to be sad that my DD has now passed gender discrimination 101?

[ICBINEG]

My DD can now accurately pick out the boys and girls in her peer group (age 1-2). Presumably she has successfully identified that boys and girls are dressed differently/have their hair cut differently.

This is entirely due to adult imposed gender discrimination, as she a) isn't looking at them naked, b) can't possibly be detecting the very subtle actual differences in behaviour/appearance.

So lets hurry onto the next lesson:

Society expects girls and boys to behave differently and have different interests, strengths and weaknesses.

Before I could at least wonder if, when she saw in books that all the girls are doing different things to the boys, she might not realise which was which and specifically which group she was 'supposed' to be in. Now I know she will be learning exactly what is expected of her every time a tired old stereotype is rolled out.

i don't understand why some of you are dead set against feminism.

remember that you've made these comments when you vote, or go out on your own, or make a purchase without your husband's permission, or get a job where you earn the same as the man doing the same job, or go on maternity leave etc etc.

feminism starts at making sure that children know they are equal in stature.

I HAVE NOT GIVEN HER A CREW CUT....how very dare you.

As I said earlier...I de mulleted her and that is it.

a mullet-ectomy if you like....

floggingmolly what do girls look like?

Ah, she is lovely Icbineg

A few points...
Lots of boys have long hair at the moment.
At nurseries all children will have the same access to all toys but its very interesting watching how they play differently with them.
Shouldn't you be on Dadsnet so as not to uphold the stereotype?!!!!!

I thought that experiments had shown that even children as young as a few months old can tell the difference in the sexes?

Small girls can tell, like everyone else, whether it is a girl or a boy- despite parents trying to disguise it- they are not silly.

I agree that there is a lot of gender stereotyping especially with the likes of mothercare
However As lots of parents on this thread have highlighted children choose their clothes a lot of the time
So YABU to expect other girls to not pick pink clothes or boys to not pick blue etc
And YABU to expect your views and opinions to be an important factor when parents make decisions for THEIR children
Not everyone is as educated on topics like this as some of us may be.

I also agree with other posters about young children not relying on clothing/hair to differentiate between genders: DS age 3 chooses to wear a lot of red and blue and rarely picks his pink or yellow t shirts, he has longish curly hair, he is referred to as a 'she' by adults a lot of the time but he's never been referred to as a she or a girl by any of his peers.

I think that people under estimate children- they are not blank sheets to imprint whatever you like.

You need a hobby.

Exactly QueenBee- adults may be fooled by a boy with long blonde curls but another child won't be.

I think I sort of understand what you're trying to say.

The only bit I'm not understanding is why you don't think she knows what sex she is. As in biologically. If, as you say, she is able to differentiate between other people's gender why is she unaware of her own? Has she never ever been referred to as a girl?

I haven't looked at the photo but are you perhaps trying so hard not to dress her as a girl that you've ended up dressing her as a boy? I don't know you so it's purely my thoughts in what you've written about your daughter constantly being mistaken for a girl. Only when my DS was a baby I'd say it was about 50/50 with strangers guessing.

I also picked up that you say you know nothing of fashion and link that to working in a male dominated environment. Surely that wouldn't make you any less aware of fashion, just perhaps less aware of female fashion in the workplace. You must still see people in the street, so you must still be at least aware of current fashions on a very basic level, regardless of how much it interests you.

I get the impression that you are happy for your DD to look like a boy but wouldn't like it if she looked like a girl. I'm sure that's not the case in reality but that's the way it comes across in writing iyswim.

I think I'd worry about that having the opposite effect on your daughter than you want it to have.

I think you make some very valid points but I do think you are perhaps over thinking this one issue.

My DD understands which of her peers are girls and which are boys. She is 20 months. She will call her little friend Oliver 'a good boy' and tell me that 'Abigayle is a big girl'. She lives in trousers, wears all kinds of different colours - her favourite colours are orange and purple. She isn't making the distinction that pink = girl and blue =boy. She is just learning that Oliver is a boy and Abigayle is a girl. When the children at nursery do something well she hears them praised as such with a 'good girl' or 'good boy' comment from the staff. I too think you are reading too much into it. Your daughter is simply clever, and has picked up on which children are referred to as girls and which are referred to as boys.

Trouble is though kids grow and have their own ideas,and a nasty habit of activky trying to piss you off.

