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?

'Perhaps Sigmund would like her daughters to grow up and still be considered less than men seeker. each to their own.'

Actually Abigail, I would like my sons to grow up without being indoctrinated that they are less than women, responsible for all evil in the world, expected to do women's dirty work and then be called benevolently sexist bastards for doing so.

I would like them to not be shafted by the family courts, to not lose their income, their home and their children and be able to do fuck all about it.

I would like them to be taken seriously if they experience DV, and not feel shame and be mocked for reporting, given that men experience 40% of DV...

And it would be nice if my sons could actually run around play fighting with sticks without some misguided know it all stating that they do that because they've been indoctrinated since birth and it's got nothing to do with biology.

But hey each to their own.

What we are saying KellyElly is that until you strip back the social conditioning there is no way of knowing what differences (if any) there are between children of different sexes. Hormones may make no difference whatsoever or certainly less difference that gender stereotyping. And the hormone argument usually means that women are disadvantaged in someway.

ICBINEG

"Teachers should realise that it is their job to negate the shit that pours in from the outside world telling kids what they should be like."

Actually my job is to teach, the clue is in the name. I am not some sort of "shit filter", the reason for this is becasue your definition of shit is different to somebody elses.

That's good, sigmund.

Because that's exactly what feminists want for their sons too!

Yeah right Sigmund. Because men are always doing women's dirty work for them . And violence isn't gendered at all. And no-one ever takes DV against men seriously (just look at any DV on women thread on here and it just ends up talking about DV on men). And if they did 50/50 childcare before the split then they'd get 50/50 childcare after the split.

I'm reading Raising Boys by Steve Biddulph. Is he talking rubbish?

I haven't read Delusions of Gender, but I will now.

I thought it was a given that teachers were responsible for upholding good principles about diversity and equality and 'every child matters' etc.

But yes. What seeker says too. In fact feminists would like to see less violence all round. If that is OK with you.

Lurcio,

But, regardless of who holds what opinion, there is only one scientific "truth". And that is, probably, that we have two different but strongly overlapping bell curves. Those saying "men and women are the same and it is ALL down to social conditioning" are as wrong and simplistic as those who believe "men like football, girls like dolls". It is clearly somewhere in the middle, the only interesting discussion is where in the middle the truth lies, which is very hard to answer.

Why would it offend you if part of your personality was due to more of one hormone in the womb than the other? We are all a product of our genetics and chemical environments.

I think what this thread shows is that many people are wedded to the 'girls and boys are different, they just are' claim and no actual facts will convince them otherwise.

There's been research where babies were dressed in blue, or pink. Adults treated the same baby very differently when it was dressed in a gender-stereotyped colour. They were gentle and cuddly with the babies they believed were girls and far rougher with boys, and made claims about how the baby displayed gender stereotypical behaviour.

Even if you explain that 100 years ago, pink was 'for boys' and blue 'for girls' so clearly a liking for pink is not an innate gender difference. There are still scientists trying to prove it is. There was a study a couple of years ago 'proving' this and claiming it was down to girls collecting berries in hunter-gatherer societies. Clearly they hadn't noticed that berries aren't pink (and not all red either) and hadn't bothered doing any desk research to see if pink had always been associated with femininity.

Isn't that a striking example of gender stereotyping - that scientists who are meant to do proper unbiased research are so conditioned by society they didn't bother to check their initial assumption, but went out and found what they claimed was evidence to confirm it? (In Edwardian times, pink was thought to be boyish as it was regarded as a pale red and therefore associated with aggression and male traits, blue was girlish because it was a calm colour.)

People will notice traits that confirm their prejudices and ignore those that don't. They will encourage girls to do X and boys to do Y right from birth. And then claim all this social conditioning proves girls are like this and boys are like that.

The problem is that seeing the world through this gender lens confines and restricts children. It means girls are discouraged from being scientists, even if they have a natural flair in that direction. And boys are discouraged from going into childcare even if they have a natural talent for it.

Lurcio, Im one who believes there just are differences that occur betweenthe genders, and yet I work in a typically male job: city trading, where personality traits needed tend to be those associated more with men. I do not think all girls are one way and all boys another, but something from a very early age seems to develop differently in boys to girls. Why do girls seem to develop language, communication, role play whilst boys develop more "physically", with movement, speed, etc?

Let me say I am totally aware differences exist within genders, there is no such thing as a typical boy or girl...I'm just curious as to why they develop so differently even just as tiny toddlers.

Do I need to download this book perhaps?

People aren't saying men and women are all the same. They are saying individuals are individuals and we shouldn't limit them with gender expectations. We should let children be children and enjoy quiet play when they feel like it and physical play when they feel like it, not encourage one and discourage the other.

Coral, that's because from being a newborn babies are exposed to gender stereotyping, which encourages boys to be loud and aggressive and girls to be quiet and caring. Some people manage to defy expectations. Many conform.

'Yeah right Sigmund. Because men are always doing women's dirty work for them . And violence isn't gendered at all. And no-one ever takes DV against men seriously (just look at any DV on women thread on here and it just ends up talking about DV on men). And if they did 50/50 childcare before the split then they'd get 50/50 childcare after the split.'

