A sad sight...

I, only slightly, pity DD's headmaster after the school started putting on cheerleading classes for the girls. He'd never seen me in full flight before. While I take the point that cheerleading is a physical activity and can be quite athletic, it reinforces the sterotype that boys do, girls cheer them on.

It starts early and is reinforced all the way through. It's one of my bugbears, how little women's sport is promoted in the media, so it's really little wonder that girls instinctively think is sport something boys do.

It's not just young girls. I play in a few bands, am the only woman. The wives come and glower at me. Girls LISTEN, see. Men play. Stupid me not getting it.

OBVIOUSLY I only do it to steal their husbands.

I never understood this behaviour with girls, I was the only girl that would play football or roller hockey, with the boys. The rest of the girls in the group would just stand and watch them.

thou at 18 when a big group of us were in a park in the summer and football was suggested, they were one down so i played, ( wasnt really that bothered at this age) When i took the ball off my boyfriend and scored he stormed off in a huff.

I was cheered by the boys and he was laughed at. The girls however said i shouldnt have done it, wtf!

I've never had women commenting on what I drink but I've worked in a couple of pubs where the landlords thought that women should drink halves and not only that, but in "ladies" glasses.

One of our local pubs when I was a teen refused to serve girls pints [rural Ireland], the landlord and his head barman didn't even like serving girls and if you tried to get served in the Bar rather than the Lounge you would be ignored till all the MEN were served.

If you ordered a pint and he knew it was for a girl he'd serve you 2 halves and charge you more ie: a pint could be £1:40 a half would be 80p so he'd charge you £1:60 even thought you'd ordered A pint.

It being rural Ireland meant that we had more than one choice of pub so we stopped going, refused to meet friends, boyfriends in there, which meant he lost money. Sometimes money is the best weapon

here we have backyard rail jam and all the boarders are out in force. they run events for both men and women and i think everyone just goes to watch the tricks... half the time i can't tell whether they are men or women anyway! there are certainly plenty of teen girls out in the terrain parks riding and jumping.

mind, we also have <a class="break-all" href="//www.www.fastandfemale.com/index.asp" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">fast and female which encourages 9-19yo girls to get out into the outdoors and commit sport...

I've only ever had women commenting about it, dudes couldn't care less what I'm drinking.

Yes Widow, the pint of real ale shock horror thingy. Years ago, when you never saw a woman drink a pint I got that too (I'm talking decades back here But what was really bad was that it was women/girls then who said they wouldn't drink a pint either because it was "unladylike" or men/boys don't like women who drink pints.

They seemed bemused by me saying that I didn't give a flying fart what men/boys thought as it was none of their business.

It's an attitude I've always had and it's actually never done me any harm or held me back. Or stopped me having boyfriends or even marrying one of this apparently disapproving sex. In fact, I've come to conclusion that men aren't half so picky about women doing "unladylike" things as other women are.

Which leads me to think "so why do these women care so much what boys/men think anyway?" Women like that really brass me off - they are such simpering wimps.

Ah, yes, pubs. When I lived in the sticks Selby we went onto a night out with my work there - and I was given strange looks for drinking real ale as a woman.

You know what is really helpful running, a bit of feminist rage.

Just think about lapdance clubs, rape myths etc. It really gets your speed up!

Basil I hear you - I need to get out more again soon. (And really have to struggle against the rage, when it's "male bonding time" for my husband and his dad (golf) which is spent by the female part of the family with watching the kids.
Now, I hate golf, so don't mind not going along and don't begrudge it him to go, but it's just hate it when it's called that, and the "dinner being sorted for when the boys come home" thing around it.

I've got them bastards as well!!!

Cough, sniff, bugh!!

I practically burst a blood vessel every time dd2(17) gets dolled up to 'go and watch the boys play rugby'. My spluttering about own interests, doormats etc only stop when I hear the door slam on her way out.

I'm glad you said that I've been sitting on my arse far too much recently. Will make more effort to go running again...

Same here. I intend to go out again as soon as I can breath normally - bad bughs have had me for two weeks now!!

upahill - yes I think most kids lose interest in stuff they do with their families, in their teens. But as you say, they come back to it later on.

Actually Widow that is a very good point.

IT's one of the reasons I force myself sometimes to go running and swimming. It's why I bought a bike. I fucking hate cycling most of the time. But I did want my DD (and my DS) to see me being active, to see me running and not giving a shit about make up, clothes, etc., to see me valuing health and fitness and endurance and to assume that it's normal for women to do that.

I'm glad you said that I've been sitting on my arse far too much recently. Will make more effort to go running again...

As in, is the daughter of an active climber/skateboarder/footballer whatever mother more likely to take it up herself, than one who sees her mother only ever in the spectator ranks?

Possibly but I think many kids of both sexes (not all for sure) get to early teens and want to break away from mother/ parents influence. I do think it may come back though when they are a bit older.

What I mean is that I was/ am the active on in our family as DH has poor health and works very long hours self employed. Since the kids were in prams I had them out walking and in bike seats. I have taken them to the Alps climbing, they have canoed, climbed, skiied, snowboarded etc.

By the time DS1 got t0 14 and half he has lost interest in wild camping, biking across the Lake District and all the things he loved doing. So it's just me and DS2 and I am losing him.

I don't push it but I do think there interest will come back (once they get bored of itunes and facebook!!)

Same with girls? Who knows, I don't- it's just a guess.

messy "Yet women will go to exhibitions on scientific inventions, tanks, war technology, etc, and admire the work that men do."

The thinking that scientific inventions, technology (and yes, even war technology are men's things or the work men do is rather sad. Women are sadly still underepresented in the STEM field, but that's not being helped by labelling them as "male".

This is not to say that sewing/knitting/crafting should be interesting to men too, and that it's quite sad that there's less men venturing into that direction than women into the other.

Since my daughters are still very very young I can't know, but could this also have to do with the level of activity they see their mothers do?

As in, is the daughter of an active climber/skateboarder/footballer whatever mother more likely to take it up herself, than one who sees her mother only ever in the spectator ranks?

The day we started secondary school we were "suppose" to stop playing and stand around talking. The boys still played football.
32 years latter I still don't get it.

God that reminds me, somehting that has been niggling me about a friend since last summer...

He didn't want to go and see Bridesmaids.

Nothing wrong with that, I hear you say.

Of course not.

But but but... the thing is, my deep down suspicion, is that he didn't want to go and see it, the best mainstream buddy movie of summer, because its protagonists were women and it was about female friendship.

Whereas we're expected to go and see fucking buddy movies ad nauseum.

Because men's experience is universal. Whereas women's, is , er, just women's. So irrelevant to me if I'm a man.