No more girls and boys; can our children go gender free? BBC 2 tonight

[Ekphrasis]

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09202lp

I heard PM in radio 4 discussing this research, it seems to hugely benefit girls in terms of their views on their own achievements and the achievements of women in general.

Will listen with interest.

What surprised me (as we have had this language banned in my place of work, with children) is that the teacher, pre experiment, called girls sweetie and petal, and boys buddy etc.

Its taken me a long time to recognise that the trans agenda (not actual trans people, just the tiny percentage with an agenda) is totally against the breaking down of gender stereotypes, but it really seems it is.

So this work is very much opposing the trans agenda.

I want an end to male violence more than anything - but I genuinely believe making girls and boys change separately when they are primary school age is adding to the problem, not solving it. It is othering human beings from each other for no reason.

That's I cried too.

datun - I sort of feel it's a shame you read the review as I feel it's put you off. I'd heard nothing bar snatched bits on PM. I agree it's likely I'll feel a bit pissed off next week as I think any feminist things will be over looked, but I don't think that's exactly what he's looking into. He's showing the developmental harm stereotypes do to us.

He makes a link to stats on the children's emotional intelligence scores (low for the boys, but high in the area of anger - they knew more words to describe anger than love) and numbers of men in prison, looking at a brief Google of stats and articles. It seems tenuous writing it and I'm foggy with tiredness but to be fair, it's a bit like the Steve Biddulph stuff so not really new. He doesn't really need to say much; the children's reactions and sound bites explain the already ingrained views they have - and how they react to situations.

Morphene, it's taken 18 moths of reading for me to 'get' it. Unravelling my many years of not being aware of the difference between sex and gender has taken a lot of hard thinking! It's amazing how very ingrained we are.

I'm thinking about the changing separately. I wonder if it's down to things that are specifically sexual characteristics related? It seems right to do that, again not confusing sex and gender? Generally it's year 4 they tend to do that. (Age 8-9).

I didn't realise it was such an issue in schools. I did mention it to our head about a year ago; it's bottom of the pile of priorities tbh. I hope this gets people talking. I've already seen a fb share of a BBC news clip on it via colleagues.

I watched most of it. Thought it was good. I consider myself to be a feminist but my DD aged almost 10 has low self esteem and my just turned 6 year old son would have reacted similarly to Riley. He's hugely competitive despite being told that it's the taking part that counts etc. He wants to be the best and always win. Not sure how to address either of these issues. I boost my daughter up constantly but interestingly she is in a class which is 80% boys.

Whatshouldmyusernamebe

It's difficult, isn't it? Winning is rewarded. Which is fine. It leads to a competitive edge.

But it's not fine if they can't handle losing, too.

Ekphrasis

Thank you very much for that explanation. And for your reassurance. I think I will watch it, I'll catch up tomorrow.

Yes re the comment about your daughter in the class with 80% boys. I thought it would be interesting to see how differently girls would react to all the 'tests' in the programme if they were at a girls only school.

Especially the final test about line your self up strongest to weakest. The body language of the girls in that part was uncomfortable to watch. They were mostly hunched or chewing nervously on their fingers - exactly like my dd a lot of the time. I can imagine if it were an all girls school they'd be more relaxed in that test in particular.

I think it starts incredibly early. Age 2/3. My son was noticing differences and commenting on them at age 3, (boys are like such and such, girls can't etc) he knew he couldn't bf his toys at age 2 as he was a boy (handing them to me to feed). Apparently boys start noticing male figures and slowly associating themselves more with them from 4-6. I've seen this happening recently. I try to point out anything breaking the stereotypes!

Dh is incredibly competitive and is from a family of all boys. I've really noticed him pushing what he considers important male traits (winning, being strong, having confidence) from early on. It really mattered to him, he worried about it. I wish he'd pushed being tidy a bit more

A lot of complaints about sexism in primary schools are how feminised they are. How they are designed to favour girls over boys (majority female teachers, prioritise sitting still and working quietly over physical boisterousness) and that this leads inexorably to girls achieving better results than boys.

Yes. I don't know what I've done to make them like that. He's very good at sport and wants to learn how to be better. It's only been encouraged by his interest. He also loves sylvannian families so we are trying not to gender stereotype. I also don't know why my daughter often thinks she isn't good at anything except drama and art. It's really tricky.

Datun

I highly recommend you watch it on catch up. It was everything I could have wished it to be. I can't comment on the next one as haven't seen it yet. But so far he has touched on many issues, including the how adults interact with babies based on what sex they believe them to be.

