to be fuming at sexist Christmas Presents?

[WomanlyWoman]

I attended my first PTA meeting the other night, during which I discovered that the pta have bought Christmas presents for every child in the school. Nice, right? Then I realised the presents were different according to gender, the older children get books, the younger ones such as my child, in reception, get crafty things from Yellow Moon. Great, except - the girls get flower presses, the boys get cars.

This has really p-ed me off bigtime. For one, my daughter likes cars, car was one of her first words, she adores Lightning McQueen and doesn't seem to realise that it's meant to be for boys. So what message does it give her about herself when she sees the boys getting cars while she gets a flower press? Admittedly she would probably like a flower press too, but that is not the point. What about nature loving boys? Why are these children being given the message that active dynamic machines are for boys and pretty, passive things like flowers are for girls? A nature theme for all of them or a transport theme for all of them would be fine by me, but this just seems so wrong.

I'm very shy by nature and I hardly know any of the other parents. The pta meeting itself was quite an ordeal for me, so I didn't speak up at the time. I thought it was pointless because the presents have already been bought. Why make myself unpopular, so soon, when it's already done and dusted.

Then I started thinking, it's only October, there may be time to send them back and order different ones if enough parents express an opinion similar to mine. Not sure how to go about it though. Opinions and advice appreciated.

Meteorite PTAs don't dare to be too accountable to aprents; in my experience that way madness lies, seen too many 'nice' parents start screaming at PTA members when what they want is not deemed a priority.

If the PTA is a charity one of the groups it is accountable to is the charity commission; if not, it is accountable to it's committeee, a member of which should be the headc though that's not guaranteed, and the people who attend meetings to vote. Meetings are open to parents should they wish to attend.

Can you tell I am glad my stint as Secretary is over, and that I shall not be returning to committee now ds4 is at the school?

I think individual human beings are far too complex to lump them into 2 such narrowly defined gender roles as "male" and "female".

What is my natural role? I love my friend's children and enjoy spending time with them but do not have a maternal bone in my body and do not want any of my own. I love action films and computer games but also love make-up and clothes shopping. Growing up I loved climbing trees, making mud-pies and watching transformers. I begged my mum one Christmas to get me a train set but I also loved My Little Pony and Care Bears. I am terrible at housework but my husband likes everything to be neat and tidy and does most of the housework - he is far more "naturally" suited to it than I.

Why do people feel such a need to define children in such a narrow-minded way and I actually feel it is worse for boys as they face far more ridicule for acting in a traditionally "female" way than a girl would for being a bit of a tom-boy.

That's interesting Button. So would it be more accurate to say that the PTA are there to represent parents?

The PTA is there as a body of parents that will fundraise; oit's true that some school run it differently- for example we had bemused aprents wondering why we did not take up issues such as uniform so I guess some might operate at that level- but certainly where I am the PTA (more likely PA) exists purely in the manner of most charity committees of this type- to set fundraising aims on consultation with those who go to meetings then fundraise for them. It is impossible to answer to the wider community. That's more of a Governot issue I would think, although we didn't have any Governors or teachers willing to sit on our PA so we kept it small (following the case of someone the year before who ahd been Chair was was verbally assaulted in the playground for not opting to buy something nobody had turned up at the 'sjhopping ' meeting to ask for)

why do some people have such a hard time accepting that they would be born with attributes and preferences to suit their natural role, claiming that it's all down to society's conditioning

Possibly because it is down to conditioning

Yes there are differences, but just as between ethic groups they are infintissimally small when compared to the differences between individuals of the same sex. Lord there is so much stuff out there. You could start with a GCSE Sociology textbook. Or an Anthropology one seeing as you mention the discipline. A 10 second Google brings up this

You are right in that an anthropologist would see plenty of differences between women's and men's roles in many societies - but we are not slaves to biology (thank goodness).

Right, so PTA is for fundraising, and Governors for taking on board parents' comments for improving the school?

Chocobo - my theory: there's a natural instinct to categorise the world, e.g. types of tree/dog/whatever, it makes it easier to process. The more you can categorise people the easier, too. I think it takes a bit of conscious effort though, to look at that instinct and say, no it's not fair because it's discriminatory. Even if it's been happening for ages, like pigeonholing boys and girls.

Mete at our school yes

Project years since I studied psych now but absolutely categorising is natural to humans, it's part of stereotype theiry and fairlya ccepted

When DH and I were in a shop once, DD's attention was taken by some children's towels (she's 2). She touched the orange one first with the digger, then a blue one, then the pink one. At which point DH said "You see! She always goes for pink!" People see what they expect to see.

What's the best way of overcoming that "categorising" instinct, do you think?

