Not sure I am on board with feminism any more.

So you’re not worried about messages being sent to boys specifically but that all children are prevented from learning more about themselves through violence?

nona, if you feel it’s the staff in your children’s school who are reinforcing damaging gender stereotypes, ask to speak to the head about it.

Family thank you I did challenge the school. After DD challenged the “Mum’s favourite chore” exercise it was confirmed to me that the school wouldn’t use that format again.

Dress codes are rather more insidious but we challenge as we go.

I have a 19 year old DS who started university last year. His take away from his first year was “men are trash”.

He was and is appalled at how the young men he sees daily treat women. He sees them belittle and demean women as default. He’s seen first hand the ‘any hole’s a goal’ mentality. He’s seen men target drunk women at parties. He’s seen them turn on women who dare to challenge them.

DS calls this out, as do his friends. They step in when they see girls being targeted - 3 times since September they’ve put a woman in a cab rather than let her leave with someone who would have raped her.

They step in when a man gets nasty when challenged by a woman - it happened this week, DS called out a guy who turned on a young woman who didn’t agree with an academic point in a lecture.

DS doesn’t feel like the world at large hates him for being Male - he sees very clearly that his life is easier, safer and far less challenging than it is for any of the young women he knows.

Are you equally concerned that girls are more strictly policed and aren’t allowed to explore aggression and violence to nearly the same degree boys are?

I do. Learning about their bodies, capabilities, what violence is, how what it means to hurt someone - it is best done through playing at it.

Bloody hell no. I'm not sacrificing the little ones so the bigger, stronger ones can 'learn about their bodies'

They can learn their capabilities without beating each other up - through sport, art, living day to day cooking and running and jumping.

If they learn what it's like to hurt someone, that means someone has been hurt. Sure it happens accidentally, but this isn't Sparta, two boys don't enter, one man leaves - we've moved on a bit from that.

"Why does Battersea dog shelter not rescue dolphins? Bastards."

Dunno, but why do they rescue cats lol

When misogynists criticised men for carrying their babies, there was a big social media campaign about Dads baby carrying in papooses.

This is feminism being man positive.

I'm really not sure where you are getting feminism not doing anything positive for men from? It's not true.

but I do worry girls might be transitioning to join the gender who can be taken seriously as valuable human beings regardless of how they look. The pressure for teenage girls to be a certain weight, have perfect make-up, and perform a certain type of ‘femininity’ really scares me
Scares me too. Where does this come from? In my experience peers at school apply the pressure. It's not cool to study hard, to be good at sport if you're a girl. You have to look a certain way (including now the bizarre eyebrow trend). This pressure is applied by other girls.

Girls and boys are being failed by the messages and nothing will change if everyone spends time arguing who is responsible for changing what.

Why does a positive message to girls have to include a negative message to boys? Surely even if you think it's not a feminists job to boost boys it doesn't mean the alternative is to do them down? And given that many single parent families are headed up by women it is important that boys in those families receive positive messages to stop the cycle being repeated.

Surely that is the aim. To improve the future for everyone?

Nona just wanted to say thank you for your brilliant post. I’ve got a boy and a girl as well (very young) and it really saddens me that my daughter’s life is going to be so much harder than my son’s.

Kindness and compassion and being "nice" alone just makes you into a doormat.

No, again I have to completely disagree.

Being nice and kind and passive can make you a doormat.

But kindness, compassion combined with strength, good judgement and the self confidence to take action can make you a leader.

My son is tall for his age. He’s very athletic and so he’s strong, visibly so.

He’s challenged bullies at school multiple times.

He’s never lifted a finger. He doesn’t even raise his voice.

He doesn’t threaten violence.

He has a quiet, conversation where he points out to the bully the error of their ways and pleasantly suggests they cease and desist.

And they do.

Any why do they?

Because he’s male
Because he’s tall
Because he’s strong
Because he’s popular

Because they all intuitively understand that these ^ things give DS power^.

He doesn’t have to actually fight a fight they all know he’d win.

If it came down to the court of playground opinion he’d win.

If it was brought before the teachers he’d win (straight A student, very well behaved)

DS has power. He’s doing what we asked him and wielding it better.

And the girls? The girls adore him. Not because he’s tall, popular and good looking.

They love him because he’s kind.

Kindness and compassion does not equal doormat.

Where did he learn how to deal with the bullies? His Father, who was just the same at school.

So how do you counter boys growing up to be like men on tv without teaching boys that they should value other parts of their character such as kindness, sensitivity etc? Because I thought you just said that it wasn’t a good idea to do that as it turned them into doormats?

My daughter has heard that message from school

nona, if you feel it’s the staff in your children’s school who are reinforcing damaging gender stereotypes, ask to speak to the head about it.

There are probably two GC staff in my small primary school, but we need parents to back us up. I’ve had the head of practice at the Sex Education Forum (a charity that advises schools) tell me it’s damaging to separate reception age into lines of girls and boys to go home (it’s the quickest and easiest way). The strongest messages schools are getting from the government and genderist organisations reinforce gender stereotypes. We can’t do it on our own.

Hi OP.

I think as long as you bring your children up to be respectful to everyone, regardless of gender/sex, then you can't really go wrong.
I am a 31 year old woman and as far as i am concerned, i have never experienced sexism to any large degree my whole life. Of course you are going to get the odd comment/situation in life, but if it's the odd occurrence and not the norm then it's not really an issue as there will always be ignorant people. I have always done what i want and never questioned whether my vagina is holding me back. I don't have a victim mindset and don't go looking for things to be upset about, which to be honest, i think a lot of women do nowadays (i.e. posts about 'should i be offended by this..?). If you have to ask whether to be offended, then you're not!

I think this whole 'men have been in charge for years, now they can listen to women' is a bit rubbish on the feminists part. The men that exist today aren't the same men who were around 100 years ago. I do think they are hammered down constantly by feminists for having a penis and i don't think it's fair on them.

The idea of gender/sex equality is to treat everyone the same, yet feminism is constantly trying to find things that make us different and i find that quite counter productive.

The solution is that all children, girls and boys, boys should be raised the same and encouraged and allowed to develop into their own characters as fully reaslised humans.

And you think that allowing them to be aggressive and investigate violence is the way to do that?

We believe differently. I think that teaching all children to be kind and compassionate will result in a far better society than one where we let all the kids get into a good scrap and do nothing to stop them.

Why does Battersea dog shelter not rescue dolphins? Bastards.

OP, maybe you should go to the Cats Protection website and berate them for ignoring dogs.
Feminism is for women.
If men don’t like their hugely privileged patriarchal position of power, violence and abuse, they can organise their own movement to change it.
Your post makes about as much sense as saying charities who rescue trafficked prostitutes should start helping those poor dear suffering pimps and johns instead.