In our glorious modern society, there are actual dads out there who not only want to emasculate their sons, but they want to publish long screeds over on TODAY's website to virtue signal in the worst ways possible.
Behold:
OH NO!
TRACTORS???
Let's look at the subtitle here to get a bit more info about this dad, Jay Deitcher.
All my life, I've prided myself on blurring gender lines. But when my young son started to gravitate toward the very things I'd shunned, I wasn't sure what to do.
Hmm, I don't know, maybe you should buy that little champ a hundred tractors, take him out to a farming museum so he can learn more about tractors, then buy him a tractor and a plot of land where he can get his hands rough and dirty and grow lots of food for people to eat.
More on this in a bit.
After turning 2 years old, my son, Avishai, started demanding that he only wear tractor shirts, and my mind spiraled into darkness. I catastrophized worst-case scenarios, imagining a world where he fell for everything stereotypically manly.
This would be a great time to remind you that this is, in fact, Not The Bee. This is a real article, not satire.
So what is Jay so afraid of exactly?
I envisioned him on a football field, barreling through mega-muscled opponents. Imagined him waxing a sports car on a warm summer day.
Can you imagine it?
Your son out there on the field of battle, learning discipline, teamwork, and coordination as he smites his foes and supplies his testosterone-driven muscles with vigorous physical exercise to strengthen his body, mind, and spirit?
THE HORROR!
Or watching him take care of a machine that best represents freedom in the modern world – an expensive machine, no less – that will teach him vital skills about working with his hands?
UNREAL!
Jay says that after his son was born, his wife joked about her special bond with their child.
You know, because only women can grow a baby inside their own bodies, then nurture that baby from their own bodies when the child is born. And only women have a slew of other hormones that helps them biologically connect to a young infant.
But gender-bending Jay was seemingly jealous, so he quit his job and set out to prove his wife wrong. If there's one goal our woke generation has, it's showing that men can be better women than women themselves... and Jay was gonna prove how awesome of a mom a dad can be!
To me, femininity was connected to empathy and kindness while masculinity equated to being frigid. Men didn't hug. Men didn't say I love you. Men were angry. Aggressive. Inept as parents. I became determined. I was going to create a bond stronger than any parent had ever achieved, but I told myself that to do so I needed to distance myself from anything deemed masculine.
Live shot of Jay:
Jay goes on to say that he doesn't have a warped sense of masculinity, so shut up.
After all, only a sane person with a stable handle on his own manhood would think that masculinity is about being cold and angry and mean all the time!
I became even more of an avid stereotyper: I grimaced at anyone driving a Ford car, the John Wayne of automobiles. I hated men who wore plaid. Felt ill if someone mentioned a wrench or another tool. When my mom-in-law bought Avishai a coverall with footballs on it, I shoved it into the depths of his closet, never to be found.
I mean this in the nicest way possible: This guy needs a therapist to deal with some really messy issues he's projecting on his kid.
Imagine "grimacing" at anyone driving a Ford, or "feeling ill" if someone mentions a tool.
Wife: "Honey, can you fix the loose screw in this cabinet?"
Jay [Wailing]: "STOP PROJECTING YOUR CISGENDER MASCULINE STEREOTYPES ON ME!!!"
Jay totally had a handle on everything. Life was perfect. He was chilling on the couch while his wife went to work every day, he had a cool toddler to experiment on with gender-bending magic, and he had an endless supply of virtue signals ready to go.
But then came the tractors.
No, literally. Then came the tractors.
But then came the tractors. It started with YouTube. On days I was especially drained, I'd sit Avishai in front of the TV and click on "Little Baby Bum." He fell in love with the tractor songs, and I was so worn, I didn't care. When he asked to watch clips of construction equipment, I mindlessly pressed play. But when he demanded the shirts, I felt like I failed him. I pride myself on blurring gender lines. I wanted him to, also.
Remember those movies where the harsh military dad finally comes around to the idea that his son wants to work as an artist or a nerd (think of That '70s Show or October Sky)? Or in more modern, "enlightened" times, where the dad comes to accept his son for living as a gay man?
We've literally reached the point where the dog-headed, grumpy dad is the woke dude who is upset his son doesn't want to play like a girl.
After a bit of totally-sane rambling on how manual labor makes him panic, Jay finally admits that he capitulated (and even let his son sit in a tractor too!):
I started taking joy in his joy. He radiates wearing his shirts emblazoned with diggers and dozers and excavators. At 3 ½ years old, he can name dozens of types of tractors (I always thought there was only one). He makes up quasi-gibberish tractor stories, sings quasi-gibberish tractor songs. Together, we clean the living room: He uses his tractors to put all his toys away. Sometimes my dad comes over and we drive tiny plastic machinery from room to room.
In other words, a father let his boy be a boy and is teaching him how to channel that rugged masculine energy into productive work.
The rest of us could have told him that in about 10 words. For the woke, I guess it takes 3+ years and an essay on TODAY to figure it out.
Happy tractoring!
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