I've just been lectured at by a trans woman for painting my daughter's room pink

[Funnyonion17]

Just that. That's the 3rd time during my pregnancy I've been ranted at about gender and I've seriously had enough. Apparently by painting her room pink I'm assuming she's going to be a girl (she's deffo a girl unless the scan was wrong but hey ho). According to the person ranting at me it's irresponsible to paint the room pink and i should base it on the babies personality instead. She's 33 weeks in my womb, she has no personality! I just wanted a pretty space to store her clothes etc. Also after my scan i was ranted at over on the baby boards, apparently her sex is a girl her gender in unknown. I'm sick to death now of being made to feel I'm irresponsible for acknowledging my unborn child as a girl. It's madness. Sorry if my post is a bit disjointed, i have a bad case of sleep deprivation today.

sex role stereotypes are way way more damaging to females than males

I wholeheartedly agree with this. The pink box is a lot smaller than the blue box. Gender stereotypes are generally bad things that shouldn't be tolerated or promoted (and certainly not given essential status per trans lobby dogma), but let's not pretend they damage boys as much as they damage girls.

I've never forced any stereotypes on to my kids, the boys and DD have had clothes of all colours, the boys' room is currently green and white! Yet when it comes to redecorating and they're all old enough to choose themselves, the boys asked for grey and blue and DD asked for pink, pink and more pink, with cupcakes. We've agreed and bought the stuff because it's their room, they should choose.

What I mean is, to attack someone over paint on a wall is a bit ridiculous frankly.

Miaow I agree, I have a pink obsessed girl who only wants to play girls toys with girls. I'm letting her. But she is especially vulnerable to social conditioning because of disability. And even if not it would have flooded in somehow. I don't want to demonise 'girls' because that's exactly what my mother's hatred of pink (I'm blonde, blue eyed, peaches & cream complexion so pink really suits me) and refusal to buy dolls or barbies did of me. But that social conditioning that will overwhlem soon enough is why it makes it a shame that parents are so keen to paint girls rooms pink & boys blue etc. We were given a pink hoover for one female dc birthday, which seems horrid. On things that are 'easy' to get it go for gender neultral or gender non descript or mixed gender etc we did- wall colour is one of those. And actually not only did we not both to repainting the white walls of the room that eventually became dc bedroom we didn't even turn it into a nursery! Which seems pretty common sense now as dc1 refised to use a moses basket let alone a cot.

DS told me his favourite colour is magenta. He'd be highly affronted if I told him that he must be a girl, because he says colours are just colours. He did say he wouldn't wear magenta trousers to school.

It's a fricking baby, she doesn't care what colour her bedroom is, it's for the parents, so paint it whatever colour you want.

Sorry to the OP that people are ranting at you about gender. I don't know why so many people think it's ok to do this. It's the new self righteous club and has nothing to do with the practical feminism I've always known.

This thread is interesting to me because I've got two boys so I had a similar battle but with weapons (ha! A pun there) I hated that my DM kept buying them swords and guns and she did it deliberately because she knew I didn't like it and thought I was being stupid.

I do hate pink actually, not because it's not a nice colour (had a lovely pink wool jacket once) but because it's SO everywhere when I try to buy socks, greetings cards, toiletries etc. etc. it drives me mad. Guy in phone shop once tried to sell me a pink phone. I'm a 50nyear old woman ffs NO I don't need a pink one. I don't need to signal to everyone that I know I'm a girl. SO infantilism got.

Anyway my two boys had a little toy McLaren buggy, in blue, to push a toy around in and youngest DS loved to push His favorite toy Archie from Balamory around in his bright pink jumper. I'd much rathe he did that than pretend to shoot people.

It's should all be just stuff, no girls stuff an boys stuff.

On stereotypes of girls and boys I do have a friend with older DS and younger DD who relentlessly stereotyped them since birth. I didn't notice it so much till the girl arrived then it was all "ooh DS is SO brave and so clever and so fast and strong and I've tested him to the limits with this but he rose to the challenge" this is something she'd always said but it didn't seem weird until "ooh DD is so lovely and seeet and caring, she got all her dollies and tucked them up in bed, and she's so pretty and she loves that frilly dress so much!"

