WIBU to print off this article and give it to the teacher.

[Imalldonethanks]

DD (8) came home from school at the end of last term talking about the differences in male and female brains (not relating to their weight or structure!). Her teacher had declared she has a 'male' brain because she is logical and rational.
This sort of talk boils my blood.
My next child is in her class this year and I don't want her to listen to this sort of crap.

I get on reasonably well with this teacher, but there are very few opportunities to chat.

So WIBU to print off an article from The New Scientist debunking that theory and send it in with a note saying 'thought you might find this interesting'?

Rubbish Everyone's an individual to me

Well that's brilliant. Some people actively decide to work against unconscious bias. Which is what you do.

Other teachers don't.

Do you what I love children. I chose to treat every one of them as an individual.

I would send her the link, making a joke about hearing DS talk about male/female brains

Well done OP

What I saw of the BBC programme was adults saying they thought they treated each child as an individual - yet still giving the girl baby in boy sterotype clothes the boy stereotype toys and vice versa. Fascinating stuff.

Going back to Solaris assertion that female children can 'hide' their ASD, that's not actually it at all. 'Masking' is not the same thing as hiding and your suggestion seemed to be that girls were somehow pretending because they were able to mask.

Absolutely catkind.

The teacher addressed his unconscious bias by using a mechanism where asking the children questions, for example, was externally random, thereby avoiding bias. Because he was completely unaware of this bias.

If other teachers on here are doing the same thing, then that's commendable.

What one can't do, is assume one doesn't have a bias, which is, by it's nature, unconscious. (So you don't know you have it.)

Datun :
"If most people have a mixture of, say, A and B, how can you put A and B in a category of their own?"

You can have A and B and their mixture (made of different amounts of A and B; 0% to 100% of one plus the other). This explains what the teacher said.
Imagine shades of pink made of the existing components of red (A, female) and white (B, male) in different amounts. Ergo, some brains are more female and some more male.

GallicosCats:

DH stealing computer to post:

Is gender identity not useful for the average person? We know it's bad for the outliers, but a young adult's social status comes largely from competitiveness among the same sex and attractiveness to the opposite sex, so embracing and exaggerating gendered traits is a useful strategy for boosting status.

Even if it was possible to suppress this and create a gender-neutral utopian culture, people who broke rank would have an advantage over those who don't, and if you opt to teach your children to be the first to be so progressive then that'd be at significant opportunity cost.

So I think for the average parent, it's in your child's best interest to embrace and exaggerate the parts of their gender identity that boost their general wellbeing, while pushing back against ones that harm it. It's currently fashionable to demand the baby is thrown out with the bath water. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be a stronger man or a more beautiful woman, the problem is unjustly punishing or shaming the converse.

It's in my child's best interests to be true to themselves and not fake some overly masculine or feminine traits in order to be accepted. If you are popular but living a lie, how does that support your well-being in the long run?

There's nothing wrong with wanting to be a stronger man or a more beautiful woman, the problem is unjustly punishing or shaming the converse.

But that's implying that those two characteristics are where that person's value lies.

Men are stronger than women. Strength isn't the problem. It's the roles attached to that. And we're not talking banging in a fence pole.

Being physically strong, doesn't mean that you are suddenly equipped to lead, be logical, authoritive and know how to run a country. It does mean that you can dominate because of your superior strength.

Being beautiful isn't a problem, obviously. But society placing so much value in a woman for being decorative is incredibly damaging.

It leads to the abuse of women, because they are there merely for decoration and to satisfy men's sexual needs, by force, if necessary.

It's not about preventing the shaming of weak men and unattractive women.

My natural reaction is that it is worse. But if we teach them not to be violent, especially not to girls, it kind of creates the idea that actually they can hit boys. When really we should be teaching them to not be violent. Full stop.