Debate and raising issues, but it is ahrd as if too full on alienates people and too soft gets ignored.

Think you are right projectbabyweight but it makes me sad that so many people are unwilling to make the effort when it comes to gender. I am so glad that most people now realise it is wrong to stereotype/discriminate based on race/sexuality etc. but am still astounded the amount of people, many of them women, who will just accept it when it is stereotyping girls/boys.

My friend was joking the other day that her little boy behaved more like a girl because he was a bit shy and sensitive whereas our friend's little girl is more like a boy in that she is daring and adventurous. I felt like saying to her well does not just show how rubbish stereotyping children is but am tired of having the same arguments.

I have 4 boys and one adores pink; he has Sn anyway so people atribute it to that (I don't think it is, I think he likes what he likes but fails to pick up on society's insistence on becoming more mannish IYSWIM)- it's a constant slog to stop brothers, schoolmates etc trying to socialise him into changing. If he wants to fine but it's hard to stop him being forced without forcing him not to change if he wants.

You will never please everyone. For example, the suggestion of selection box for everyone would be no good for my DS. He is completely tube fed ( congnitively typical though) and is in any event dairy allergic.......so that's be no good for him !

I think that it's lovely that the kids are getting a pressie. Maybe the teachers could suggest who gets what, as they will know what girls have an interest in cars and what boys ike nature etc and label the gifts accordingly.

"I really don't understand why someone would actively go to the effort of differentiating the two groups when it would surely be much easier to just not."

exactly Katie. exactly.

The question should not be "what harm does it do to gender differentiate".

The question should be "what benefits does it bring to gender differentiate".

I cannot see why there is any benefit in giving girls one toy and boys another.

this thread is hilarious and makes me want to join a PTA

next year you could divide it along class lines so anyone who lives in a council house gets a Jeremy Kyle DVD, those who live on mixed tenure or privately owned estates get an Argos catalogue and some Emma Bridgewater tableware, those from non-estate houses might like family membership of English Heritage or National Trust or something?

Could be argued it brings quite a lot of benefits to men (higher wages, more leisure time, political influence etc) and to capitalism (reserve army of labour, free domestic labour maintaining work force etc)
But that only counts if you believe that the girl is mother to the woman (which I do)

it would make more sense than the girl/boy thing though not sure have come up with best gift suggestions - maybe can of special brew for council house children and wine for everyone else?

You could gauge it by name.

Those with the "common" names could receive sparkly Playboy pencil cases (or whatever the boy equivalant might be) and the nicely but blandly named children could receive appropriately patterned Cath-Kidston-a-like ones. I'm working on what to give the rest.

In case of doubt, I propose using the MN Baby Names board as a barometer. People just love pinning class badges on names over there - they'd love it.

I've got it. The rest get a pencil case randomly selected from the previous categories, thus facilitating a worthy an enlightening conversation on class and gender stereotyping between parent and child.

Ok, being serious it would make more sense - to divide the children into "sporty" and "artistic", and give them toys accordingly, than to divide them into "girl" and "boy".

Of course there would be some kids who are both, and some who are neither. So some would be hard to categorise. But at least the distinction would be based on thinking about the actual child rather than assumptions about what they are like based on their gender.

Other than that the whole of your post was twaddle, with perhaps the assertion that the sexes are different. But as you didn't qualify it with physically different then I have to say I can't agree with that point either

Well of course you can't agree, because if you had to admit the sexes are different, and that gender differentiation is used all over in life without much argument, then the reasoning underpinning gender neutral parenting falls away and it becomes just another ideology based on unverifiable dogma.

(Incidentally, gender neutral parenting Mk 1 sputtered out in the late 70's, mainly because the children failed to read the theory books and carried on doing what kids do)

I really don't understand why someone would actively go to the effort of differentiating the two groups when it would surely be much easier to just not

And I really don't understand why someone would get so het up about a PTA's existing decision to give different Christmas presents to the kids when it would bs so much easier to do what has already been done. It's no big deal, try and persuade them give the same present to all next year.

But why? What's so different about making assumptions about someone because of their gender, to making them because of their race? I know that one is considered OK and the other is considered outrageous (rightly) but why do we think that is

IMO it is because anything where you are differentiating between people, nearly anything can look racist if you substitute X for black, or jew, or whatever, and race has some serious emotional baggage given the last 300 years or so of world history.

Thus playing the race card (or Nazi card etc) moves the debate "is X good/bad" to "anyone who thinks this about X is implicity a racist/nazi/etc" and totally changes the tone, so it becomes nearly impossible to have a rational discussion.

Loving the pencil cases. Might I suggest Playboy for some of the boys as the punters tastes do vary? Why not give boys the same career opportunities as 'glamour' models?