Leave it to Salon to rant about the patriarchy again. This little ditty comes from senior writer, Mary Elizabeth Williams. The gist of things: it’s soooo hard to be a boy mom and a feminist.

Mary Elizabeth of Salon sits down with Ruth Whippman, author of “America the Anxious” and “Boy Mom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity”. Whippman is a mom of three boys. Salon has already painted this article as a “how to” lure our boys away from the “abyss” that is “harming us all across the gender spectrum”, so we know where this is going. To Hell in a hand basket at Mach Eleventy. The conversation right out of the gate goes something like this:

You would think that it was a feature of having three children of the same sex, but even from the very first, it felt like a little disappointing to people when I said, ‘We’re having a boy.’ You could tell the reaction was kind of muted. Then people would say, ‘Oh, well, you can try again. You’ll have a little sister next time.’ That sort of thing. Then there were all these sort of threads online for you know about gender disappointment, and they’re pretty much about mothers who are pregnant with boys.’-Ruth Whippman

Well, I would say that, at the very least, Mary Elizabeth of Salon and Ruth Whippman acknowledged there is a gender distinction between boys and girls. It’s interesting to note how they like to draw this distinction across the “gender spectrum” at the most convenient times. But gender disappointment?! C’mon MAN!