“Why are you asking me to dress more modestly? You should teach boys to respect women so that I don’t have to dress modestly,” my 11-year-old girl glared at her father and I at the dinner table. She didn’t look sexy—she still has the body of a pre-pubescent girl, but her little skirt, too small on her, rode up her chubby thighs, and her father told her she shouldn’t be wearing tiny skirts because, soon, she would be “dalaga.”

At her age, and having watched movies and read female empowerment literature, she was telling off her concerned, perplexed father. She was espousing the most basic tenets of feminism and equality—“This is me, this is my body, this is my right.” Not too long ago, as a single rah-rah woman, those were my lines. I believed that I could dress up however I wanted, and the world would need to adjust. I would have high-fived my daughter for the power in her words.

Now that my little girl is uttering my girl power taglines to my face—lines that I told her when she was three or five or seven—I am honestly gutted. I have become much more realistic as I went through life and I have become more protective as she grew, so this dilemma is something I wished I knew better to handle.

“Teach him,” she points at her 14-year-old brother, who is used to this dinner drama, “that women can wear whatever they want. Boys should be taught to respect, not girls being taught how to dress.”

I sigh, I have, of course, taught my boy to respect, among many other things. I have taught him equality, fairness. I have told him that having me as a mother—strong and opinionated—should be the best proof that women are not the lesser sex. Weaker physically, yes, but not weaker in other things that matter.

I gingerly tell my impassioned 11-year-old, I only have your Kuya to influence, I cannot influence somebody else’s child—and it is somebody else’s child I am and will be worried when the time comes.

It is somebody else’s child who may hurt you—someone who is, somewhere out there, growing up in a toxic masculine culture, a child whose parents never really got enlightened because they were not educated enough, someone who watched our very own President tell everyone, ‘Women cannot be Presidents,’ a child who is being praised right now when he does something aggressive that he’s “lalaking-lalaki.”

I have no power over those children, I tell my girl, and so I can only control you, and your Kuya. You don’t live in paradise, you don’t live in an ideal world, so until then, I tell her, you are going to have to cover your butt when you dress up to go outside. I can educate you, and my circle. But I cannot risk you to a world that is not Utopia. Until every last child is educated, this is going to be a reality.

Machismo is so deeply ingrained in our post-colonial culture that it will take more than Generation Z to completely dismantle it. Historical research shows that European superpowers created machismo for the very purpose of military conscription—and as a colony of Spain, the Philippines adapted the cultural currents from 300 years of colonization.

Only recently are more educated Filipinos trying to disentangle themselves from this construct, and even then, for many of our fellow citizens, being gender-fair is all for show, afraid as they are of being “cancelled.” Many Filipino children are still being raised by Filipino men reared in archaic concepts of masculinity. It is a cycle, and only education will break that cycle.

Right now, on the social media app Tiktok, men are being asked to wear skirts to ‘combat masculinity.’ My boy scoffs at this. He finds it ridiculous. He can respect girls without wearing skirts, he says. My girl gets mad that her brother won’t wear a skirt to support equality.

My Gen Z Pinoy children, who are very Westernized thanks to the pervasiveness of social media, are growing up at a really interesting juncture. Right now, on the social media app Tiktok, men are being asked to wear skirts to “combat masculinity.” My boy scoffs at this. He finds it ridiculous. He can respect girls without wearing skirts, he says. My girl gets mad that her brother won’t wear a skirt to support equality. “If you’re not wearing a skirt to support the end of toxic masculinity, you’re being toxic,” she says.

I am admittedly at a loss. There is no word of wisdom from me. This is a struggle I didn’t have growing up. My own brother would have punched me if I asked him to wear a skirt to honor me. At 11, my concerns were very different. This I take as a sign of progress (and maybe proof that I am doing well as a mother) that my 11-year-old is fighting for womanity at her age.

Maybe only when the last of us who have grown and experienced the unfair dynamics of gender inequality have passed on, a new generation of kids can start over. Maybe this will be the generation after Gen Z, maybe two, or three generations after. But it will come, as enlightenment comes with age, and evolution.

In the meantime, I watch with amazement the current, and very chaotic, upheaval of established gender norms and cultural mores as this new generation fights to redefine everything that we Millennials and Boomers have ever been taught as children only a few short years ago.

My “flex” is I am getting a front row seat as a coach. Empower my daughter, empower my son. Teach them how to be good human beings, first and foremost. So let me not mess this up.