Help end medical misogyny. Sign our petition.

Help end medical misogyny.
Sign our petition.

Sign the petition

Please or to access all these features

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Raising kids as feminists?

42 replies

Ghostlove · 30/06/2010 17:23

I have a post here at The F Word about raising children as feminists, explaining just some of the ways I am trying to raise my son in a feminist manner, and asking commenters to pitch in with their ideas and methods of doing the same - the conversation there has been spectacular!

I'd really like to have that conversation here too - what are you doing to raise equality-minded, feminist boys and girls?

OP posts:
ElephantsAndMiasmas · 03/07/2010 13:36

Also the playing with the pink stuff kind of rules out the kids playing together, if the boys are conditioned to be allergic to pink.

Saw a mother the other day directing her small DS away from the bubble blowing toys because "they're for girlies" and steering him towards to replica gun section...

ImSoNotTelling · 03/07/2010 13:39

I struggle with the fact that I am not a girly girl at all, and DD1 does seem to be very girly (much to the delight of my mum).

She is nearly 3, and it's all do these socks match these shoes? My hair is very pretty isn't it. Can I have pink hairclips today? etc etc

It started when she started at nursery actually and I have been quite shocked at some of the extraodrinady things some of the other parents have said in the extent of casual and extreme putting of children of different sexes into "boxes" IYSWIM. I thought other parents were generally like me, now I know better and it is quite clear where this stuff is coming from.

Luckily DD is keen to get into everything and I have always bought her clothes which are practical so as well as wanting the pink hairclips she is up the climbing frame and jumping in puddles and all the rest of it.

The thing for me is, that I have a personal aversion to all the super-girly stuff (I feel that girly = crap in that regard) so it pains me when DD wants it. But I can grit my teeth and say fine for as long as it's not the only thing she's interested in. If in a few years she announces that we're to get rid of all her toys expect the pink dollys, and that she will only wear dresses, and that running and climbing are for boys and so she won't do them any more, and when she grows up she wants to be in a girl band, well then I shall take to my bed...

tethersend · 03/07/2010 13:57

I have no issue with girly colours- I hate them myself, but my DD has been drawn to the colours purple and pink since she could grab stuff.

Surely the issue is about semiotics; which objects are produced in these colours? We need to examine what the colour pink has come to signify, rather than avoiding it per se. Why are cars, guns etc not made in pink? And princess dresses in blue? If this were the case, would it not render all toys gender neutral? If not why not?

ISNT, you raise a good point when you say "I feel that girly = crap in that regard". How feminist are we to blithely assume that any sign of 'girlyness' is a failure? I am not having a go at you here, but since having a DD I have really had to challenge my own views about why I see 'girlyness' as flippant, unworthy and insubstantial.

A ban on 'girly' toys isn't challenging the prejudices around us, it is reinforcing them.

frikonastick · 03/07/2010 14:03

oooohhh tethersend, good post

TheButterflyEffect · 03/07/2010 14:47

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

sethstarkaddersmum · 03/07/2010 15:09

just read OP's F-Word article.
Bloody hell, it must be hard work monitoring C-Beebies .
I wonder where s/he stands on Justin Fletcher.

ImSoNotTelling · 03/07/2010 16:22

Yes tethersend it is true that "girly = crap" is not a great feeling to have either.

It's so complicated. As a not very girly person, and one who was good at maths and liked "boys" things and so on, obviously I find it hard to understand how it could be that females would genuinely prefer things that are "girly" and really not want to get involved in "boys" things.

However it is a big wide world and having read many threads on here I understand that honestly some women do feel very different to me, and obviously I have to accept that is a genuine feeling. So we're all different, so far so good.

It's the difficulty that in our society things that are "feminine" are indentified as inferior and flimsy and silly and not worth much - from all sorts of interests to work. Thus there is a problem that doing the feminine thing, if that is what it is in your nature to do, automatically results in lower status things that are laughed at and considered unimportant. Then on top of that the additional problem that both sexes are steered into the stereotypical roles from the moment they are born (and before, sometimes).

