A lot of things annoyed me yesterday. Here is my list.

I noticed it almost as soon as she started nursery. She quickly began rejecting blue things on the basis that they were "for boys". She went a little after 2.

The thing with the dresses is that she is always running about and bombing around on her scooter and her poor knees are exposed and waiting to be skinned. We have compromised on dresses with pink or floral leggings underneath...

SardineQueen, my DD who is 3 loves dinosaurs so Father Christmas delivered dinosaur pants and socks this year. Only of course the labels all say 'Boys'; annoying enough in itself but I am dreading her starting nursery and the social pressures she will come under. She is already constantly referred to as a boy by strangers (presumably because she's not wearing pink/butterflies/flowers - she has some of these things, on some of her stuff, just not everywhere, and almost always wears boys' trousers because she says jeans are uncomfortable and I find it almost impossible to find girls' stuff that she can climb or run in. Oh, don't get me started, in fact, this is so depressing.

I heartily recommend the book 'Packaging Girlhood' to anyone else struggling to find a way through it all, and 'Delusions of Gender' by Cordelia Fine for those seeking arguments in the face of all the idiocy.

I'd love to, Jess!

Has this become Feminist Chat Thread - The Other One?!! I'm enjoying it, anyway.

I'm sad to hear about the effects of gender stereotyping on nursery-age children. My DD is only 15 months and it upsets me to think she will soon have her innocently unprejudiced views on toys and clothes turned inside out.

My MIL runs a Montessori nursery and AFAIK the activities are strictly "non-gendered" with girls and boys encouraged to participate equally in all of them. (I wonder if she'll give me family discount...??!)

Hi Immaculada
Yes do! You could join one of our feminist groups. We've got a lot going on.

"What? It appears that no-one ever bothered to find out what Noah's wife was called, so she's just been known as Mrs Noah forever (and the same for the son's wives) Way to go to teach DD and DN from a very early that having their own identities isn't important."

DD has a Noah's ark, DP did some googling as we also faced the same problem of what to call Mrs Noah. Apparently it's Emzara so that's what she's called in this house.

I'm moving back down your way soon, Jess. Think I'll have to get in touch...

Not read all of the posts but first of all I want to say that dogs are great!!! I am sat on the sofa with my gorgeous dog snoozing next to me and I've just watched a programme about Extraordinary Dogs. So I agree with your friends on that.

But......as HerBeggs has said, it's denial. I get it from my female friends too. They got married, call themselves Mrs, change their surnames, make a pretence of deferring to their husbands even though in one peer group we are all professionals and most of them are earning more than their husbands. I was quite surprised at the whole marriage thing as I thought that at our age (early 30s) wouldn't do the whole white wedding, Mrs Hisname thing but most of my friends couldn't wait to do it.

They don't get it either and most roll their eyes and make a point of saying that they don't think feminism is needed anymore. I had a 30 year old woman in work a few months ago tell me that she thinks it's right that women are generally paid less than men because men tend to work longer hours!

I think most women don't want to think that there's a problem. If they think there's a problem, they might actually have to do something about it.

The only way I managed to keep my sanity was by finding some great feminist friends. Luckily I'm in Bristol where there's a big feminist contingent.

Yes, keep plugging away.

I don't think your friend meant to say that. She may have meant that some women are shallow, vain, fashion victims and men are a bit less complicated. ? Maybe?!

I've had the same thing as your no.1 for being too serious. Sometimes, you just want to forget about the world's problems and relax. This is how a good friend calmed me down once after a hideous sexist incident that I couldn't just shake off like they could.

Glad you've had some good news too!

Why the hell do boys "get" vehicles in the great gender divide anyway? Lord knows there are plenty of men and women out there on the roads/in the skies/on the rails.

The daughter of a friend of mine won a tiny plastic toy and was HORRIFIED to discover it was a car she had got (lucky dip type thing). She was wailing about how it was a toy for boys, until every single woman present reassured her that we all have cars, her mum has a car and drives to work in it, and how much we enjoy driving our cars around. It was quite funny to hear us all pile in to correct her :)

I think it will be OK. She is a very thoughtful child though, with a memory like an elephant. When people say things to her she listens carefully and mulls it over and a week or two later will come out with her interpretation of it. You have to be quite careful what you say around her.

I gave her the "oh they are silly meanies! your best friend is a boy and that's fine, the ones who say boys play with boys are being very silly sausages. If you like someone but they won't let you play then that's just how it is - we don't all like everyone - but you have lots of friends at nursery who like you so when X, A or B are mean why don't you go and play with them instead" etc etc. I didn't know what to say about the clothes. She has very much got it into her head that girls wear X and she is a girl and so that's what she is going to wear. Sigh.

I will add that book to my amazon list!

oh that sounds SHIT, SardineQueen. I'd be trying out "Girls can wear whatever they LIKE, including things without flowers, or shorts, or anything!" in a 'yay girls are awesome!" kind of voice. But I imagine your DD is pretty clever, in that she'd say "ok well if I can wear whatever I like then I want a dress" to you.

