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AIBU?

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Original poster

To ask the school... WTF

458 replies

bookeatingboy · 01/12/2016 22:55

DS came home yesterday with a payment card for his first residential trip next year. The cards were blue and apparently all the girls got pink cards!

Some of the girls asked for blue cards and were told that blue is for the boys and pink for the girls Confused

OP posts:
BusyBeez99 · 03/12/2016 04:00

Oh dear this has made me laugh.

You seriously thinking of going to the school over the colour of some cards. You have too much time on your hands

ProudBadMum · 03/12/2016 04:10

They should have given the boys the pink and the girls the blue

MN would be singing their praises then. Pink is only bad if its near or around a girl it seems

Insane

BertrandRussell · 03/12/2016 08:03

Can I implore you all to follow @manwhohasitall on Twitter?

I can't think of a better way to explain why these small things matter.

PacificDogwod · 03/12/2016 08:22

I am actually really curious now as to the reason for this.

But reason aside, I do find it astonishing that some posters cannot see that allocating one colour to 'mean' girl and another boy does 'harm'?
Of course it's only a tiny thing, but it's symptomatic of a much bigger, societal malaise.
Pink is just a colour, as is blue, and red, green, yellow and turquoise; pink is neither bad nor good. The implications are bad.

Bertrand, I don't tweet or FB and there are occasions when I regret that. Hmph.

Original poster
bookeatingboy · 03/12/2016 08:35

busybeez I only wish I had too much time on my hands, but I am fortunate to have the most excellent time management skills Smile

I am going to ask the question because I am very curious as to why they have assigned pink and blue cards. As some say this may be to assisting in administration but I suspect the answer is more likely to be that someone in the office thought it might be a cute idea Confused.

If the answer turns out to be the latter then I believe the school should be aware that not all of the parents will appreciate this. That is all, no huge fuss being created here, just asking a question.

OP posts:
BusyBeez99 · 03/12/2016 08:44

I don't know a single person in RL who gives a toss what colour cards each child would get. Seriously there are bigger things in life to worry about than colour and gender mix.

BusyBeez99 · 03/12/2016 08:47

That manshohasitall is a spoof thing right.

Sparklingbrook · 03/12/2016 08:49

You could have emailed the school as soon as the payment cards came out and had the answer by now surely?

FurryLittleTwerp · 03/12/2016 08:50

Eolian

yes, quite

RaspberryOverloadTheFirst · 03/12/2016 08:50

BusyBeez99

I have plenty of things in my life to worry about, but this is also something to worry about.

It's the constant drip, drip, drip of little things like this that make it so hard to fight the gender stereotyping. These things should be challenged. Not nastily but in a way to make people think.

BusyBeez99 · 03/12/2016 08:52

Oh doesn't bother me in the slightest so guess we are just different. I'm not really a militant person so maybe why

That link though has had me in hysterics. I love satire

NotYoda · 03/12/2016 08:58

bookend

Sounds like you wouldn't mind if it was to assist administration

HOHOHOvariesBeforeBrovaries · 03/12/2016 09:02

I'm not really a militant person so maybe why

I don't think you need to be militant to see the harm that gendering does to people?

I am a radical feminist. I'd be furious at this.
DP is a feminist/feminist ally but not as militant as me. He'd be even angrier than I would.

This all feeds into toxic masculinity, and into boys seeing anything feminine as "dirty", "gross" or "bad". Showing emotions is regarded as a feminine trait. So boys hide their emotions, repress them, grow up into men with deeply repressed thoughts and feelings... is it any wonder the male suicide rate is so high? That's why this is harmful.

It's a drop of rain. On its own, it seems unimportant, but put enough of them together and it'll flood your town.

GravyAndShite · 03/12/2016 09:03

Can I implore you all to follow @manwhohasitall on Twitter?

I can't think of a better way to explain why these small things matter.

They don't matter to me. They do to you and no doubt many others, but not to me and no doubt many others.

