I was in Tesco perusing the bubble bath when a couple with a toddler (boy) came along. The boy wanted to choose a pink bubble bath but the parents wouldn't let him as it was a girls one! He had a full on tantrum about it. It's bubble bath ffs
OMG I've just realised DS has bright pink shower gel - the horror! I didn't even think about it when I bought it for him - it's Strawberry scented (his favourite). Better whip it out of the bathroom quickly so he doesn't get the gay seeping into his pores!
DF's favourite colour is purple. He was the youngest of a pack of boys and his DM actually taught him how to do hair/make up/nails as he liked to help her do hers. He's painted my nails in the past, done mine and my DMs toes when we were pregnant and even helped me dye my hair as a teenager. He's definitely not gay, but he was a superhero Dad to a young me. He also encouraged my love of computers, science and tech from a young age and builds meccano with DS now.
In my home as a small girl it was not seen as weird that I had a train set and stacks of Lego alongside my barbies. DSis had dinosaurs and a black baby doll that got many dirty looks and comments when she took it everywhere as DSis was the blondest, blue eyed white kid in existence. Neither of us are gay.
I never thought of my DParents as that progressive, but evidently they were as they've set me up for allowing DS to play with what he wants (which at the moment is so much sodding lego that we're having to remodel his room to accommodate it all).
I just don't understand how people think things are what makes you gay, not feelings. Homosexuality occurs in nature and animals don't have gendered items to 'make' them gay. As humans we always want to find a cause for things, particularly if we think something is 'wrong', why can't we just accept that sometimes something just 'is'. This insistence that boys and girls must like different things as otherwise they may end up gay or trans reinforces rigid gender roles and could actually lead to more confusion. My DS was very confused a few years back - he knew he loved 'girly' things so he thought he should become a girl. But he also knew he didn't want to stop dressing like a boy, didn't want to get rid of his genitals and got very upset because he didn't know how he could forward both things. He thought he had to get rid of something - either his identity as a boy or his toys. I had to explain to him it's fine to just like things and it doesn't mean a thing about who he is as a person. When he understood that it was like a weight off his shoulders. He stopped talking about killing himself because he stopped thinking he was wrong.
Now he knows it's OK to just like what he likes he is happy and more confident. Where did his confusion come from - the kids with rigid gender stereotypes at school, the one who use 'gay' as an insult, claimed that even being in the proximity of certain things would make you gay, and shouted down anyone who appeared even slightly different. Until those kids started trying to force gender roles on the whole class, DS wasn't confused in the slightest. Where did they get their ideas from? Home mostly, with one child claiming their Dad did some pretty inappropriate things to 'toughen them up'. 