AIBU - sexist science homework

[Litchick]

Lst night's science homework was to write a short passage about a famous scientist, what they discovered and its applications today.

Fine except that each question said 'he'.

Eg what was his name? What did he discover?

DD and I chose Marie Curie and changed everything to she.

AIBU to make the point on the prep sheet or just touchy?
Does it matter? It felt to me like it does. Grrrr

I don't know Dailymail. At that age I would guess a lot of it comes from the way toys are marketed.

Yeah, might. It might be. Or it might be not a huge issue. I happen to think the latter.

And LOL at your 3 year old picking up what you would 'expect' to be an outdated stereotype. Wiht her limited expereince where on earth do you think she could be getting it from? Especially if you keep her protected from such things.

These things come from within as well as without. She's 3. Think about it. I wouldn't worry about it or attempt a 'corrective'.

No Zep. There's been a huge ampount of studies about this. It's not the way toys are marketed. Of course, that doesn't fit the feminist stereotype of a patraichally oppressive society, so they don't want to know - or register feminisms successes!

oh Harpy. I posted something very similar on another thread. Where are the calls for 'bin-persons' rather than binmen.

Not going to happen

I'd be very interested to see these studies showing that marketing has no effect on children's perception of gender roles. Why don't you do us a link?

And why on earth would you think that a child has an innate sense "from within" as you put it that doctors are men and nurses are women? That makes no sense whatsoever.

Erm, Harpy and Monkeytrews - look back at my earlier post about my friends' dd in her basic skills course at college, where she all of a sudden lost all her interest in mechanics and shifted into fashion design. It is just as much of a problem, if not more so, that girls (and of course boys) slide into "gender appropriate" courses in vocational education, and down the line the girls end up hairdressing and the boys fitting tyres.
If anything, I believe that womens pay relative to mens is even lower proportionately at lower pay levels (IYSWIM), so yes, it is a big issue, just as much as the higher level stuff.
Really depressingly, I remember a good (female) friend from school going off to do a YTS (showing my age) at a local garage, being the star trainee, getting her pictures in the local paper cos it was so unusual, 25 years later I can't see that there is any difference at all.

Start by reading Susan Pinkers book 'The Sexual Paradox'.

I'm not saying "a child has an innate sense "from within" as you put it that doctors are men and nurses are women"

I am saying some preferences are innate, and many of them, on average, can be mapped between sexes. That is still not to say people are also complex individuals and that some people buck the averege trends. This is why gender prescriptions are a bad thing. But so is making discussion of science fact - psychosexual difference - taboo becasiue it jarrs against feminist discourse. The world turns FFS. Feminism either turns with it or something else fills the void it's leaving in rational thought.

Tak, why is it a problem for you that this girl lost interest in mechanics if she wasn't interested in it? The best people in mechanics, male or female, will be the ones who find it interesting.

Lenin, that's becasue he's a boy. There is no consprisy here. Let your kids just be who they are. Our society allows that.

MT I have been looking at some excerpts of this book you keep going on about and I understand your perspective although i totally disagree with it.

What I'm interested in is, if it were accepted that there are innate differences between the sexes, what difference would this make to life/policy?

What changes would you like to see in schooling and the workplace for example?

On the two points just mentioned, tak's friend lost interest in mechanics as soon as she realised that it was all boys doing it, and the girls were doing something else. Lenin's son wants to dance but is confused as in his world dancers have to wear skirts so they must be girls. So he feels he can't dance, I think that was the point.

The key thing is that all children should feel the world is open to them, and that their choices are as little prescribed as possible (things like ability and financing obviously coming into it). I would never automatically write he (or she for that matter) and I really dislike baby books where the baby is permanently a girl as much as the over use of "he". It is not difficult to write (s)he or he/she or to construct sentences in such a way as to avoid using either term. It just requires a little bit of thought. For me that's what would irritate about this worksheet, the lack of thought for somethign very very simple.

That 30 years after this was raised as an issue the same argument is still going on does not to me show the issue has been sorted out. On the contrary.

