Getting a tiny bit feminist on the teacher's ass!

[SolidGoldBrass]

I didn't raise my voice. I didn't unshave my legs or anything.
It just so happened that DS and I bumped into his class teacher at the playground this afternoon and we had a pleasant chat; the teacher turns out to have DC of her own, of a similar age to DS. She mentioned something about girls being very different to boys. I very very gently said that this was in fact rubbish and suggested she read Delusions of Gender, and added that I thought every teacher should read it as a lot of the stuff about gender difference you hear these days was not only wrong but dangerous...

I'm going to be 'one of THOSE mothers' forever, aren't I?

Im going off years of experience to and completely disagrer,however its because I see them much younger where they dont havr to conform yet.

I am also one of Those Parents: school ran a session on 'Your Child's Developing Brain' a while ago run by an outside company which spouted all this innate gender-difference bollocks with lots of sciencey diagrams and I was bloody INCENSED (especially as they were very careful not to allow any time for questions or any chance for us to challenge what they were saying). Emailed head to complain (including link to Delusions ;) ) and she turned out to be a bit of a feminist too - told me the company had misrepresented the content of the session to her, she'd been shocked bh it herself, and that they wouldn't be invited back

I have two boys who are very, very different, I am sure if one had been a girl we'd put the differences down to gender. I was told by a friend of mine that my calm, polite DS was not 'normal' for a boy whereas her loud bullish DS was.

I am firmly in the camp that there is a lot more to us than our gender, and being a woman in a very male industry I see those ridiculous stereotype every day.

Everyone banging on about how your children are completely different - anecdote /= data. Delusions of Gender is excellent, and very readable, and will show you just how much your children are being socialised into their gender roles despite your best efforts.

I find them very different- I don't know why it is taboo to say it. Why on earth do people have such angst about having a baby boy when they wanted a girl if there is no difference? Try saying that on a baby thread ' don't be silly- you are making a fuss over nothing- there is no difference'!

Girls and boys are different because we treat them differently; not because they inherently are different.

Some (not) all women want girls so that they can do girls things to them. You know, dress them up in pretty frocks, brush their hair (which they've grown long), take them shopping and to ballet lessons.

Yes, they could do all these things with their sons as well... but ... interestingly, they don't. Do they?

I have one child, a boy, who shows both 'male' and 'female' typical traits. I like to think that it's because he's an individual. He loves cars, sure. He notices makes and models and remembers them, when I can't. He told me that my tyres needed air (they did). But that is because his father loves vehicles and he wants to be like his father, and his father has instilled a fascination
He also loves to sit and read, or colour, or craft. Because his mother likes to do those things. As he has been at nursery for a few years he has been socialised into more 'male' behaviours and that will get more entrenched when he goes to school. I remember my brother being very 'girly' before he went to school because he wanted to be like me. It's so impossible to judge what is innate personality and what is socialisation.

Midnight Masquerader, I took DS to ballet lessons until peer pressure made him give up - he still does Highland and jazz dance..... It isn't always the mums!

I have two boys and a girl.......and I love me a good ole read from the feminist section of the book shop ( currently wading through Vagina by Naomi Woolf) BUT I do think there are some innate differences just from my observations of being a mother for the past 11 years.

I also think there is a hell of a lot of social conditioning going on, and I think it's getting worse. For example at Christmas I tried to source a dolls house for 2 yo DD, most of them look like barbie threw up on them, pink plastic crap (I just wanted something durable, not one of those intricate Victorian jobbies) anyway I ended up with what is possibly the only dolly house with a blue roof, I got it from e bay, it's a 15 year old Little Tikes one, quite gender neutral and fun.

scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2009/06/10/six-month-olds-prefer-differen/

www.rps.psu.edu/probing/gender.html

For every opinion there is a polar opinion.

The differences are obvious, even at a young age - its due to hormones.

Nature will always triumph over nurture in the end.

The second article is on the CAH hormone, a study of girls born with enlarged clitoris and fused labia, surgery to correct at a young age and also given corrective hormones to bring the CAH levels down to a standard level. All showed male traits and were more aggressive, 'boy like' if you will. Those girls were gender stereotyped into female, but they were still exhibiting the sterotypical male behaviour of enhanced physical, spatial, mathematical skills.

Now why would that be? Hormones. Babies have hormones too. As shown by the girls in link 2, who had abnormally high CAH and were medically engineered and sterotyped into traditional females.

You can try to make your little boy like pink spangly things all you like, but by 18 months he'll have a natural gravitas towards trucks, and vice versa. Well, 99% of the time they will define their own gender - and I know there are going to be anecdotal stories about boys liking dolls and girls liking cars because there is always someone who is different.

I cant find the study - a Scandanvian one - where babies were given gender neutral toys and clothes for 2 years, then let loose in a room with gender specific toys. The girls gravitated towards dolls, houses, prams etc and the boys towards lego and cars.

SmeeHee: Please do read the book, as it deconstructs all this supposed 'research' on how different the genders are.

As to DS teacher, she made the comments in an 'unofficial' setting ie we met her in the park, and she was talking as another mum not a teacher. I don't actually want to go into too much detail just in case she's a MNer which would be hugely awkward...

