DS8 feels hard done by as a male..

[ZigZagInToTheBeach]

I'm not convinced that I'm posting on the correct board here but I'm going to go for it anyway as I feel it's linked to gender equality. Please be kind! I'm happy to ask MNHQ to move it if someone suggests a more appropriate place for it.

DS8 has become upset on a few occasions over the last year about what he perceives as "everyone hating boys". I'm not sure how to talk to him about this and am hoping for some suggestions. I'm really concerned that this is pushing him towards a negative view of girls. I want to talk to him about how great both boys and girls are (I have two wonderful sons after all so do think that boys are great but not that one gender is greater than the other) whilst also avoiding gender stereotypes and I most certainly don't want to paint one gender as superior to another. I have listed his 'evidence' below but please bear in mind that this is his perception, regardless of whether or not you agree with him.

Girls can join Scouts but boys can't join Brownies.
The boys at school will get into trouble for doing something that the girls don't get into trouble for, one of his examples is being asked to quieten down.
The boys at school get into trouble more frequently than the girls do.
Various comments made by my friends or family, eg. my cousin witnessing my boys playing in the mud and joking to me "Sometimes I wish that I had had a son but at times like this I'm glad I didn't", or my friend who comments on how boys are noisier and harder work than girls.
Although his teacher tells the class that she doesn't have a favourite pupil DS8 says it's obvious that it's X girl. To be fair to him, having listened or watched most of the online class lessons this was blindingly obvious to me too and this was before my son spoke to me about this.

I'm sorry your son is feeling this way. A lot of pop culture these days is F men. I try to make a point to strike a balance between celebrating womanhood and our new found freedoms and not doing to boys and men what they've historically done to us. There comes a point when oppressed groups gain enough ground that they mimic their oppressors without consequence which isn't real change but a game of table turning.
In somewhere like India or Chechnya it's not unusual to read about a man chopping off his daughters head or a group of men kidnapping and raping girls and unfortunately in those such countries they so very disconnected from the freedoms women have in the west that this very post would probably be a punishable act.

The boys at school get into trouble more frequently than the girls do.
Various comments made by my friends or family, eg. my cousin witnessing my boys playing in the mud and joking to me "Sometimes I wish that I had had a son but at times like this I'm glad I didn't", or my friend who comments on how boys are noisier and harder work than girls.

I imagine that the first sentence is a consequence of the second. Boys are 'expected' to be loud and boisterous and get away with a lot of behaviour that girls wouldn't from a very young age. So girls have already learnt that this behaviour is not always ok by the time they get to school, boys havent' had the same expectation placed on them and so will get into trouble more.

The bbc documentary "no more boys or girls" is good for showing how stereotypes harm both boys and girls.

^^Yes! A good doc to show your son OP.

I imagine that the first sentence is a consequence of the second. Boys are 'expected' to be loud and boisterous and get away with a lot of behaviour that girls wouldn't from a very young age. So girls have already learnt that this behaviour is not always ok by the time they get to school, boys havent' had the same expectation placed on them and so will get into trouble more

I think it’s the other way around. Boys are hard work and the kind of noise and disruption they cause is really not welcome or tolerated by parents (or by the rest of us, for that matter).

I see a lot of parents humiliated by their little boys in public but they just can’t control them, for whatever reason.

I think it’s the other way around. Boys are hard work and the kind of noise and disruption they cause is really not welcome or tolerated by parents (or by the rest of us, for that matter).

I think there's a place for noise and girls make just as much of it. They just get told more often that they shouldn't.

I’m curious,Miss Barbary: when you say "none of my friends wanted boys" do you mean that no expectant fathers in your friend group had any preference for a boy, or didn't mind having a boy?

Didn't discuss it so much with the fathers, but 2 of them wanted daughters, not sons. The women all wanted daughters.

(As an aside "expectant fathers" is just one step away from "we are pregnant")

What would you suggest instead of ‘expectant fathers’, MissBarbary?

Around the teachers favourite issue I think it's great that you have acknowledged he is right about that.
My parents always insisted teachers didn't have favourites and the flat out contradicting of what I could see with my own eyes didn't do anything for my opinion of my parents.
I just stopped talking to them about school as they seemed so clueless.
That is not necessarily a gendered issue though, my younger brother was very much the teachers favourite in one of his primary school classes.
I would just explain as a pp said that sometimes people like someone more than others for their own individual reasons. But they should still be treating everyone fairly.

