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

soz, he loves pink - I want grandchildren. Being gay doesn't preclude this of course in this day and age. In our blessed country anyway.

It depends on if your talking male or female. And how you define sexual oritentation. SExual or emotional or both.

Female sexuality is thought to be much more plastic than male, though males can easily 'get their rocks off' with other men if in prison, but will not be necessarily gay - whereas women make emotional connections as well as sexual ones - men are very apt at making purely sexual ones.

Gay man prefer sex with men however though most hetro men in situations where no sex with women was avaiulable would 'make do' qute happily. The more feminine the other man the better however, which is why pretty men don't do well in prison.

Thje consensus at the mo, I think is that orientation is genetic (how someone positivly identifies a preference, but is condition dependent on environment. HUmans like intimacy, women emotional intimacy more (in reletive terms) than men, though men do like this too. The variation is subtle and is not so fixed to be prescribed.

Sorry, really tired now. Got to sleep.

Monkeytrews - well DS2 has refused to go to gym club this term because we will not buy him a leotard like the girls. He is the only boy in the class of 30 and the girls have been making comments that he does not have a leotard and wears shorts and T shirt.

We cannot buy him a leotard for erm... obvious biological reaosons but he is having none of it and refuses to go. He says the girls crowd around him and say things that make him uncomfortable. Sex specific dress code being the main issue.

Not sure what that means about his future life but we would like him to go to gym club.

All advice welcome.

ABD - not sure I get this. Lots of the boys at my DDs' school do gym and dance and they wear leotards - there are lots of boy leotards on the market surely?

I know. He wants one just like the girls though. Not a boy leotard.

LOL Betadad. But do I remember you also buying him a pink shirt and him refusing to go to school in it - with you being upset by this?

DS has always like dressing up in girls/princess dresses, and had a collection of Barbies, but we began to limit this as he got older as it would draw negative attention from other boys and we thought, he could do what he wanted at home but also did not want to make him a target for bullies - which as much as we wish it weren't so, is inevitable.

But I dunno. Why not go and let him try one on and this will demonstrate why they aren't suitable - or shw him this listicles.thelmagazine.com/wp-content/upload/borat-swimsuit.jpg

Lenin - sorry yes, I was really tired last night and practically auto writing - I didn't mean genetic of course. I meant exposure to hormones in the womb. That is where the consensus is. At the mo, he biggest predictor of being male homosexual seems to be having an older brother - though this is by no means fully tested hypothesis, just an emerging corrolation.

Looking sadly at the latest bit of building work today done by a very charming young male plumber, I wondered whether actually gender stereotypes mean that women should be better builders - because we would have some idea of how a house is ultimately supposed to look, and it doesn't involve random pipes sticking out of walls unconnected to anything. (It really was a WTF? moment) We will find out when my female head builder and female architect get going...

Am I the only person that isn't too bothered by whether they use he/she/it/they as long as they get the point across? If I were concerned, I'd simply re-educate the teacher; it probably just hasn't ocurred to him/her/them.

I read a good book that made this point recently by Ellie Levinson - The noughtie guide to feminism - had section on having feminist curriculum in schools.

Def put note to teacher. Is outrageous.

@grendelsmum - in some parts of the world a majority of construction workers are female - i hear in India because it is such a low-status job, almost all road wrokers are women.

job-stereotypes really are pretty much socially decided, even if men are v. much stronger on average.

Where do you 'hear' this from OOM?

my sister went on a 'finding yourself' trip to india. all the construction workers lugging stones up the road were women.

Well we finally agreed to send DS2 to Gardening Club and give Gym Club a miss for a term. We will take him to a shop to try on a male leotard when he is a bit less sensitive about it. Poor little thing outnumbered 29:1 by girls all ganging up on him telling him he has to wear a girl leotard. I have told him he will thank us for it when he is older.

MonkeyTrews - yes I had the battle over the 'pink jumper' as well. Won that one.

Going back a few pages on this thread, am shocked to see UQD pretending the choice of words is not important. And him a writer and all...

House names for my Daughter's primary school
Darwin
Faraday
Einstein
Newton
All white male scientists.

Was this decided in the the 60s? no this decidion was made last time. I'd just had my son when it was announced so didn't have the energy to complain, but this made my blood boil!

amic, fact is usage is changing, whether you like it or not. And actually the new usage does have some pedigree - look down the thread for GrendelsMum at 14:54:55. (I'm a writer and editor and think the new usage is the best solution to the problem.)

My fave female scientist is the Hollywood sex goddess Heddy Lamarr. When she wasn't seducing her beaus she was busy inventing a little gadget that became the precursor to wireless communication. What a fabulous woman.

Sophia Jex-Blake,Elsie Inglis,elizabeth garrett anderson all amazing pioneering women

Frankly, I don't see why my daughter shouldn't be inspired by Darwin just because he didn't have t*ts

YANBU

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Hodgkin

Dorothy Hodgkin too.I work with one of her children, it rather entertaining to hear her say once, "Yes, well, things were a little bit different after my mother got the Nobel prize."

on whether "he" is the correct generic, well, common practice is one of the determinants for that. absolutely right to challenge it. I think "they" is fine, if he/she seems ugly.

am noticing more and more efforts at gender-neutral generics, like "firefighter" even "post men and post women" on BBC news on the strikes. It just takes some thought..

X

We have posties (male & female) round here