Tired of stereotypes about gender and behavior - Page 3

[MusicianDad]

Originally Posted by wildmonkeys 

Well, at one point the kids got a little loud and one of the assistant teachers says "Okay 5th grade boys, enough, you need to quiet down"  What??? The teams were co-ed, some boys were a little loud, some girls were a little loud, and some of each were also very quiet.  Not to mention, it was intended to foster group partcipation, but I guess only in the girls??? The boys would be misbehaving if they participated? My only relief is that my son's teacher actually spoke over this assistant and encouraged everyone to weigh in, but in quieter voices.

Dude! That TA needs to come visit here when DD has her friends over. See how quiet girls really are...

[_ktg_]

Chalk up another person who is excited this thread has been started.  I recently was mourning my DS's announcement that pink was a "girl color" and therefore he couldn't use it anymore for art or drawing his letters because of his friends at school.  Even by another girl!?!

I ended up hopping on the computer and googling the history of the color pink & gender association (which prior to 1950ish) was considered a masculine color to prove to him (he's 4 y.o) that assumption (pink = girl) was incorrect.  We're still working on the fact that mommy has the more historically correct answer than his friends

Its hard to overturn gender socialization because its socially woven into the fabric of culture and reinforced continually. Hopefully though I'm raising boys who feel comfortable in expressing their emotions, loving all the colors of the rainbow and celebrating the uniqueness of everyone.

[EdnaMarie]

Someone also told my daughter that blue shouldn't be her favourite colour because it is a *boy* colour.

Blue is my daughter's favorite color, too.

Blue is the color of Cinderella's dress, LOL!

[MusicianDad]

Originally Posted by EdnaMarie 

Someone also told my daughter that blue shouldn't be her favourite colour because it is a *boy* colour.

Blue is my daughter's favorite color, too.

Blue is the color of Cinderella's dress, LOL!

Blue was originally a girls colour and the colour to get married in because it was a symbol of purity (yeah, yeah, I know it's that word) and innocence 

[mama_daba]

blue is still a girl color in much of the world and if you look at all the old painting of the virgin mary she is in blue (for the reasons MusicianDad mentioned)

when i worked at a toy store and childrens clothing store people would come in wanting to buy a dress for a new baby girl and we had very frilly floral print blue dresses and if i would suggest one people should gasp and say no people would think the baby is a boy it was sad.

[Viola]

[quote]What do you guys think?[/quote]

What I think is that people can't comprehend even to a small degree how much we've been conditioned in society with the whole boy and girl behavior thing, and how our expectations and attitudes are internalized by children.  I've read many times where moms have claimed their children fall along the gender stereotypes even though they deliberately tried to remain neutral.  But even in the things written just in that post, I can already see inconsistencies.  My daughter took swim lessons with some other children, and the one mother was particularly wedded to certain ideas. She pointed out many things about her child's behavior and always related it to his sex, but ignored the fact that the other little girl was doing the exact same types of things.  She told her son many times that he needed to be a little gentleman and not treat the girls that way, even though girl was much rougher.  It was kind of maddening.  So I when people do make comments about their boys doing certain things, I might talk about how my girls do that too. But I also think you'll get North Korea and South Korea to reunite before you get people to agree on this.