Girl Got A New Haircut. Father Shocked By The Things Strangers Now Say To Her.

[Onnabugeisha]

From US HuffPost

My Daughter Got A New Haircut. I'm Shocked By The Things Strangers Now Say To Her.

"Our 12-year-old daughter would like to pee without being harassed. Lately, she can’t seem to escape it."

Article: www.huffpost.com/entry/daughter-short-haircut-harassment_n_6384dd5ae4b06ef4a546c8a5?utm_campaign=share_email&ncid=other_email_o63gt2jcad4

Been happening since I was a kid in the 70’s.

I was told I needed to use the mens toilets, purely because I had short hair on a couple of occasions.

probably worse now though as not conforming to gender identity = trans.

Gender stereotype, sorry. Not gender identity.

Gender identity ideology has made this worse. I was mistaken for a boy when I was about 12. But now the kids at school ask if you are trans just cos you have short hair.

OP, do you think this didn’t happen before? It was a common theme in my school. Short hair on girls meant being bullied, physically attacked and called a lesbian. And not just by other girls.

It’s gender stereotypes that cause this. Having regressive thoughts that long hair means girls, short hair boys. Unfortunately gender identity has pushed those stereotypes and sold the story that if you do display opposite stereotypes, you must actually be the opposite sex. It’s such a ludicrous and regressive ideology, isn’t it OP?

Most of the women and girls when I was school and university had short hair. We've certainly regressed if short hair now only signifies male. I know a British man who worked in America in the same period. Americans used to think he was gay because he didn't have long hair.

Until DS’s voice broke and he shot up, he had this going into the men’s.

It's so dumb. My DD has short hair because she likes short hair. She recently got asked if she was trans of some sort by some random teen girl she'd never spoken to before..

And?? I’m assuming this is intended to be some kind of “ooooh see you can’t tell sex on sight and women are mean too” gotcha

All a girl has to do is to open her mouth and say 'I'm a girl' and everything's all right. Butch lesbians sometimes get challenged — quite rightly, because women are allowed to notice and check who's using their facilities. As soon as they smile and say that they're female the woman who challenged them knows and usually apologises and they agree you need to be careful these days.

It's sad how much we've regressed since I was a 12 year old girl. It goes to show how obsessed people seem to be these days about sex based stereotypes. It's caused by this illogical obsession with gender identity. The idea that there's some sort of scale of maleness and femaleness that can be judged by the visible choices someone makes about their appearance. So short hair is heavily coded as indicating "maleness", regardless of the sex of the individual. So regressive.

Yes i agree roses

no comment of your own OP?

When I (46) was at primary school there were quite a few girls with short hair, and long hair was rarely much below shoulder length. Girls often wore plain t shirts, jeans, unisex trainers, PE kit was exactly the same for boys and girls.

When ds (22) was at primary there were 3 girls with short hair, most with shoulder length hair and a few with longer hair. Clothes were a little more separated by gender stereotypes, but there wasn’t the sea of pink that’s so common now.

My youngest has just left primary, the vast majority of girls have very long hair, one has shoulder length hair, one had short hair, and I understand is identifying as non binary (at age 11). Up until the age where girls ditch pink for grey hoodies and leggings there is now a big gap between boy clothes and girl clothes, and very little flexibility for girls which was the norm 40 years ago.

And the author just plays right into that. For someone who supposedly feels so strongly about his daughter's experience, he sure plays into the gender handbook.

@Onnabugeisha we'd all be interested to hear your own thoughts

Funny how hordes of 50+ Women aren’t being challenged 🙄
Most of us have short hair. I’ve seen plenty of Female students at the local college with short punky hair too.

Short hair on women and girls used to be totally run of the mill Now it's seen as some kind of declaration

Me too. Short hair was all the rage all through the 80s when I was at secondary school. It was a tiny minority of girls who had a style longer than collar length. How has it come to pass that 30 years on things have regressed so much that if a girl wears short hair they are presumed to be a boy.

I dont think that's a fair assessment. There are two separate issues which ate being blurred.

The first issue, which the writer is complaining about, is people assuming his daughter is a boy based on her fashion choices.

The second issue, which apoears to be the concern of the people challenging the daughter in the article, is the issue of males of any age identifying as women and invading women's spaces and sports.