Men have ALWAYS done women's dirty work for them. Violence is totally gendered, men by far experience the most violence. If DV towards men was taken seriously there would be refuges for men:

"There are over 400 publicly funded refuges for abused women and their children, but none specifically for abused men and their children, although five of the women?s refuges do allocate about 11 places for men and their children on an ad hoc basis. Generally, however, women?s refuges prohibit any men or older male children from the premises."

This, in spite of men accounting for 40% of DV cases.

Saying that the childcare should be 50/50 is ridiculously simplistic, and in a lot of cases, completely unworkable.

Larry - it's the way the bell curves are interpreted by journalists (and some educational professionals) who don't understand statistics that worries me. They read the bit about differences in the means of the populations, and immediately think that we have two delta functions a long way apart! They never think about standard deviation.

Hence (let me pick an example where boys are disadvantaged by this sort of thinking) thread on here which start "my son still isn't talking at 2.5 years old". You will get loads of respondents saying "that's ok, boys talk later than girls", perhaps lulling the worried parent into a false sense of security, when in fact the correct answer is "ok, there's a small difference in the mean age at which boys and girls talk, but your son is now so far into the tail of the distribution that you should be getting him checked out by a professional."

And no, I have no problem with being a product (in part) of genetics and chemical environment (as well as being in part a product of social factors, education etc. - and it is, as Lise Elliot points out, incredibly difficult to design clean experiments which will tell you which part is more important). What I do have a problem with is the presentation of these differences - women with high testosterone levels are somehow weird, not proper women.

I remember reading an interview with a post-op female-to-male transsexual. He was talking about how his perception of the world changed as he made the transition. He said the most startling phase was when he began having testosterone injections, and that he was completely astounded at how different the elevated levels of testosterone made him feel. Basically, he felt much more driven to pursue what he wanted, sometimes quite aggressively, and was much more likely to feel anger than despondency when denied something.

I thought that was very interesting. It does rather imply that certain traits are chemically controlled.

However, on thinking about it a bit more we are talking about someone who learned and internalised their responses to gender conditioning as a female. Someone who hasn't had the benefit of a childhood treated as a male to become acclimatised to the presence of testosterone and to learn what to do with those feelings brought about by it. Which again comes down to conditioning, doesn't it.

My gut feeling is gender, like sexuality, is probably a spectrum rather than a binary thing. Certainly in my life I've had periods where I am much more feminine than at other times. This is partly adaptation to society, partly my own feelings at the time. Sometimes I really like being female and think it confers me an advantage. Other times I feel it restricts me dreadfully and I get very angry about it. I suspect many other women, and men, feel the same.

We are all human first before we are male or female, and if gender didn't matter in terms of how we behave and what we do I suspect the world would be a much nicer place. I suspect we will always attempt to differentiate between the sexes though (in terms of appearance, if nothing else) simply because of the biological imperative to mate.

Incidentally, does anyone know of any research into how the gender stereotypes held by researchers influence what they "see" when they do field work? I know there's a lot of stuff on this in primatology (Donna Harraway, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy). It always strikes me as interesting, because someone might look casually at my small son playing with his cars and think "typical boy, playing with cars" without listening to the dialogue which makes it clear that the cars are people in his mind and he's practising social interactions with them. (They had a tea party in the dolls house recently. Then a lorry came along who was too big to fit in. So - in a spirit of inclusivity - the cars decided they would have a barbecue in the garden so the lorry could join in ).

Sigmund- yes men are far more likely to suffer violence- overwhelmingly from other men. So surely you agree that it's a good idea to examine, from babyhood, the construct of masculinity that makes men violent towards each other?

Good debate.

My 4 kids are all different to each other but the girls ( much younger than the lads) are defiantly tougher mentally and physically. I don't mean stronger as in physical strength but they make far less fuss over colds etc.

Men have ALWAYS done women's dirty work for them.

What does this mean?

I look after a nearly 3 year old boy since he was a newborn. His parents are artists and in fact his dad in in a very ' feminine' profession. Most of their friends are homosexual. There was never any pressure for this boy to be boyish. He always had my daughter for a playmate and at my house were always surrounded by 'girly' stuff.
However he turned out to be your 'typical' boy.
He loves anything to do with transport toys, dinosaurs, wild animal, everything else.
His favourite colours are green and blue

However he is also very gentle and not too much boisterous. yet.

So this is my research based only on this one child
Didn't read the whole thread tough

Those of you so insistent on upholding gender stereotypes - what are you going to do when one of your DC expresses a clear desire for something that's the 'wrong' gender? Whether it's your DS wanting Barbies for his 6th birthday or your teenage DD insisting she wants to study physics, are you going to deny your child something vitally important to him/her on the grounds of bad science and prejudice?

Really?! Stereotypes from newborn? I can't think of any gender specific toys or books we had for dd, colours were all primary, we did a fair bit of rough play and soft, we read, and threw balls, and painted, and sculpted and climbed and built tunnels... Yet she gravitates towards more role play led playtime, reading, no real rough and tumble.