Help me to help my three year old realise that girls aren't shit!

[StarsAreShining]

My son is almost four, and seems to have absorbed a lot of awful opinions and made them his own. This includes, but is not limited to, 'I don't like pink because it's for girls. I like blue',(despite having a few pink things and not noticing the colour before), 'I don't like girls. Boys are cool', 'Girls cry but boys are brave', etc etc etc.

I'm feeling really disappointed because I don't know how to deal with this. I feel like I've failed. There's just a general feeling of men being big, strong, brave, cool and doing all of the exciting stuff, while women are quiet, weak, cry and do a lot of cleaning. There's no way I want this to continue. We regularly talk about it and read books which promote equality, but it doesn't seem to sink in. I've tried, but it seems that the rest of the world has won :( I'm aware that his dad and grandad regularly say things like 'Ugh, grandad's a big girl!', and I've told him that I'm not happy with my sex being used as an insult, but I can't make him stop. We do talk about these things, and he'll happily talk about people being equal, but it doesn't seem to be sinking in.

What do I do?!?! I really struggle because I don't have any friends who share my opinions. I barely even know anybody with children, let alone children who aren't having certain behaviours pushed onto them or restricted because of their sex!

slug, you must be the exception that proves the rule.

And, pray tell, why do you think it IS that there are so few women in many areas of science, industry, medicine and political life and conversely, so few men in primary teaching, nursing and health and social care professions generally?

You seem to insist that this "just is," or in fact may be the "natural order" of things, so children need to be "taught" to accept the status quo.

You say if you are "born round" you don't "lie square." But, children are not round pegs nor square pegs. They are human beings. The inherent physical and intellectual differences between girls and boys are extremely small, but social conditioning has a mahoosive impact on how they come to view their own capabilities and how others view those capabilities as well. It get's namedropped all the time, but serioiusly, crack open Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Grandeur for a well-research blowing-out-of-the-water all the pseudo science bunkum about boys having a "natural aptitude" for this and girls for "that."

If you're only suggestion for dealing with bullying is to move the child to a different school, that's sad. You seem to think it's inevitable that the strong and privileged will take advantage of those less strong and less privileged and perhaps that that is actually a "good" thing.

Interestingly, children get bullied not just for not conforming to gender stereotypes. They may also be bullied for having a different colour of skin, talking with an unusual accent, not being able to do some things because of a disability or chronic illness or because their family doesn't conform to the stereotype of mum, dad, 2.4 children and Labrador. In such situations, do you suggest the parents and the children "just accept" that it's the "natural order" of things for the stronger and more privileged to hold sway and the weaker ones just suck it up and learn to live with it?

Nope BlitzMum there are plenty of us out there and more joining the ranks every day.

Must have been the meccano we were allowed to play with as children.

Kritiq, people should better accept themselves for what they really are instead of expecting a red carpet or other fairy tales.

where it is written that life must be easy ? it's never been easy and never will, and it will be much harder for those who endlessly talk and expect priviliges because of their gender or whatever, not to mention it's a very parasitic life.

sorry but if you suck at something you can only blame yourself first.

bullying : there can't be any solution to bullying because nowadays kids are untouchable and teachers can be jailed if they punish a kid in ways their parents don't like.

on top of this, education is mandatory and therefore most of the people don't give a sh...

we can rant for the next 100 years about this, but still kids will call other kids names, and make racist jokes and so worth, because kids cannot be punished and parents will send their lawyers if you just try to say their kids are "difficult" or troublemakers.

the solution : reinstating physical punishments and separate classes based on sex.

I have the same problem OP - I'm a single parent to my DS and he constantly comes out with 'that's for girls and that's for boys' particularly when he's watching ads on TV. I think part of the issue is that ads are so split along gender lines and, from what I know, a lot of men are very uncomfortable with their sons liking anything which is considered remotely feminine. DS and his best friend (another boy) for example both really like Tinkerbell to the Rescue but his bf's mum has told me that his dad doesn't like him watching it. DS likes cars and trains but also cuddly toys and watching Strawberry Shortcake.

