AIBU to believe that this is a self-perpetuating cycle?

I blame it on all those pseudo-scientific male-brain/female-brain nonsense. Perfectly reasonable people say "ah but boys and girls are different" and proceed to entrench the gender stereotypes. How can they not be different if we do this to them!? It drives me potty-mouth potty.

Buffy - like your reading list!

My children (boy and girl) mostly read the same books. ds is as happy to read about girls as boys, although he did complain recently that one of the books me and dd really liked and were suggesting for him had the blurb on that back about a girl wanting to do something and not being allowed and why couldn't we find something a bit different. It was a bit sad because it was a quite small part of the book, which was excellent. He obviously feels it's time to read books about guys breaking the gender barrier instead :)

I'd be very peeved at the school. We have a 'Battle of the Books' thing here, which is age group only (they have to read set books and answer questions on them).

Sorry

How hard is it to say "parents"? Or divide books into "adventure" or "animals" or whatever? What is it that makes the gender divide so easy? And the traits of each gender so easy to divide in stereotype?

It baffles me. I share my interests, book-wise, with 4 people in the main. My mum, my dad, my brother, my mum and a female friend. It's a veritable Venn diagram. My Mum is quite stereotpical in her book choices i.e. they are of the exclusive female genre. The others are more wide-spread. But the non female-aimed books are largely seen as "male" books. Because they are not female-orientated. It's quite fascinating. I am about to have a holiday with my folks. They have masses of time on their hands, so I am going to challenge my Dad to read some women-orientated books. Any suggestions?

What is wrong with people? How hard is it to s

And folks ask - why do women not want to do the "hard" jobs? And say there's no barriers. So, there's no barrier put up when Dad's are asked re landscaping when there's an expert on hand, who happens to be a woman? What of a bunch of blokes turn up and so does she, as someone with a skill in this area? What kind of reception will she get?

Questions, questions, questions.

OMG crikey just read your post about author visit! Am lost for words well apart from to say yes, write that email!

We had a newsletter from the Primary School asking Dads to come in and help with landscaping the playground. I went in and complained - especially since one of the mums is a landscape architect who has done a lot of work for the school voluntarily - what a slap in the face for her. I don't mind being THAT mum.

The HT was unpleasant & defensive to my face, but to be fair did apologise in the next newsletter.

I would be extremely pissed off if we got a book list divided by gender. What bollocks. YANBU.

I can't imagine my DCs' school doing that though. So far they've seemed pretty hot on stamping out any sexist talk by discussing views as a class ("boys can't wear pink" etc)

I would quite like a t-shirt with "down with bat-arsed wankery" on it.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?

This isn't even a straigh down the line feminist issue, ffs. (Unless being a feminst means being someone who believes in something other than strict gender-roles. Or is that a rad fem in backlash terminology. I think that's for another thread.) It's about people. And not boxing them in. This harms all of us.

It's fucked up. Big Style. This is something that the MRAs should be on board with too.

Ds brought a letter home from school the other day about an author visit to school and the option to buy a signed copy of the book.

The letter refers to this visit being for year 5 boys. I asked him why only the boys and he said "the girls have had their visit".

The author is female but writes books for "boys" with male protagonists.

I am so cross about this blatant segregation :(. Why couldn't both boys and girls attend both book readings?

I was going to just leave it but I think, after reading this thread, that an email is needed.

Grrrrr :(

And still, we get people arguing about nature not nurture.

Society is fucked. We are going backwards at a great rate of knots. We seem to be in a bizarre situation where the laws are such that sexual discrimination is outlawed, but the outward forces towards gender determinism in childhood is greater than before the laws came in. I was a pup in the 70s - it seemed to be better for kids then, didn't it?

I despair. What the fuck happened? Why did "books for girls" and "books for boys" even get thought of as a concept in 2013. How limiting! Please raise it. We want our following generations to be well-rounded, don't we?

If there's war between the sexes then there'll be no people left.

Or between the red and blue group, but it doesn't scan so well

Jesus, that is insanely crap in the 21st century. I really think you do need to say something. DD goes to the most out-in-the-sticks rural primary you could think of, and I genuinely can't imagine them doing this (in fact AFAIK all dc had to read every book on each shelf before being 'promoted', rainbow magic, beast quest, every pink'n'sparkly or macho-tastic one of them, regardless of sex).

I agree gentle tact is needed (rather than my friends WTAF reaction when we were shown a new logo at the PTA meeting with girl carrying book & boy carrying football ), but you can't let it pass, surely.

I think there was a section in Delusion of Genders about classifying children as boys and girls - they did an experiment just classifying two classes of children randomly as the blue group and the red group. In one class they just left it at that, and in the other they made a big deal of it, like lining up in red and blue group. In the end they found animosity between the groups in the class where the distinction was emphasised. This is what we are doing to our children ... Makes me feel a bit sick ...

Write to school: you are so happy that DS has been so happy in school etc etc, but you've notice the list! Surely it has not been the school's intention! Gendered lists limit the children's imagination. Surely this has been an accident! For example, school XXX down the road has a marvellous reading list (need to research here) and it's not gendered. And you yourself have found several books that are cross-gendered/gender-neutral which DS loves which you would never have found if all books were classified by gender! You know that the school is committed to gender equality and you are looking forward to working in tandem towards it!

(Sorry, idea stolen from the let toys be toys campaign, and I've written a letter just like that too to a toy shop ...)

How old is he? Maybe we can make a whole new list which you could present to the school?

I'm with the strident anti-overthinking brigade. I would write to complain.

DS1 said that his three favourites series of books are by women (though main characters are still male ). He also likes Judy Moody books - main character is a girl!!

Some things are such bat-arsed wankery that it makes you despair.