When the push comes to the shove...

[quirrelquarrel]

Would you call your little boy a "girl's" name? Dress him in skirts, etc, to hell with the lingering stares and well meant nosy advice?

www.digitaljournal.com/article/306649

A schoolboy called Chris Whitehead- fantastic!
But I wish he was protesting about something else than that.

oh god. I've not got to that stage yet (baby toys are pretty easy to be neutral - primary colours, etc) but DS has ONE pair of pink socks (from a multipack) that he was wearing a couple of days ago with navy joggers and a green t-shirt (dressed by Dad, I think, as it was hardly an 'outfit') and a nice lady in the park said 'ohh how old is she?'
I said "oh, he's 9 months" and didn't think anything of it, but on the way home noticed his socks and thought - aaaah! That's what it was. I mean, he wears his cousins's cast-offs and they're rather more 'boy' boy clothes than I'd buy - so I thought - how can she have thought he was a girl? Interesting... and then I saw the socks and it all made sense. Cos obviously pink=girl.

I'm amazed his penis didn't fall off, frankly. Or that someone didn't call SS. I'm a terrible mother!

When I say 'crossdressing', rest assured that it was only due to my lack of proofreading abilities/years of this kind of reinforcement! and not due to my thinking it's innately unnatural, etc etc.

There will always be people who earnestly point out that their DD had automatically chosen the dolls and shunned the railway set- these are the people we need to convert...they are interesting in arguing, at least...unlike the passives who just don't care.

"these are the people we need to convert"

Why? do you think they are lying?
Some girls do that. Some boys wouldn't want to play with baby dolls but prefer the trainset.

Some girls would prefer the trainset and some boys would want to play with baby dolls.

You shouldn't be dismissive of parents who have observed their child's own choices.

Convert...to the idea that children are completely influenced by their sexist environments (unless you live on the moon, it's there)? Lying is a strong word. I didn't say that. Ignorance is more often an enemy than a friend, that's what I'm saying.

Children are very perceptive and being dismissive of that is ignoring that we do have very little idea what kids' choices would naturally be where things like that are concerned. If they had the abilities of a three year old the second the popped out of the womb, which toy would they plump for? We don't know.

We should be skeptical when parents claim that sort of thing (otherwise where would the impulse for change in attitudes come from?) because how can they know for sure?

If it could be concretely proved, it would probably come out that the part of personality which is attracted to traditionally gender-appropriate toys and colours and clothes is not at all gender-related afterall. Basic theory. But it's too easy just to say, well, my child knows their own mind and they're different and I know exactly how they've made up their mind independently to choose this thing which society wants her to choose as a complete coincidence, despite the fact that all their same-sex friends like exactly the same things. All too often they would not be the child's own or first choice in the ideal world.

While I agree that children are influenced by their environment, I still think children have their own preferences of things they play with. Sometimes that might be a girl chooses dolls and boys choose trains.

Sometimes a girl might choose the train because she knows that a parent prefers her to play with that.

I agree with you that we should be aware of various influences on our children but at the same time I don't think that girls choosing dolls(for example) should be dismissed as not being their own preference.