This thread only confuses me - the colour of a payment card is reason to have a word with the school? Confused

NotYoda · 03/12/2016 09:04

.... or maybe you still mind a bit burt wouldn't be sufficiently irritated to contact the school about it, taking a more pragmatic approach

Eolian · 03/12/2016 09:11

You don't even need to be ANY kind of a feminist to see how pointless and arbitrary it is to assign colours to sexes. And you only need to be a human being with basic intelligence and maybe a teensy bit of compassion to see that using these pointless and arbitrary to pigeonhole people is offensive to some and at least mildly irritating to many, many peoole. Mocking people by saying they are petty to want to get rid of the smaller but no less insidious markers of inequalities between the sexes is unpleasant and short-sighted. And failing to see that this is about more than just the colour of a piece of card is frankly just ignorant and stupid.

Sparklingbrook · 03/12/2016 09:13

Charming.

PacificDogwod · 03/12/2016 09:15

It's nothing to do with being 'radical' or 'militant' to be bothered by this.

Gray, you don't feel it matters to you, but in all seriousness any woman is affected by this shit. Yes, It's a tiny example and not right up there with not having the right to vote or summat, but it is indicative of unnecessary gendering. It DOES matter, whether you see that or not.

NotYoda · 03/12/2016 09:24

I find it really funny that last night I was picked up by Bertrand for using the term "upset" to coney how I was not feeling about this issue (as if feeling upset by an issue is a BAD thing and is not a motivator for doing something about the issue). Yet today people who are upset by this issue are using emotional language (furious etc) to say how they feel. Rightly so, IMO

Is it OK not to feel upset about something?

Here's the quote I mean:

"And it's perfectly possible that to think something is worth doing something about without being upset by it.
Incidentally, men tend not to use words like "upset" and others with emotional charge when discussing things. Just saying."

NotYoda · 03/12/2016 09:27

By the way, by "this issue" I am talking about coloured payment cards. Nothing else. I don't think "all in the garden is rosy", nor am I thick, lacking compassion, or do not care about the suicide rate amongst young men

Somerville · 03/12/2016 09:30

My nephew who loved pink aged 7 couldn't take a pink school bag to class without being called gay. (This was a decade ago; now a child in that situation might be called trans? I don't know.)

Colours are just colours are just colours. But whilst most parents that I know are cool with a toddler son wearing their sister's dressing up clothes, they wouldn't let them do so outside of the house. Or even wear a pink t-shirt. Their small boys have to perform masculinity because pink is for girls. Therefore toys with pink packaging (often baby dolls) are for girls. And toys with blue packing (electronics sets perhaps) are for boys and girls aren't bought them.

If these were just 2 random colours then I'd think differently. But these are the colours that are too often assigned to make individuals behave in a way that aligns with their biology. Which is bollocks.

I say this as someone who happens to like pink. But I wish my DN had been allowed to as well. And handing out pink to girls underlines the stereotype that it's not for boys. When it's just a frigging colour!

HOHOHOvariesBeforeBrovaries · 03/12/2016 09:33

By the way, by "this issue" I am talking about coloured payment cards.

But can you not see it feeds into the larger problems?

Inertia · 03/12/2016 09:34

I'm a teacher and have organised school trips, and I can't see any good reason why you'd need to have payment cards organised by sex anyway. Dorm allocation is done at a much later stage in the planning - some children drop out of the trip, spare places may be taken up by a child of the opposite sex, residential centres usually tell you the dorm arrangements just a few weeks ahead rather than at the start of the planning process.

As Bertrand and others have said (and I can't now find the excellent post above about imposing limits) a pink / blue card system is a totally unnecessary reinforcement of gender stereotypes. On its own it may seem like a small thing, but it's part of a much bigger picture in which children are encouraged to conform to gender stereotyping, that they are not 'proper girls/ proper boys' if they don't fit in. This in turn leads us to the sorry state of affairs where children feel that they are the 'wrong' sex simply because they don't want to perform the stereotype of masculinity or femininity.

NotYoda · 03/12/2016 09:36

HOHO

No, I think it possibly represents larger problems, I can see it's interesting to discuss, but I would never do or say anything to the school about it.

itsmine · 03/12/2016 09:40

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.