I had to bite my tongue not to intervene when she was talking (in front of her DD) about how sad she was that a boy at school didn't want to have her as a girlfriend because she had curly hair. (They were 5) so she took her to see princess films with girls with curly hair to make her feel better. I did manage to say something like, sod the prince coming, have your own adventures, your hair is lovely as it is. Awful.

The worst though is that her DS at my DS birthday aged about 10 would not join in one game at all because it risked him having to pick a female character and he just would not. Should have seen his face. Utter disgust at the thought of it. Can't remember what they were playing now but something with multiple adventure fantasy roles where a couple of the characters were (super hero) women. The other boys didn't seem to notice. My own DS has no problem with this, it's just imaginative play to him.

So I suppose I'm saying gendered stereotypes have real life consequences from an early age and they stick for life mostly. I think my friends views are representative among mainstream moderately conservative types in the U.K.

It's the flavour of the moment for these confused kids (and some adults) to make the point that you shouldn't predume what gender a baby is. Your baby with a penis could be boy/girl/nb or one of the many others. It's to emphasise that biology is meaningless.

Oh God, that cartoon (there's a load of them) is creepy - I file it in the same box as Chick Tracts in my head.

Thing is you can take that one both ways can't you - that yes, no-one ever asks the cisgender girl if she wanted to be treated 'like a girl' did they - a gilded cage is still a cage.

Not that I agree with the word 'cisgender' I want to strongly emphasise - I just use it here because it's on the cartoon

I don't like pink as a colour, but that said I hate all the anti-dress, anti pink shit.

It just re-iterates that being "girly" (as constructed by society) is the worst thing possible.

Everything That Imbreakingbad said. This thread is sheer lunacy. My daughter is a girl and had pink clothes from birth. It's her favourite colour and if I have a boy he will be getting blue clothes. The end.

Rofl - yes, lunacy is declaring that anyone can wear whatever colour they like, and it's completely sane to declare that boys wear blue from birth and girls pink.

Right. OK. As my kids would say, it sounds like it's opposites day.

Yes, thise cartoons are wuite creepy but seem to be fairly popular.

Nothing inherently wrong with pink. It suited DD when she was little, she had lots of pink clothes. She climbed the Yorkshire 3 peaks over the course of a couple of weekends wearing pale pink ... at which point she decided khaki would be much better for not showing mudstains, fortunately was happy to choose from the 'boy' rail. Because for that purpose pink wasn't a good choice. Pale blue wouldn't have been either.

'Pinkification' can be problematic - a pink and/or glittery 'girls' version of something if it isn't as functionally good as the neutral or 'boys' version. Some pink stuff does stink (literally in the case of 'girl science bathbombs )

Bambambini

I still don't really get the premise that those comics are trying to push.

If there is a whole section of people who don't want to date a transboy, there is a reason. In what world would you think that that reason was prejudice, rather than the instinctive knowledge that saying you are the opposite sex does not make it happen, with or without surgery.

What on earth are they hoping to achieve by denying this?

If something is designed to be aimed at girls and women, then pink is the default colour of choice. Along with sparkly stuff and glitter.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/9349923/Science-girl-thing-video-branded-offensive.html

"Asking is less violent than misgendering"

My dad had just bought me pink secateurs

He bought himself blue because he didnt want a pink pair

I own nothing pink

This has made think how useful it would be to have top quality power tools designed for women (or smaller handed people), preferably not pink, but recognisable.

A drill for example has a circumference which is just a little too big for a woman's hands when you want to hold it at that part..

I just looked at that video "Science it's a girl tyhing." Oriantina

It is a sex film based on metaphorical images of a clitoris, penises and orgasms that makes it seem that if you let one of those 'girls' into your lab you'll get to have hot sex with her.