Oh, and some councils do stupid things. Why is that a surprise? The reason why our Labour council was loony is because it indulged in creative accounting and made a huge mess of services. That they also bought books for the library with positive images of men staying at home or women in science or even men falling in love with me, or families with two mummies is not something that caused problems to any but a few reactionary busybodies in the press (who didn't pick up the screwing up the local services for the next ten years issues).

nooka your council bought books for the library about men falling in love with you?

that kind of personalised service from the council must be very expensive, and wonderful

Think positive though, "even" men falling in love with you sounds a little dispirited!

Monkeytrews, did you see my post - she's a farm girl, she wears jeans all the time, she spends her spare time doing woodwork, she has never in all the time I've known her had any interest in fashion, she wanted to go to college to do mechanics. She lost interest after being there for 1 week only.
And the reason I think its sad, is because there are very few jobs in fashion design for women with little in the way of qualifications in rural Wales. Actually, lets rephrase that. There are very few jobs in fashion design. As oppose to, oh, lets say, mechanics.

takfer I used to work at a sixth form college which offered a range of qualifications. I was a technician in the physics lab, so wandered around in a white coat with reams of wire etc hanging off me.

The college had a motor mechanics area, where people learned how to be mechanics etc also brickwork, electricals and so on.

Those areas of the college were real "no go" areas for females, it was really odd. But I had to go there sometimes for parts for equipment - belt to drive knackered old van de graaf generator etc. I always was boggled at by all the students, who were always all male, and the teachers had real trouble treating me with civility.

It is this type of thing that I get angry about. Very angry, in fact. If a girl wants to learn brickwork or motor mechanics as a trade, well bloody hell she should not be put off and have to retreat to the hairdressing area.

So sad.

check this for some amusing chemistry

Lenin I can never understand why male dancers are considered a bit, well, you know...

I am always impressed by ballet dancers, the strength, agility, speed etc. are amazing.

Show him ballet, modern dance etc. OK being realistic modern dance/street dance or even michael jackson strutting his stuff.

Men do dance. The ones who can't are just jealous, and so conspire to view it with suspicion

How's the baby by the way?

Oh Spam what a typo!

Great idea though, woudl have really helped me out in my teens when I was very unsure about my identity.

Lenin, pity you probably can't show your ds Dirty Dancing. I don't recall anyone suggesting Patrick Swayze was anything other than totally sexy and very male, even though he was originally a ballet dancer.

I don't think patrick swayze was totally sexy

Patrick stewart maybe...

Well he wasn't particularly my cup of tea either, but he did have a following

In a liberal democracy Spam, it wouldn't make any difference to policy, as the individual is more important than the sex or gender.

Differences in sex/gender have been objectivly observed and documented beyond dount. The good news for feminists is that these differences do not equate to female inferiority on any level, apart from brute strengh - pound for pound. The study on sex differences in the latter hald of the last century in no way support any idea of a 'status quo' in which men are better than, or deserve any better treatment than women. Women do have babies however, and because they do, they want to take the majority of hand to hand responsibility for them whilst wanting partners to enable them to do this. Team work.

These are average observations not prescriptions. These studies also seem to show that females are more health and physically robust than males and are - again on average - more intellegent than males. Women cluster at the mean of the bell curve with men of less average intellegence - which make sense seeing how quickly females have outstretched males in the education system in such a short space of time. However, at the ends of the bell curve - in catagories of 'genius' and 'psychopath', men outstrip women. We also know the psychopathic personality does very well in 'high power/stress' jobs which demand more time away from family and other down time. Women being more intellegent but less psychopathically driven (on average) tend to go the lower stress route, by choice&^.

Obvioulsy it'sa bit more complicated than this. Don't read extracts of the book. Read the book - and then check her sorces. It will take you on a very illuminating path.

Men do do dance your right. But boys who like girly things are also more likley to be homosexual. This again has been measured. I say this as mother to a boy who loves pink and who also wants grandchildren. But these are odds. He's odd's on to be gay - it's not biologoically determined. He will be who he will be. It's my job to let him grow in an environemnt that will help him become the optimum person he will be. And if I love him, make him feel safe and secure, give him stablity (thats all kids really need from their parents) he will do this regardless of what I would presonally prefer.