He talked about taking a wider look into why more men end up in prison, why so few women are CEO.

Crumbs1 I think you are missing the point with your fence post example. Sure boys and girls start off with small differences but those gaps are widened by society's differing expectations.

If you always ask your son and not your daughter to put up fences/lift chairs/put furniture together etc you are giving him the practice but her not. You are widening the gap.

And consider it is not always about giving the job to the most capable but about giving everyone the chance to hone their skills and develop confidence in their own physical abilities.

So much of what is innate can either be improved or lost with practice. So we should be pushing girls to be the best they can be rather than saying they'll never be as good as boys.

I thought it would be interesting to see how differently girls would react to all the 'tests' in the programme if they were at a girls only school.

Research has always shown that girls do better in single sex schools but it does not impact boys in the same way. I think they actually do better in mixed schools, but happy to be corrected.

Another thing that got me - which may had some of you with boiling blood, was the whole issue of books.

Firstly he's saying : 'they all think a ballerina, has to be a girl, but there is no reason they should think that way" - err they got it from every single book they've seen.

Then - he cleared out all non gender neutral books, and replaced them with ones we're supposed to think are brilliant. "In this one the princess saves the prince! That proves girls can be brave too!"; "In this one the princess has super powers and rescues every body, wouldn't you all like to be her?"

He's acting like these books, which simply tell the most stereotypical boys story, but which now have replaced the lead boy with a girl - (who is still a bloody princess), are the simple answer to the problem. !!!

I saw he cleared out a big bunch of 'rainbow fairies' books. Admittedly they are a bit stereotyped, but they may have more about female friendships etc. I'd rather that than saying to our daughters that no - they're wrong- you need to be reading boys adventure stories instead and imagining yourself as the hero with superpowers.

Yes re the girls only schools- I believe boys actually do better in mixed schools and girls do better in girls only schools.

I've seen strong evidence of much more confidence in girls from only girl schools.

I wonder if that should be part of the debate long term

Important to have books where girls save the day, but also important to have books where boys deal with friendship issues.

Thank you TheWitchAndTrevor. I will watch it. Save all you lot from being my own personal reviewers.

nobel

Yes I agree with this. What's mind boggling is that he's essentially saying society moulds the boys to need more wriggling and different strategies of teaching, as he says there's no brain difference. Which I've heard before in a good horizon prog (will link in morning). I wonder how the research that boys need to wriggle to progress well in reading (or rather that boys who aren't allowed, don't progress) fits into all this? possibly a can of worms we may not want to open I also wonder if all this research would have been any different under Victorian teaching methods, in Victorian times.

Lexi 😩

I watched with suspicion to me it was more of the trans agenda masked as an innocuous documentary about equality. I thought it would be one way to challenge trans agenda. They challenged the thought that our brains are the same.
They have also challenged the fact that boys and girls can both play with same toys.
They have tackled the issues surrounding gender and how society treat the two groups.

I think this has tackled more trans issues to be honest. It will hopefully give parents whose children are trans, ideas on how to handle it. They should accept their children for who they are. Boys who love pink, dolls make up and so on without placing a label for being in the wrong body. The ga t that it's not about what's wrong with your brain. It's not about being born in the wrong Jody or brain but a look towards social conditioning.

Yes the book thing got to me, but, I do know there's book lists out there for all this and they're much better than that. They could have had a clip of boys reading about friendships and emotions. I think girl power has been around for a while.

Let's face it, it's all condensed into a hours program. Hopefully it can spin off more debate.

Widening of the life experiences of boys is hugely important. It shouldn't make the national news when boys chose to wear skirts to school in exactly the same way it fails to hit the national news when girls wear trousers to school.

It will hopefully give parents whose children are trans, ideas on how to handle it.

I agree, I think this programme is what we need, but, I don't think it's been specific enough about this yet. I sadly don't think it'll dare to be.

With luck, this may make the transing of children frowned upon.

Many people already think it's ridiculous transing a child purely because they play with the toys of the opposite sex.

Hopefully, 'toys of the opposite sex' well cease to exist.

Glad some of you actually watched it before commenting as being a parent of one of the real stars of the show,it was so disappointing to read negative comments before it had even aired!bet those of you thinking it was about gender identity, were surprised when its about unequalness between sexes!I am so proud my child was part of something so cool!

For example in the swedish school they had signs on the wall saying 'girls are strong' and 'boys are sensitive'. Whereas in the UK school they had signs which said 'girls are strong' and 'boys are strong' which is more equal.

You are missing the point so completely it is almost funny.