This is interesting. I think that it it wrong, and counter productive, to ignore the fact that by the time they get to school they are different. There are two tasks, really. The first one is to change society so that we stop socialising boys and girls to be different from before birth. If this is going to happen, this is a long term goal.

The second one is to deal with th fact that this generation we are dealing with now have been socialised that way. There is a difference between a teacher saying "oh, they are so different arn't they, bless their little mud paddling/doll hugging socks" and a teacher saying "Yes, they are different, and this school is going to do it's damdest to show them that despite what the world tells them in this school, they are not going tonbendefined by gender"

My dd went to a girl's school from year 7 to 11, and was used to arguing, debating, speaking up, doing physics, doing stuff. She's been in a mixed 6th form since September, and regularly rants about how the girls have suddenly become quiet and compliant, and the boys take up all the room. She's got a meeting with the head after half term to talk about it.

So the differences are there. They shouldn't be, but they are. And we deny it at our peril.

Oh, and anyone on this thread uses the word "feisty" I will explode.

I took DS to ballet lessons. I was also a single mother and before he had access to any one else or TV he made guns from toast and could make very good gun noises at the back of his throat (I am anti guns) I have a friend who has a boy and a girl 14 months apart-she wasn't having 'any of this conditioning nonsense' -she ended up with a girly girl and a very boyish boy.
You always know that if someone is bringing up a child to be non gender stereotyping it will be a boy and they wanted a girl!
You can do what you like with your DD-if you don't let her have pink it will be fine if she agrees but if she likes pink-she likes pink!
I can't see why people can't just relax and go with the child-rather than their own fixed ideas.

How arrogant OP. Why don't you become a teacher? You may be able to change the world, eh?

YANBU. Thanks for highlighting the book - I've just ordered it to read.
My FIL is always going on about the differences between men and women so hopefully I can pass it his way when I'm done!

This is where the feminist ideal breaks down for many people.

There are physiological, psychological and hormonal differences between the genders that does not make one more important than the other but does mean that the mode of each gender is different in quite discernible ways.

Of course there are a large number of children either side of the bell curve who exhibit more of the characteristics generally attributed to the opposite sex but it is not just social conditioning that brings the difference, it is innate,,

But it is wonderful that we are different and our children are different. it is something to celebrate not hide away from or think that it makes our daughters in this society less equal.

Treat each child as an individual and you can't go wrong

And yet if a boy 'likes pink' he's inevitably gently persuaded out of it...

Sorry, but I just won't be persuaded that girls and boys are treated exactly the same...

Good for you OP.
My DS current teacher has daughters, and it shows in the blatant way she favours girls.
She frequently yells out the boys but the girls get away with pretty similar stuff - it goes unnoticed.
She's a pretty good teacher so I keep my gob shut, but I have noticed.

Mine are different, but I expect this difference is then reinforced and amplified by me and wider society.
I was quite amazed at the difference in type of play though. Luckily, I have actually seen other little boys play with playmobil or else I would wonder why it even existed.

midnight teenaged boys love pink - my eldest doesnt own anything that isnt pink, pink, I am informed, is the new black!

As a teacher and mum of both genders, boys and girls are different in my experience. A good teacher knows this and knows how to reach both boys and girls, knowing what appeals to each gender. I know I'm generalising but I've taught for almost ten years so I've known a fair few children. There are always exceptions of course; "tomboys", and quiet studious boys who prefer to play with dolls or play at teachers etc. I suppose I don't know how they've been nurtured at home but I do know that mine are treated exactly the same. My son's favourite toy is the doll pushchair; he walks round in play high heels and bracelets yet he is so much more laid back, chilled, and physical than her. She's a princess through and through entirely of her own design.

Well how about a read of this:

crr.math.arizona.edu/GenderKeynote.pdf

or this:

www.journeytoexcellence.org.uk/resourcesandcpd/research/summaries/rsgenderineducation.asp

or this:

faculty.washington.edu/chudler/heshe.html

The one book "Delusions of Gender" written by a psychiatrist, with no qualifications in neurology, is far from the last word on this subject.

I spared her my other usual comment that I offer people who have one DS and one DD and therefore insist that boys and girls just are different - which is that people who have more than one child of either gender often find that their children are different...

I often find myself saying this too! Usually after they have commented that I have three 'the same'. Er, no, they are all very different actually.

I have a boy and a girl, they are both very different, this is because they are different people.

Ds is quiet, gentle, sensitive. Dd is loud, manipulative and slightly obsessed with guns and death.

There is one study from Delusions of Gender that always sticks with me. If you prime females to acknowledge their sex by having a tick box at the top of the paper, they do worse on maths tests than if they aren't primed. As a group, of course.

Still blows my mind.

Coaldust,

When I see a result like the one that you have highlighted, it really makes me wonder about the research. I really struggle to believe it is true. I don't believe someone approaches a test differently merely by ticking a box, UNLESS there is something else going on. I would really like to dig into the original of that piece of research to look at the methodology and the stats. Normally when you get a really bizarre result, the experiment is not statistically significant, not repeatable or there is more to it than meets the eye.

If true, it is remarkable. But I would not take incredible results on trust without lookiing further.