curlew It's hard to do any standing up to social norms. We talk about that too. ds has the problem that he loves football but he's not particularly good at it, but being good at football confers social prestige. Thankfully, the school he's at now is a specific style of academy that expects all its pupils to succeed so he can feel free to be more academic whereas at a previous school there was very much a prevailing culture of boys mess about and are thick and girls are very good and academic which the teachers didn't appear to be able to change or change much.
I do point out on television and in movies men who succeed in things that are supposedly for girls - though the natural end of those conversations is usually that female success is overlooked, the cook v. chef type thing and of course acting is very much one of those areas. I mostly fall back on the thought that as my son is a white male he has a vast array of successful role models to look up to so whatever I say isn't going to "hurt" him and whatever type of man he turns out to be is what a man is like. But of course that he's even having any form of feminist input is going to be a positive effect!
PlateSpinning I absolutely 100% agree sexism should be taught about in schools! It's boggling that it isn't, although obviously we know why it isn't, because school curricula are designed mostly by men at the top who have the privilege of not knowing this is an issue. It's the same with racism too, that it's not just name calling. Any form of privilege actually.
DoNotDisturb (and this is points Plates raised too) I've been reading this section until it opened but have only posted in it sporadically. Obviously this topic is close to my heart as I only have two boys and so have felt sometimes that there are big strands of feminism that don't care about how boys are raised, but obviously as a feminist raising boys I really really bloody care about it! Anyway, ds's checkered school past includes initially being home educated then going to an infant school in year 1. There was never an issue of boys v. girls until then but what happened was that first he saw it and commented on it, and then he ended up emulating it because of social pressure. He became an immediate target for bullies because he'd chosen a cardigan to wear and cardigans were apparently just for girls! But in the end, even at home, he stopped playing with the girls on the street.
This was the school I mentioned earlier in the post. Strangely enough I was listening to one of the mums in the playground once going on and on to a friend about how her daughter always wore trousers, refused dresses and skirts and looked like a little whatever word it was always in trousers. Except the mum herself was never out of trousers! So even though she didn't do it the fact her daughter didn't conform to how little girls were supposed to look made her actually very angry and negative.
It is definitely overwhelming. So much "man up" and "don't cry like a girl" and so young. I just thing it needs commenting on again and again and again because as parents we have a lot of power to shape how our children see the world and if we don't challenge what we see as wrong how will they ever know? So it's not like we're fighting society, but fighting for our individual children to know what's acceptable or not. Now whether they go on to choose to be part of that or not is a different matter and part of being a parent, they will be who they will be.
I do find setting an example at home also works with regards to clothes and toys, not avoiding pink or pretty for a boy. It's funny, but I bought lots of clothes with flowers on for ds2 at one point and so he looked like a girl and it messed my head up! It was so strange. But it made it obvious to me that at 18 months the only reason we need to know if the child is male or female is to treat them differently! What else could it be?! Why would it be important to know otherwise?! Why does it enrage people so much when boys don't look like "boys" and girls don't look like "girls". Being male or female is only fundamental to us because we've decided it must be to order society in a specific way.