Your dd may become very girly ax a reaction to your influence.

That's what makes parenting fun and real though and not serious abc academic.

I agree the gender sterotyping and colour coding is worse in the Uk than in continental Europe where it is more normal for children to wear trousers and a t-shirt, there's far less 'princess pink' and 'Thomas the Tank engine blue' out there.

Having said that, I was that 1970's child with the bowl hair-cut and the brown cord dungarees. My parents deliberately dressed me in gender neutral clothes. Unfortunately this just made me feel like a plain version of all the pretty blonde pink-dressed girls I saw at parties. Now I dress in a very overtly feminine way (make-up, heels) on a daily basis.

Be careful you don't make a big thing about it. Being a girl is not a bad thing.

Op, how did you become a feminist in this g ender discriminatory world? did you perhaps use your brain and think? I suggest you relax and realise that you can fight ' universe' all you like but your dd will in time make up her own mind.

Being a girl is not a bad thing.

Which is precisely why I worship at the altars of L'Oreal and Topshop, amongst others [sarcasm]

Ok, so she might not need to know who's a boy and who's a girl at the moment, but there was probably some time in the long, distant past where it might've been quite handy to know if the adult you're approaching is likely to feed you or ignore you. Some of the defining features of gender (such as men having longer middle fingers, different face shapes, etc.) are there from babyhood. They're not 100% reliable, but to most there's an innate knowledge as to what the gender of the person in front of you is. Especially if the person is a peer and you can compare to the face in the mirror.

That type of evolutionary trait is not likely to be "bred out" or disappear within a few generations.

I'm sorry, I honestly can't get my mind around half these posts, but based on the OP ... does no-one else think it's really interesting how a child that small can tell, given there aren't necessarily visible physical differences?

I guess this is one of those where everyone who has kids has got bored of this stuff, but to me it's amazing they can tell.

Also ... FFS, 'discrimination' means 'telling the difference'. It starts with identifying the difference. The OP's child has started being able to tell a difference between two groups ... eventually, she will work out that the rest of society has an unpleasant attitude to her group, and that difference will become significant.

I don't get why that's particularly OTT to have a mildly sad moment over?

you know, I was just wondering last night what happened to the nutter who was raising her kid as "gender neutral" ....

Worded the way you've worded it LRD it's not OTT at all.

The way the OP worded it did sound OTT, perhaps it's as simple as two people expressing the same views but in a different way. Or perhaps it's the same opinion but different extremes.

I don't know, but your post makes me react very differently to the OP's. That's the way with the written word I suppose.

I thought that experiments had shown that even children as young as a few months old can tell the difference in the sexes?

Exactly LastTangoInDevonshire but let's not let science stand in the way of a juicy conspiracy theory!

I think that people under estimate children- they are not blank sheets to imprint whatever you like.

The whole idea of the human brain being a Tabula rasa is well out of date as any first year Psychology student knows. People are born with innate tools for understanding/analysing the world around them and other people, they're not just empty vessels into which 'society' pours it's prescribed expectations and agenda.

randall - yeah, I know ... I wondered if that was what the OP was getting at, and then she got all caught up?

But like I say, I honestly can't get my mind around the rest of the posts and didn't read every one, so maybe I am wrong.

I just find it so fascinating that a child that age can do something as subtle as recognising what must be cues like what colour clothes (but that doesn't always hold), length of hair, pronouns etc. ...

It does seem sad that all of that happens and yet for lots of people, the later stages are so much sadder.

But you may be right that isn't what the OP meant at all.

But society doesn't only have an unpleasant attitude to the female sex LRD ?

It's a mixed picture. Other girls will identify her as a potential friend for starters.
Not that boys can't be friends too - but I know by nursery my DD was already beginning to have closer friendships with other girls.
How much parents and teachers encouraged this I'm not sure.

But I don't think the growing awareness we are female is all negative is it ?

Looking back on my childhood I think to me it meant I was someone like Mummy and Granny and my teachers, with all the rich mixture of characteristics they had.

I can't help but think that people who go on about gender stereotyping contradict themselves. If a girl plays with something pink they view it negatively. If a girl plays with something blue then this is great. Why don't people like this just let their dcs play with whatever they like and stop classifying everything. Surprise surprise some girls like playing with traditionally viewed girl toys with the same applying for boys.