Discuss Invisible Women with him? Leave a copy where he can read it.
Try to spot where disabled people are disadvantaged. Steps or gravel paths or muddy paths mean mobility impaired people can't go where others can. Overhanging hedges and pavement furniture and potholes and broken paving is a barrier for visually impaired. Music is distressing for both certain neurological conditions and for hearing impaired, because it drowns their option of understanding speech. (It is smeared over all nature programmes, so deaf people are banned from Attenborough) Old people are openly jeered at and despised (watch the Simpsons, or, if you can bear it, Mrs Browns Boys, or the James Corden One man two guvnors. In every case, old people are derided) Your boy is on the right lines, in being aware of injustice and inequality. Of course he has only noticed what affects him, but that is the perfect starting point to notice others.

The all too effective Sharmi Chackrabati (sp?) started thinking of injustice when noticing a fellow student couldn't access the campus using a wheelchair. She could have transformed the country, putting her efforts into that injustice, instead of distorting the budget, the legal aid fund, and the equalities law to mean only one equality is more equal than others.

@MissBarbary

Firstly WTF from your cousin?

Does it surprise you that comments like that are made? I remember them as being fairly routine if you're the mother of boys only.

Someone actually asked me shortly after my son was born if I was disappointed he wasn't a girl. None of my friends wanted boys.

I've always imagined myself as a mother of boys. Never really examined why, it probably is based on stereotypes but it is how it is.

However know that I'm actually pregnant (Dont know the sex) obviously I want a healthy baby above all and will be chuffed either way.

I'd be very confused if I had a little boy and someone asked me if I would have preferred a girl!

@aliasundercover

What would you suggest instead of ‘expectant fathers’, MissBarbary?

"Fathers", "male partners" , "husbands" ?

I don't see the need to add the twee "expectant"

I'd be very confused if I had a little boy and someone asked me if I would have preferred a girl!

"Confused" was the least of it.

This is a great thread (I have an 8 yr old boy) but I question the practicality of some of these suggestions. I could leave a copy of Invisible Women lying around for a month and my son would not think to pick it up and read it. He might ask me what it is about, particularly if he saw me reading it, but he wouldn’t read it himself.

It isn’t also really important to address the conversation from his point of view. Any implication that structural issues need rebalancing and therefore girls need girls only clubs is not really going to win him round.

I would suggest that one way to go about it is to agree with some points. You are far more likely to come round to another viewpoint if you see the other person agrees with some things you think.

It is unfair that girls have Brownies and there is no boys only group now. But once you understand the historical reasons - no girls allowed in Scouts and then that changes much later - it is easier to understand. It would not be fair to insist Brownies let in boys just to ‘make it fair’.

Also - what does he want. He can’t join a girls group because then he wouldn’t be a girls group. There is a mixed group that he can join. Does he want a boys only club? Try to show him the best way is for everyone to have a choice, rather than everyone to have no choice. Sympathise that he feels he doesn’t have a choice.

If he wants a boys only group could you look for a local Boys Brigade?

The Scouts equivalent of Brownies would be Beavers www.scouts.org.uk/ For obvious reasons they are unlikely be running now but you can contact the movement to find out if there is a group in your area. If not you can explain to him how busy most adults are these days and how difficult it is to find people to run such groups.

And actually if he put on a dress and said he felt like a girl today they'd probably accept him - you could ask if he'd like to do that and if he says no ask why not.

I'm actually amazed no-one else has pointed that out.

And actually if he put on a dress and said he felt like a girl today they'd probably accept him - you could ask if he'd like to do that and if he says no ask why not.

Why would the OP even ask that of her DS? It's got nothing to do with his issue!

If he wanted to go to Brownie's and said he was a girl today they'd probably take him - so very relevant to his issue. Is no-one on this thread actually a parent, most parents know this already.

@alreadytaken

If he wanted to go to Brownie's and said he was a girl today they'd probably take him - so very relevant to his issue. Is no-one on this thread actually a parent, most parents know this already.

Yes, people on this board are parents. Yes, they know it already. Doesn’t make it any more relevant because they are parents and they know that telling an 8 year old boy to just throw on a dress does nothing whatsoever to address his sense of injustice that girls get brownies to themselves and boys don’t get beavers, whatever definition of girl is being used.

