Lisa Bloom deconstructs the prototypical “Oh, look at the cute little girl!” icebreaker talk that at least many (usually North American) adults engage in when interacting with young children, and suggests something different:
Try this the next time you meet a little girl. She may be surprised and unsure at first, because few ask her about her mind, but be patient and stick with it. Ask her what she’s reading. What does she like and dislike, and why? There are no wrong answers. You’re just generating an intelligent conversation that respects her brain. For older girls, ask her about current events issues: pollution, wars, school budgets slashed. What bothers her out there in the world? How would she fix it if she had a magic wand? You may get some intriguing answers. Tell her about your ideas and accomplishments and your favorite books. Model for her what a thinking woman says and does.
I’m glad to be a girl because I don’t have to be topless in the swimming pool.
Last October, a group of sixth-graders in Sweden filed an official complaint with their country’s advertising regulatory agency against the Toys”R”Us corporation. The reason for the complaint? Because the kids felt the toy company’s catalogue was gender-discriminatory.
According to the youngsters, the Toys”R”Us Christmas catalogue featured “outdated gender roles because boys and girls were shown playing with different types of toys, whereby the boys were portrayed as active and the girls as passive”, according to a statement from Ro [Sweden’s regulatory agency].
The group’s teacher explained to the local Smålandsposten newspaper that filing the complaint was the culmination of more than two years of “long-term work” by the students on gender roles.
Thumbing through the catalogue, 13-year-old Hannes Psajd explained that he and his twin sister had always shared the same toys and that he was concerned about the message sent by the Toys”R”Us publication. “Small girls in princess stuff…and here are boys dressed as super heroes. It’s obvious that you get affected by this,” he told the newspaper. “When I see that only girls play with certain things then, as a guy, I don’t want it.”
Classmate Moa Averin emphasized the importance of children being able to be who they want even if “guys want to be princesses sometimes”.
Two thoughts here, if I may…
First, how absolutely great is this? That a group of young kids not only took a big political step to advocate for an issue they cared about, but that the issue itself is what they felt was gender discrimination? I see what these kids did as many great things, but most important it was a bold declaration against adults trying to put them into a box – against a corporation trying to exploit them, by playing into and contributing to culturally defined childhood gender roles, all for the purpose of selling cheap toy products. If you don’t think kids are cognizant of the ways society tries to transmit cultural expectations like gender roles, and are fully active in questioning and challenging those expectations, then think again. Kids see the world in a whole new way, one that’s uniquely their own – and they won’t let anyone else dictate it.
Second, leave it to a country like Sweden to not only hear a complaint filed by a group of children but also eagerly embrace and encourage the children’s activism while doing so. Following a review of the case, Sweden’s regulatory agency chose to agree with the children, and they issued Toys”R”Us a public reprimand – echoing the children’s sentiments in it by declaring that the toy company’s catalogue “discriminates based on gender and counteracts positive social behaviour, lifestyles, and attitudes.” Apparently the kids aren’t the only ones who understand and value the importance of them having the freedom culturally to be whomever they want to be.
I’d say that deserves at least two big cheers – one for the group of children themselves and their hard work in making their voice on a topic known, and another for Sweden’s government for taking that voice so seriously.
In a landmark decision, the Scouts are looking to welcome more gay recruits and leaders.
Britain’s best-known youth organisation is keen to dispel the myth that homosexuals cannot join the organisation and as part of this it has produced a document entitled ‘It’s OK to be gay and a Scout!’ […]
Spokesman Simon Carter said: “There was an assumption that being gay meant you couldn’t be part of the movement. That was never the case and we are keen to make it clear that we accept people of any particular orientation.
“We have had youth members and adults attend (gay) Pride events and plan to do so again this year. It shows that we are not just talking about it but are demonstrating our support publicly.”
Sadly, this is just one more way Scouting in the USA differs radically from Scouting in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the world.
A 12-year-old boy from Impington, England, decided to protest a ban in his school’s dress code against boys wearing shorts – by exploiting a loophole in the code that allowed him to wear a skirt.
Chris believes that forcing boys to wear long trousers during the sizzling summer months affects concentration and their ability to learn.
He said: ”In the summer girl students are allowed to wear skirts but boys are not allowed to wear shorts.
”We think that this discriminates against boys. […] ”I will be wearing the skirt at school all day in protest at the uniform policy and addressing the assembly with the student council, wearing a skirt.”
Good on Chris for gaming the system, I say. Here he is, in all his skirt-y glory:
About That Whole Gender-Differences-in-Children Thing
Just in time (given a recent headline), the Scientific American’s latest issue is all about the research concerning the potentially innate differences between males and females. (Hint: they don’t start out so different after all.)
If there is a neurological disparity between the genders, it could explain important behavioral differences. But surprisingly, researchers have found very few large-scale differences between boys and girls in brain structure or function. Yes, boys have larger brains (and heads) than girls—from birth through old age. And girls’ brains finish growing earlier than boys’. But neither of these findings explains why boys are more active and girls more verbal or reveals a plausible basis for the consistent gaps in their reading, writing and science test scores that have parents and teachers up in arms.
They go on to illuminate how experience – or nurture, if you feel compelled to put it in terms of that age-old argument – plays a much more important role in establishing gender: “Most sex differences start out small—as mere biases in temperament and play style—but are amplified as children’s pink- or blue-tinted brains meet our gender-infused culture.”
I’ll chime in to say it’s important to remember that children’s brains are quite malleable, especially in early childhood. In practical terms, this means that our own cultural ideas and subtle gender-based biases present within our interactions with boys and girls actually impact and help shape our children’s physical brains – with the potential to magnify the originally small sex-based neurological differences that a child may start out with. As much as there may be real neurological differences between older boys and girls, those neurological differences, to a large degree, have been a result of the brain’s own self-shaping responses to culturally informed experiences.
This has been perhaps one of the largest faults present in past scientific research about children and gender: much of the research simply never acknowledged that there is no fixed, neurological standard in brain development, or that the brain itself grows and shapes itself based on experiences. In effect, studying the neurological roots of gender is like trying to pin down a fast-moving target, and then trying to tell others how to do the same thing with other fast-moving targets. It just can’t be done.