It's a real shame that gender roles are forced down our small children's throats like they're geese destined for foie gras. It doesn't do any of them any favours.

Thanks for the link to the reading thread Emily - I missed that before.

Wow, I didn't realise the Feudal System was still so popular. Well, okay, obviously a system that rewards people based on unearned privilege will be popular amongst those it benefits. But, wow, it's interesting that you are genuinely advocating that we all just accept injustice and deal with it. Not born with a silver spoon/penis/white skin/fully functioning body? Tough shit. Know your place, which is down there somewhere.

Well, I don't buy this. And, if a system is unjust and a person is treated unfairly as a consequence, then the person is NOT to blame. If you "suck" as you say because the system made it so that you could only "suck," then nope, it's not due to the inadequacy of the individual. It's the unjust system.

Gender "roles" are a social construct. There is no reason men and boys can't care for their toys and play with dollies, they are going to be parents in all likelihood. It is society that says they shouldn't not their natural instincts.
Pink and blue divide has only happened very recently...someone decided it and as made it mainstream, when I was growing up there was kids clothes in all colours and there was not this huge divide between "boy" and "girl" clothes.

I'm in IT and a boss, in India 50% of IT graduates are women, it is cultural that in the western world IT is seen as a male occupation, there is no such gender divide.

100 years ago men were falling over themselves to say that women could not be doctors as they were emotionally unsuited to it, now 50% of medical graduates are female and now they say, yes well women are attracted to medicine because of their natural nurturing ability. Yes, all those female coroners really need to nurture their corpses.

Yo may gather from this that I think the gender divide is bollocks.

sorry but gender roles have been "invented" by nature itself.

if women want to make a career and don't make kids anymore, who will ? men ?

@kritiq : i'm simply saying life is tough and we should not expect any privileges, unless you like the idea of fighting the windmills for the rest of your life.

it's too easy to blame men or society or whatever new buzzword.

Miggsie, strange as i work in engineering and i can't remember a single indian female working for our business partners unless we talka about call centers.

where are the female software engineers ? where are the mechanical engineers ? the are the software architects ? tell me a single developmente language invented by a girl ?

i mean, i was one of the few graduating in computer scences and i'm still one of the few females "cranking code" in my multinational, i'm surrounded by men and the only females i see are either secretaries or working in sales & marketing (where they outnumber men).

my 2 cents.

Oh Blitz, it's pretty clear you already know that there are certain people in society already granted heaps of privileges because they were born wealthy, male, non-disabled and/or white. You seem to be unhappy about those who wish to challenge those socially-dictated entitlements by giving others more of a fair chance. It's not about blame. It's about accountability and justice. But of course, those who benefit from the exploitation of others might not be cock a hoop at the idea of that nice arrangement being challenged.

Gender roles are as miggsie says, entirely social constructs. She has given several examples of this. There is no science that backs up your arguments. Biological determinism, when it comes to gender "destiny," as been repeatedly shown up as a pile of cack.

Hahaha! Your arguments are hilarious Blitz!

I played with lego, Star Wars characters, Action Men when I was a little girl and shock horror grew up to get married and have kids. My brothers played with identical toys (twins) and one is gay and one is straight.

DS1 is always playing with dolls, kitchens, pushchairs, etc. It means nothing except he is copying what he sees with his straight dad who pushes a pushchair, changes a baby, cuddles him, puts him to sleep, etc.

The ignorance utterly astounds me . . .

@Kritiq : what's unjust ? that females don't have a penis ? and therefore they should have more "godgiven" rights ?

thanks god in my work i'm valued and praised for what i produce and not because i'm the only woman in our team, that would be embarassing and frankly sexist if not racist toward my male colleagues.

you probably advocate a world designed and customized for female needs and skill, well sorry it's not gonna happen and i can't see why it's so important for many mums here this "race" against the men, unless you hate men of course and unless you have problems accepting your female identity.

men go on the moon, so what ?
women make babies, including the ones going to the moon.

to each his own.