In an ideal world we could all be whatever we wanted, and there would be no difference in vaules attached. A woman with a penchant for shoes would not attract more assumptions of frivolity than a man who liked expensive watches. Everyone could get on with it.

But at the moment while "female" things are lower status, and girls have stereotypical bevaviour reinforced so forcefully, it is best to be on the alert for it getting too much, becoming all that they are.

MillyR · 03/07/2010 16:42

I thought a lot of the comments on the F-word article were quite sexist - all those people saying they wouldn't let their daughters do ballet because it was pink and frilly.

DD does ballet and the clothes are sky blue for primary, dark purple for grades 1 and 2, and navy for the older dancers. The pink thing is just a stereotype because it is seen as a girly thing.

I believe that the real underlying issue is that as a society we value competitive things like football more than expressive things like ballet.

Part of raising children as feminists is about teaching them to have respect and compassion for other people, and not to judge all things that are stereotypically female as somehow less valuable.

ImSoNotTelling · 03/07/2010 16:55

Yes that's what I was trying to get at milly.

Discarding everything "girly" as crap is just as bad as buying into the whole pink sparkly thing.

While we have the views that you reflect from the comments, how are we ever going to reach a position where things which are identified as "female" are valued?

tethersend · 03/07/2010 17:03

MillyR and ISNT, that's exactly what I mean- by denigrating everything 'girly', not only do we reinforce society's assertion that male roles are more important, but we are actively reinforcing the division of roles into 'male' and 'female'; precisely the opposite of our intentions.

ImSoNotTelling · 03/07/2010 17:22

It's an easy trap for a feminist of a certain type (like me) to fall into, unfortunately.

At least now I am aware of it I can keep a lid on it.

How many parents are also "keepig a lid on it" when their male children want to do "crap, girly" things though I wonder. So long as they are pointed towards the more valued stuff when they try to do girly stuff, then it means a disproportionate amount of women end up with the less valued stuff, and the cycle continues. But then there is the problem that (apparently) the majority of women like the girly stuff.

It's a bit bloody complicated if you ask me.

I suppose the answer is simple - have a revolution, restructure society, remove all discrimination, value all sorts of things according to their importance to society, not who is doing them, and live in utopia.

ElephantsAndMiasmas · 03/07/2010 17:30

I'm in!

ImSoNotTelling · 03/07/2010 17:43
Grin
ElephantsAndMiasmas · 03/07/2010 17:45

Really interesting debate, I'd never really thought of the "urgh, girly= bad" thing before and how unfeminist it is, in so many words.

Blimey, why can't we all just be people eh?

pointissima · 06/07/2010 10:11

I think that feminism is more complicated than just "equality". "Equality" has tended to mean that we are allowed to join in the male world provided that we put aside femininity and behave just like men. "Men's" activities have always been accorded higher status and "women's" activities denigrated.

IMO bringing up children as feminists means encouraging them, as individuals not to be stereotyped by expectations for boys or girls (or to do the same to anyone else); but I don't think it means that girls shouldn't be allowed to do "girly" things: no-one suggests that boys shouldn't play with trains.

I only have a boy; but I do, for instance, try to ensure that the books he reads include positive female characters and I do think that it helps that he sees me go out to work and his father washing his own socks.

DH is pretty good; but I do wish that he wouldn't imply (as he sometimes does)that "boys" are engaged in a perpetual struggle against female nagging (ok am bossy).

fleacircus · 09/07/2010 13:31

I've been reading 'Packaging Girlhood' which touches on a lot of these issues; particularly the 'choice of two' that girls are limited to, e.g. girly vs tomboy; innocent vs slutty; nice vs mean. It's depressing reading but at least does offer a way forward for parents. I'd be interested in other people's opinions if anyone else has read it? DD1 is only 2.5 but already these issues are beginning to seem relevant.

Janos · 10/07/2010 21:52

Interesting debate.

I like to think I'm providing a good role model for my son by dint of being a single mum, holding down a job and running a house (not always doing a brilliant job but..still doing it ). Showing women can manage this.

I get him to help around the house - tidying up his toys, putting his clothes in the laundry basket.

Challenging sexist comments, although I don't get many of those - he has still to start school tho.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page