Because males are invading female spaces, women (or in the case of the article, the father of another girl) are exercising their right to challenge people they might suspect of wrongly occupying female spaces.

With adults, it's almost always possible to identify someone's sex, regardless of hair or dress. Only very occasionally do people get this wrong, and in those cases it's almost always mistaking a woman for a small man; very rarely do people mistake a man for a woman.

The problem is that in pre-teen children the secondary sex characteristics have not developed yet, so the only way to guess the sex of a child is by their hair and clothing.

For this reason, if I dress my 2 year old boy in a pink flowery top and put a bow in his hair, I can reasonably expect that strangers will assume he's a girl, and it would be downright stupid of me to get annoyed by this . If the same boy wears a skirt and crop top when he's 15, no one will assume he's a girl. The writer's 12 year old child is in between these two extremes, but is still pre-pubescent, therefore hair and clothing are the primary indicators of sex.

The writer of the article seems to misunderstand the position of those who are challenging his daughter. Her challengers are not saying "I don't think girls should be allowed to have short hair". They are saying "I don't think boys should be allowed in girls toilets"(correct) and "I think this child is a boy, based on the evidence available to me"(incorrect).

Perhaps if there weren't so many males trying to sneak into female spaces, then other parents wouldn't feel the need to be so vigilant, and would assume the short-haired child in the girls toilet was a girl, like they used to in the good old days.

My DD got the same when she cut her hair off into a pixie at secondary. Ooohhh, are you gay, trans, bi. You must be. You definitely are. She almost believed she was because of the group think, and bullying, and the fact that she hung out with other non conforming kids, because they were the only ones who accepted her for who she was. She was also voted most unlikely to get a boyfriend in the Year book. She is a strongly feminist Cis (sorry but you have to state that as well these days) young woman who has now grown her hair because she got so tired of it all.

Dd always found it odd that her classmates would insist the girl with short hair must be a boy, “because only boys have short hair”.

yet absolutely none ever called their teacher sir, or told her she was a man, even though she had short hair.

I had really short hair throughout my teens and twenties. I was never called out for being a boy.

And I think it's vanishingly unlikely that this man's daughter is.

But if she is, so what? What does that prove other than that our gender rigidity has become so tightly enforced that it's really hard for anyone to step outside it's rigid confines?

I've never really understood why TRAs consider this some kind of gotcha. Gender critical people don't want to enforce gender, we want to smash it down.

I want girls to have long hair, short hair and everything in between. I want boys to do the same. I want all children to play with whatever toys they want and pursue whichever career path makes them happy.

The people who are rigidly enforcing gender are the one who think if a boy prefers playing with Barbie rather than Ken, we need to cut off his penis.

My primary concern reading this is that if you’re a GC man or woman and you think you are seeing a transchild, then keep your mouth shut or find their parent(s) as the author suggests.

If you want to challenge someone you think is a transwoman or transman who is where or doing what you think they should not be that’s your choice to do so, but please don’t pick on a child FFS. At least have the decency to only confront adults.

I think children should be unequivocally off limits on principle.

Any adult shouldn't be bullying kids full stop.
But why on earth are you assuming it would be GC adults assuming 'gender' in a (slightly) gender nonconforming child?

I had short hair throughout my childhood - 70's and 80's and so did lots of my classmates. It was pretty normal.
My mum has always had short hair even when young ( calls it her Judy dench hairstyle now).

I occasionally got called laddie but quite rare and usually by very old men. Never remember being mistaken by somebody my own age.

So regressive that short hair is now considered the preserve of men. Society has got very weird.

Tempted to cut it short again just to make a point but not sure I have the face for a pixie cut now.

@Clymene
Despite the majority of posters saying this does happen, why you think that your life experience trumps the author’s daughter’s and everyone else’s?

For the record I had very short hair in my teens. I’m talking above the top of my ears short & spiky. Not an above the collar cute little feminine bob. I was mistaken for a boy quite frequently.

So it does happen and it’s dismaying to read that it is still happening and perhaps even getting more ugly because of the gender debate.

I think children (including teenagers) should really be left out of any public confrontations and it’s my hope that this is common ground that everyone can agree on.