Kritiq, find me a woman working on the developer team of Photoshop for instance, or of Microsoft Windows, or Apple's IOS5 or OSX .. i can tell you ... there isn't ANY and you're free to check it by yourself.

so much for the "50% of graduates are female in india" and bla bla bla, yes like if getting a degree in Calcutta is going to give you a job as kernel developer at Oracle or IBM ? i talk by experience, indian companies like WiPro are seen as the joke of the IT/ICT, instead i could praise the development centers in Beijing but guess what they're mostly male geeks with a few exceptions.

and sorry, so far there's no female "bill gates" or "steve jobs" despite the free market and free enterprise and yadda yadda.

i've the impression you all see the world with rosy glasses.

Blitz, there's a whole community of female developers out there. Can I suggest this as a starting point?

Try picking up Cordelia Fine. If you can bear to open your mind a bit, you'll see one, that the playing field isn't as level as you seem to believe it is between the genders and two, that there is no reliable science to show that men are biologically predisposed to success say on the stock market and technology nor women at caring and menial labour.

You've misrepresented most of what I've said in your "summary," but others will clearly see that. Maybe that's because you have been so strongly influenced by dominant cultural, societal, political and economic "norms" that you are genuinely unable to see that some people benefit from unearned privilege due to their gender, class, ethnicity, gender, lack of disability, sexual orientation, etc. Or, it could be like the flat earthers, you simply refuse to engage with any evidence that threatens your unshakable beliefs about what is right and wrong.

there's NO EVIDENCE blitzmum.

Do you want to continue believing your version anyway? Why? not logical is it - oh, wait. Women don't 'do' logic. Cos of the cavemen, presumably

It's a shame Blitzmum wasn't around in the 1800's to tell Ada Lovelace that she should just have sucked it up... I bet she was only holding Charles Babbage back, the selfish bitch...

If money is the only measure of success then yes, there's no Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, but a quick google and a look at WIKI has brought up shedloads of women making advances and claiming firsts in computing.

For someone who thinks it would be 'racist' (?!) towards their male colleagues to be "praised" for being the only woman in the team, you've thrown in some pretty racist comments about India yourself.

But back to the OP... having raised DD in a relatively even-handed manner wrt toys and pastimes, I found as soon as she started school peer pressure kicked in and the whole 'that's for boys' thing started. I do of course gently suggest to her that she can do whatever she wants and nothing is 'for boys', but it's depressing that this whole thing is sooo much more prevalent now than it was growing up in the late 60's/70's.

And I LOVED lego, as did my sister. Neither of us appear to have turned into lesbians...

I didn't see the OP as being about gender-stereotyped toys at all, more about disparaging remarks made about 'girls' and the view of girls being as weak and not brave. Obviously not met my two then, though I do notice how unconfortable many men are when my girls climb to the top of really high towers and high-wire down and their poor boys don't want to, or when my daughter went on the bumper cars and bumped this boy lots of time and his dad nearly died of embarassment, so there are lots of men out there who feel their boys need to look brave and daring at all times and get quite upset when they show normal emotions or girls do things they think are stereotypically boyish (I don't give a monkey's whether they climb up or not, I have just noticed that some dads seem to have real issues about making their boys into men, even when they are aged 5 and don't like heights or whatever).

Slug, i'm talking about serious engineering, not geeks.