The trans issue is a big one. But a throw away moan about it is not at all relevant to this OP and it’s making this board far less effective as a feminist forum.

"Fathers", "male partners" , "husbands" ?

I don't see the need to add the twee "expectant"

But we’re not talking about ‘fathers’, ‘male partners’ or ‘husbands’.

We’re specifically talking about men who are about to become fathers, because their partner is pregnant - hence, ‘expectant fathers’. It’s just short-hand to describe men in that particular situation, and nothing like ‘we are pregnant’.

And I still very much maintain that most women would like at least one girl, and most men would like at least one boy.

@alreadytaken

If he wanted to go to Brownie's and said he was a girl today they'd probably take him - so very relevant to his issue. Is no-one on this thread actually a parent, most parents know this already.

Yes, but ... he probably doesn’t want to say he’s a girl, so that suggestion falls at the first hurdle.

He probably doesn’t even want to go to Brownies. He’s just pointing out a group that only accepts girls, and won’t allow boys.

"Fathers", "male partners" , "husbands" ?

I don't see the need to add the twee "expectant"

That was me. I used "expectant fathers" for men who are not yet fathers (although some may have been, if this was not their first baby) but who are expecting to take on that role. That’s who I am interested in, in this context. “Male partner" or "husband" isn’t as specific and seems less relevant to me because it is about the relationship to the mother and not to the fetus. I’m also very conscious of anti-abortion contexts (it's still 100% illegal here in Malta), so I routinely avoid calling someone an unqualified “father” (or mother) before the child is born. There are also “fathers” who have nothing to do with the pregnancy or the baby, and those aren’t the people I meant either.

I don't think that "expectant" is biological and therefore intruding on the terrain of women (like "we are pregnant"). I’m happy to be corrected if I’m using sexist or antifeminist language, but I’m not convinced that there is a consensus against “expectant fathers” here. Perhaps terms have different connotations in different countries/areas. Possibly that should be a separate thread, if anyone cares enough, because it’s tangential to what ZigZagInToTheBeach asked.

You did answer my original question, MissBarbary. Thank you.

@jellyfrizz

I think it’s the other way around. Boys are hard work and the kind of noise and disruption they cause is really not welcome or tolerated by parents (or by the rest of us, for that matter).

I think there's a place for noise and girls make just as much of it. They just get told more often that they shouldn't.

On what basis do you think this? How does that even make sense, if the boys are the ones getting in trouble for being disruptive more often? Which they are, if you look at the stream of kids being sent to the principles office, it is usually really tipped toward the boys.

This is one of those areas where the claim that there are no male/female behavioural differences on a group level mean people cling to these kinds of explanations that are simply false. As a group, boys and girls have developmental differences from fairly early on. The ability to read develops in girls earlier for example, so there is a significant gap in early reading achievement with boys and girls in the early years, which continues to have effects down the road. And boys are typically more active and slower to develop the ability to sit still and focus in the early years.

So you get boys being perfectly developmentally normal who are always getting in trouble, and struggling with their work, mainly because the schools try and push them to sit and do work in a way that's not appropriate too early on. It affects some girls as well, but in terms of cohorts or classes it disadvantages boys.

Sometimes you see a similar problem at adolescence where girls develop earlier, and that includes some brain development - they start making abstract leaps before many boys are quite ready. It's less of an issue though because typically that age group are given school work that is less advanced than they could handle.

I don't understand why people are so set on dismissing these kinds of quite well documented differences. Go to any reading recovery type program, they are dominated by boys who can't quite keep up. It's not because they are allowed to screw around while girls get told to read quietly.

There's a BBC clip showing the difference in how people treat babies depending on their sex.

Only 3 mins to watch

The boys not reading thing is not because they are somehow not capable etc. It's to do with really unhelpful ideas about what boys ought to be doing and what is a bit crap.

Remember as well the whole education and exam structure was designed for boys in the first place.

The principals office?

Is that a Scottish thing? I know they have a different school system.

The whole point is that it's nigh on impossible to tell if loads of things are nature or nurture. Or a mix.

It's never a good idea to dismiss ideas out of hand.

Boys used to be the ones who went to school and sat and did their work in rows.

I watched a thing on the news the other night about a school in Syria, I think it was. Zero kids dicking around.

Etc etc