I dunno. I hope to sort of 'weatherproof" DS from peer pressure but I know it's not going to be easy and really all I can do is try to give him enough confidence to sometimes push back. I doubt he'll be able to do that so young. Children are VERY conformist, and I certainly was. Have you read "reviving Ophelia" ? _ I haven't but I've been told it's great if you have a DD. I've just ordered "raising Cain" which is about raising boys who feel they're allowed to have emotions. I might read the one for girls too, it sounds so interesting.

Sorry, rambly. More needed!

DD used to wear a mix of clothes. Now it has to be a dress with flowers on every single day. Now I know why. It's come from this bloody girl, or rather from her barbie obsessed mother

And as for being told to go away from the boys because she's a girl, and from the girls because she's a boy...

I know the nursery though and I'm sure that if they see children being mean they sort it out (DD has told me some stories) and DD has friends some of whom are boys, so all is fine really. It just seems that the loudest/most popular children are using their powers for bad when they could be using them for good IYSWIM. It's always the way isn't it. Who said the bloody meek would inherit the earth? It's cobblers isn't it.

Can I join in? I had a conversation with DD (3.5) last night which was prompted by me saying she's back at nursery today and she obviously started running it all through in her head and all this stuff came out. Some of it is normal tribal behaviour I guess and normal childhood stuff but taken all in one go it made me really

It was stuff like this

She likes Boy X but he doesn't like her as he says "boys play with boys" and when she tries to play with him he says go away or tells her to hit someone
Girl A saw her knickers and said they were horrible because they were plain (this came up a while ago as well so I bought her some with characters on)
Girl B says she is a boy as she doesn't have a dress with butterflies or flowers. Girl B says girls must have whatever clothes they like and they have to be butterflies and flowers (DD has been going on at me recently, wanting wear a dress every day and going on about how everything has to have flowers on it)
Girl B also won't play with her because she is a boy not a girl

And so it went on and on and on and I was just so

Girl B is the one whose mother famously told me that I had to buy some Barbies for DD "before it's too late" when she was 2
Don't get me started on Boy X and his mother...

I know this is all normal childhood stuff but the pressure to conform, to like the "right" things, to have the right clothes, to be segregated along gender lines... For it all to come out in oner conversation made me so Especially teh bit about Girl A taking the piss out of her knickers

Anyway there you go. Sorry for rant

If it's any consolation (and i realise it doesn't make things less infuriating at the moment), i was pretty much one of your stupid friends until fairly recently. I did the whole "i get on so much better with men than women", and "women just need to stop complaining and realise that nobody is really oppressed anymore, feminism is over" thing. Kept it up all the way through university.

Even though you're getting negative reactions and laughs, hopefully every now and again something you say is going to chime with them and one day they'll have this massive eye-opener. Or they will chance upon this thread, get curious and start reading. Presumably your friends are all intelligent, nice people, otherwise they wouldn't be your friends! It just takes some of us a little while ;-)

Yesterday things that pissed me off:

1. Work colleague who we were visiting for the day suggesting that only she and I, and not her dh or mine, were capable of changing the baby's nappy or putting her down to sleep.

2. The presumption from a guy who was trying out for the men's rowing team that I must be a spectator, rather than his new coach. He actually referred to me as a wag.

Thing which made me happy:

Hearing about the Reclaim the Night event happening in Cambridge next month.

dicotomy becoming a feminist hasn't improved my spelling though!

The church seems to write most women out though according to Jewish tradition Naoh's wife was called Naamah.

Is it that some people mock things that they do not understand. It comes down to ignorance.

Also people seem to turn away from anything that they feel uncomfortable about.

I had a terrible day on saturday. DH asked when I was going to tidy up my bikini line! and then asked me to hurry up and help him build the new shed. WTF. He couldn't see the docotomy in his two requests.

He is a very scared man at the moment and so uncomfortable, his reaction is to laugh things off.

I got annoyed by some children's building blocks yesterday. They were about Noah's Ark.

One was 'This is Noah' - fine
Another was 'This is Noah's son, Japeth' - fine
Then there was 'This is Mrs Noah'

What? It appears that no-one ever bothered to find out what Noah's wife was called, so she's just been known as Mrs Noah forever (and the same for the son's wives) Way to go to teach DD and DN from a very early that having their own identities isn't important.

Also got annoyed by MIL telling DD she was GORGEOUS every two minutes. Not clever, not funny, not anything else at all - just gorgeous. And everyone laughing at her comfy but short shorts (she's 1) instead of being made to wear a dress (which means she struggles to climb steps)

It would be nice if some value was placed on something other than how she looked.

EllieG - Sadly I can't its Dh's best mate and they are in business together. I made do with pointing out to dh that the man was a twit and I felt sorry for his wife.

My dh's friend who -after dh and he had been to the pub - was lucky enough to be given dinner at ours. Dh had asked if there was enough. We all sat to eat outside and I had made homemade burgers. Both dh and his friend had doubles and ds, dd and I single.

When we were finished I asked ds if he wanted the last one, as he had been active all day and was hungry. Dh's friend visibly and obviously winced when I asked ds, without offering it to either him or dh first.

The man was lucky enough to intrude on our meal, I know my dh well enough to know when to suggest splitting something between him and ds and I am still peed off a whole day later at the friend.

Gah"!

Oh shit I'm not going to be invited back am I?