña. I had to use white-out all over the admission forms and staple another page on the chart: growth chart for girls, not boys. During this time, Dennis peed herself and the mom put her in a new diaper with trains and airplanes on the front.

For a girl who had short hair for years, for a girl who wore boy's jeans, for a girl named Dana, for a girl who isn't always so into being a girl, I sure made a lot of assumptions about what it means to be a girl or a boy in that office. I started my behavior because I wanted to make the patient comfortable. I've asked grown men and pregnant mothers thier gender and they always react shocked. Of course they do, they are presenting gendered signs on purpose. But this mother wasn't and I didn't give her the benefit of the doubt. Or the benefit of androgyny, or the benifit of just having a tiny baby and leaving it at that.