Ada Lovelace, ok, anybody else ?

how can it be racist to say WiPro's quality standards are appalling ? and we're not the only company moving out of india and taking the jobs back to europe where they belong.

on the other side we're moving many other jobs to china, and for good reasons, price but especially quality ! then there's a communication issue as their english isn't as good as the indians but you can't have one's cake and eat it too.

i don't care if their product is made by female engineers or not, all i can say is that i can't remeber a single female working in their development teams.

it's nothing new actually, in all my career at both university and multinationals i was almost always the only tech girl around, i come to accept it and i like it, and that's how i found my lovely husband.

lovecat : it depends, there's a huge number of women in chemistry and medicine for example, but very very few in math, physics, mechanical and electronic engineering.

how can we explain it ? i don't know but talking with other tech girls it seems they simply don't like these fields, i never heard comments like "mechanical eng is for boys" or whatever, they're just not at all attracted by engines, pistons, wheels, and screwdrivers, as simple as that ...

then you wonder why airplanes, trains, oil rigs, military devices, guns, cars, trucks, are all made by men ... women are just "scared" by all this, it's not part of their "dimension" and how could it be after all ? i certainly couldn't see me working in an oil rig or designing a new rifle or a SUV ... to each his own and i don't blame girls for preferring other fields like chemistry or teaching math.

and talking about money, i can't see any female banker around, or female speculator or stock trader, what about this despite there's an overwhelming number of females graduating in business economy ?

last i heard 50% of the economy grads were girls, so where are all these entrepreneurs and CEOs ? the few ones in the IT industry have been a total disaster so far, see Carly Fiorina (HP) for instance or Carol Bartz (Yahoo), i guess they've been hired for the novelty of for desperation.

the only successful one that comes to my mind is Meg Whitman (eBAY), now recently appointed CEO of HP, we'll see if she ends up like Fiorina, i almost lost my ex job because of Fiorina !

@kritiq : no, i'm just the living example that to succeed in your job it's all up to your brain and not up to your gender, my work is 100% technical and intellectual, either it works or it doesn't, no escape, no excuses, no dirty tricks.

if girls want to change the world they better grow up some balls and get a brain instead of endlessly whining like in this forum.

i see and learn daily from my male colleagues and i admire them, especially considering our jobs are often treatened by the competition in india and china and there's no security about that, we can be the best and being fired tomorrow because we're too expensive and management couldn't give a rat's ass about us, including female managers who see us as a "cost" and not as a "resource", they've no problems whatsoever destroying families and careers in order to get their millionaire bonuses.

i see this shit everyday, what do you think i should think about women in positions of power ? that they can be more evil than men, and they do, and if this is a feminist progress we should seriously rethink it all.

Jocelyn Burnell?

For pity sake Blitz, I've worked in many fields where there are a higher proportion of women leaders than in other sectors. In my last job, I was generally the only senior women within decision making groups of nearly all white, middle aged, middle class men. Know what? Both men and women leaders can be excellent or crap, both can be insightful and profoundly dense, some got to the top based on drive, skill and intelligence. Others got there because they didn't rock the boat and "got elevated" by stealth, so were actually "over-promoted." Both men and women leaders can be backstabbing and snipey or encouraging and supportive of colleagues and juniors.

I'm getting a strong sense from your posts that you have very little regard for women, which is sad as you do appear to be a woman yourself and perhaps have responsibility for the care of girls or young women as well. In my experience, sometimes women feel compelled to behave in ways they think will make them "appear" more like a man because they think that will put them at an advantage in the workplace. One easy way to show off those "manly" credentials is to diss other women, to distance yourselves from them, to try and paint yourself as an "honourary man," and hope maybe they won't notice the lack of bulge in the trouser department. Sometimes in some situations it works. Problem is, the minute you slip up in any way, all that hard work can be undone when someone again "notices" that look, it's a woman, of course she screwed up. And, if you've bought into the misogynist crap, in fact promoted it for your own benefit, then it's rather hard to argue back.

Maybe that's not how you see yourself. That's fine. It's just an observation I've made from a long life, encountering lots of men and women at different levels in many different workplaces and the tactics they use to do what they think they need to do. Bit of a game really I suppose.