re MN campaigns

[coco44]

Ok well I'll probably get deleted but I just want to vent about some of the MN campaigns, which I find are very dogmatic and partial.
Firstly 'Pink stinks' .WEll I am all for letting all children have access to pink, blue, orange purple, dolls, tractors, prams , dinosaurs.But I don't think all children are blank slates.Female animals usually have different roles and tempeaments to males.Why shouldn't girls be allowed and encouraged to be pink and sparkly and feminine if that is what they want! why should they have to deny their nurturing instincts? But 'pink stinks' is just so scathing and dismisssive of what lots (not all) girls are!

secondly the 'we believe you' campaign.This really scares me Women should undoubtedly be always encouraged to tell and be listened to .But statistically well over half of us are parents of boys.
a woman could falsely accuse one of your sons ( or your DH) wreck their career, marriage, reputation, life , and everyone should just automatically believe the worst of your DC because he is a male.To hell with de, judge and jury! I think and hope the campaign is well meaning but terribly worded.A Fraisier Crane-esque 'WE are listening' would have been so much less sinister

Let girls be girls.More pontificating.You are not going to dress your own pre-teen dds in boob tubes and stillettos (and neither am I).But Stop imposing your views on others!!

I agree with you on the pink thing.

Lots of girls do like pink sparkly stuff, and whether that is a result of social conditioning or whatever else, I do dislike the attitude that there is something fundamentally wrong with stereotypically girly things. I don't believe any child should receive the message that their choice of toys is wrong.

I can see where you are coming from with 'we believe you', but it's only a campaign, not a change in the justice system that is going to do away with premise of innocent until proven guilty and see any man accused of anything be automatically convicted.

' can see where you are coming from with 'we believe you', but it's only a campaign'
It is an attempt to steer people into being prejudiced though.I prefer to be open minded and fair.
People who are saying pink used to be a boys' colour are missing the point.It doesn't matter what the colour is, it is the insistence that girls should not like things which appeal to the traditional female nature.
I don't believe men and lay to nfeminine atWhich again is people attempting to control thoughts.I do not believe that the only difference between males and females is down to social conditioning! Going back to other mammals Are you saying a cow and a bull have the same temperament?

Let toys be toys isn't about saying girls can't have pink domestic things. It's saying they shouldn't only or automatically have pink or domestic things, and equally that boys should not be barred from having pink or domestic things. Which you'd know, if you'd followed the campaign rather than just reading the headline.

I manage to nurture my son perfectly adequately without ever wearing anything pink/sparkly. Colour has nothing to do with the "traditional female nature". There are obvious differences between male and female animals/humans. Not sure what point you're trying to make?

I agree with you OP
The fields near my house are full of these

1. I know Pink Stinks isn't a MN campaign, but on the 'nurturing' side ... male seahorses get pregnant and daddy penguins walk around with their eggs on their feet.

Do you really want to start using animals as role models for your child's 'nurturing instincts'?

2. The only people who need permission to be 'sparkly' are Twilight vampires. They're not real.

I don't think anyone could reasonably interpret the "We believe you" campaign as meaning that no false accusations are ever made. It is just a counterweight to the prevailing ethos of distrust and disrespect of possible victims of sexual crimes. That prevailing ethos is so powerful and so discouraging to victims that it often prevents them coming forward until they have been massively reassured that they won't be treated badly for speaking honestly. So there is a need for voices that express faith in those who do speak out. At the moment (because society is screwed up in this respect) balance can be improved by gestures that don't attempt to do more than flatly contradict a pernicious distortion.

It was only a Twitter trend and a couple of press releases -- set against e.g. the weight of disbelief that let Saville abuse for 50 years. I don't think there is any danger of it tipping the balance in a way that is unfair to my two sons!

OP - please go and read Cordelia Fine's Delusions of gender which has actual research into social constructs of feminism and gender typing/roles!

ODFOD. Come back when you've done the research.

By the way, the fact that you are more worried about false rape allegations than being raped shows how much the media have done a number on you.

You could find this out if you read up on it, but considering you havent yet, I won't hold my breath and so I'll stick it in the thread for you :)

FALSE RAPE ALLEGATIONS ARE NO MORE COMMON THAN FRAUDULENT BURGLARY CLAIMS

please go and read Cordelia Fine's Delusions of gender which has actual research into social constructs of feminism and gender typing/roles!
I will do that but can be found to support almost any viewpoint! Looking at the animal kingdom is very relevant I think. Seahorses and penguins are not good examples.They are not mammals!

FFS OP some of us, joking aside, have studied this kind of thing. You can't look at cows and bulls, which have a massive gender based size difference (a good indicator of at least gender based sexual behaviour differences) and say, "there you go, different".

Apart from the obvious fact that even in primates, there is a huge difference in behaviours, we aren't 'natural' humans. If we were, we would be hunter gatherers, who have a much more egalitarian societal structure than any humans past fixed agriculture. Gathering produces more calories, more consistently, than hunting so, in short, if you were a cock to the women, you weren't getting laid or eating.

My DD (3yo) plays with dinosaurs, prams, cars, her new marble run (argh, engineering, not for girls). Some of it is even pink. However, I don't restrict her choice. The shops and advertising do.

Oh, and depressingly 'our sons' are far more likely to commit a rape than be falsely accused. That should be shocking.

YABU. And, ignorant of the issues behind these campaigns.

'YABU. And, ignorant of the issues behind these campaigns.'
I don't think so.

And, I do.

Oh, shit.

And here I thought seahorses were mammals.

OP, you know primates practice infanticide, gang rape and incest?

Still want to use them as exemplars?

Thought not.

Don't see how you can pretend you're not ignorant of these campaigns when you didn't even realize which were MN campaigns and which weren't.

Don't see how you can pretend you're not ignorant of these campaigns when you didn't even realize which were MN campaigns and which weren't.

This is what I was about to say, but LRD got there first.

Seriously, you're not ignorant, but 'Pink Stinks' is a MN campaign? Talk about falling at the first hurdle. To be honest, for me, you lost all credulity with that opening statement - you haven't done your research at all.

Are you a faire OP?

Is your really name Coco Sparklyshitforbrains?

I thought half the bloody point of 'Let Toys be Toys' was to say that pink is just another colour, not something that should be demonized (as in Pink Stinks), but not something that should scream 'girl' either.

How do you feel about 'This is my child'?

Pink Stinks is a great campaign. You obviously know very little about it

and really you object to We believe you campaign

what sort of person are you apart from one that does not bother to read up on what they are moaning about to not want women who have been raped to be believed

pinkstinks is a campaign that targets the products, media and marketing that prescribe heavily stereotyped and limiting roles to young girls - from the Pinkstinks website.

What exactly is wrong with not wanting girls to be stereotyped and limited?

"Traditional female nature"....

For quite a lot of history women were thought (or at least discursively imagined) to be baser than men, deceitful, fiery, naturally slatternly, naturally more sexually promiscuous and desirous than men, cruel, fickle, gossipy and incapable of either true friendship or "pure" love. The nineteenth-century notion of women as feebly passive domestic angels who are "naturally" attuned to nurturing and naice pursuits is a relatively recent historical innovation in the grand scheme of things.

I thought HQ usually enlightened posters that perpetuated rape myths?