Am I a bad feminist because I'm glad I have a boy?

I have a son. A wonderful, boisterous, little dude who is the light of my life. When I was pregnant and found out I was having a boy my first feeling was....relief. And then guilt.

I was relieved that I dodged the teenage girl bullet with my first (and perhaps only) child. I go to the mall. I see them. They travel in packs and speak a language I can't understand. And I'm not that old. Today's teenage girlhood exudes a level of sexual sophistication that even in my thirties I can't pull off. How on earth could I parent around and in a culture that sexualizes girls as young as six? No doubt about it I was happy not to deal with any of that crap.

Until the guilt set in. I'm a feminist. I pride myself on a developed sense of gender identity that articulates a contrary vision of mainstream femininity. I'm a professional. I litigate complex business dispute and spend more of my day than not navigating the last bastions of the old boys club. In heels. With cleavage. Who am I kidding that sexuality and gender identity don't go hand in hand in my daily existence? Shouldn't I be praying to the goddess for a little mini-me to mold into a vision of third or fourth wave feminist dreams realized? And am I now a traitor to the cause because when presented with the fact that I was having a boy instead of a girl I didn't feel even a teensy bit sad that I was not birthing another little hegemommy? I was, by all accounts, overjoyed that I was not having a girl. Doesn't that make me a bad feminist?

Now that I've had a couple of years to let that guilt process I've realized that having a boy doesn't mean the coast is clear on this issue. Not by any stretch. How do I raise a young boy to view girls as his equals in a culture of female hyper-sexuality? That's an even stickier issue for me as my gender is highlighted daily in my career. I'd be lying if I said that I'd never played on my femininity at work, or gambled on the fact that the douche on the other side of the table has issues with women and used that to my advantage. All. Day. Long. Maybe the answer is that I was a bad feminist all along.

This issue is far from unpacked. When people tell me my son is "all boy" I beam with pride and entertain visions of bad high school bands, skateboards, football games and floppy hair. And if he was a girl, and someone told me my daughter was "all girl" how would I respond? Right now that conjures images of princess parties, pink everything, and dance. Despite the fact that NONE of those images populated my girlhood, they are the images I default to in imagining girlhood. So having a son has, at the very least, given me a template for exploring all these nuances of mainstream gender identity, my own identity, and how those two identities clash, compliment, and coexist. At the very least its provided me with plenty of material to write about.