The blog of a mom who got fed up with all the pink, princess stuff offered to little girls. She offers remarkable t-shirts, commentary, links to sympathetic content. A recent post took up the topic, "how to teach boys to be feminists."
We have been speaking of gender as one social identity factor. We have mentioned the now standard distinction between biological sex and culturally defined gender expectations. The later are surely dynamic and changing. This was a major doctrine of second wave, mid-20th century American feminism. Boys and girls learn how they are "supposed" to act and those lessons can restrict or expand their possibilities. One small part of acting on that conviction was not insisting that girls be dressed in pink; or even insisting that they not be. Another was to give both boys and girls lots of options of toys and activities rather than giving boys trucks and girls dolls. Nearly twenty years ago, when I was a new mom, it was possible with a little effort to find infant clothes that were gender neutral. Now that I'm buying baby gifts for the off-spring of my students I find that this is less possible. The author of this blog appears to have had a similar experience. I might also recommend the subversive kid's book, The Paperbag Princess. This princess offers the model of an active, self-reliant response to danger.
1 comment:
I wonder if human are not born female or male but learned to be female or male.The process we perform, the gender display is based cultural rules and social institutions that describe what female and male should be. Even though this is highly impossible, what if we let the little baby grow up without any gender intervention by parents or the environment. I am curious what gender the baby will become. Or there might even not be a gender?
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