Jude...

[egoldber]

Interesting. While I have not been doing things as consciously as you, I do agree with much of what you say. And I also personally do not like lacy frilly things (except for very rare special occasions), fingernail paint (although I have grown fond of pedicures in the last few months...), make-up, etc.

As a result, DD's wardrobe is not very "girly". She has some boy clothes, but mainly cotton knit basics in a variety of colors. Some are pink, but most are not. The girliest things she has are Hanna playdresses, and she only has a couple of those.

My main goal (as far as clothing) has been to keep her as confortable as possible so that she does not feel limited in the type of play that she engages in because she is wearing things that are too constricting or too "nice" to get dirty. She loves to dress up, but to her that means wearing a cape and calling herself a princess (or a knight LOL), not putting on a fancy, frilly dress.

This is one of my favorite outfits for her right now:

http://www.windsorpeak.com/dc/user_files/22797.jpg
http://www.windsorpeak.com/dc/user_files/22798.jpg

I like it because I think the colors are fun and she plays easily in it. Its a girl outfit, but not limiting because its girly.

As DD has grown older, it is absolutely fascinating for me to watch her learn about gender. To watch her become aware that there are physical differences, who is a boy vs a girl, how to tell, how is daddy different from mommy, etc.

I have not necessarily bought her gender neutral toys, but I like to make sure she has a variety of things around her that are of interest in helping her discover the world. She has dolls and a kitchen. She also likes bugs, dinosaurs, trains, and tools.

I find it disheartening in some ways that she has already told me that "some movies are for boys" or "some toys are for girls" when I have NEVER expressed such a feeling to her. She has even said "No! No!" when I have said there is no reason a girl cannot play with that "boy toy". Its amazing to me that she has gotten this from SOMEWHERE but it is not here at home.

Gender bias is so innate in our culture, it is so hard to try and protect your child from its influence. I am also curious as to how you and your family will continue to try and actively work against that (rather than in the somewhat passive way I have chosen).

[dules]

Oh yes a Gender Discourse board! Where do I sign up?

Jude, I love the way you dress Riordan. With Sophie, I dress her in pink sometimes, not many frills because I hated frills as a child (I was a victim of smocking, lol!) and I can count on one hand the number of times she has worn tights (and only the thick cotton Hanna ones at that). Just as often she's in jeans and a sweater or sweatshirt that could go either way (red or blue or maybe orange) and people tend to assume she's a boy. I think that's kind of fun and like challenging them on that...like, if she's a girl then can she ONLY wear pink? Boys get all the other colors?

Conversely, I've heard from moms of boys that when they dress their boys in anything but blue or brown people assume they are girls. Go figure???

I'm sure you know this but I love that it was an Act of Parliament that made the use of "he" the appropriate gender neutral singular. Prior to that, the appropriate use was "they", as in "A person should be free to do what they want..." This fascinates me. That somehow this grammatical point was so important that it required a law...that in effect removed the neutrality and caused females to have to "self-identify" as males in order to be grammatically correct.

I still use "they" or "s/he" when I can get away with it, LMAO. I guess I was thinking of this when I read the PP comment that a "gender neutral" boy might have to wear pastels...

Wow I could go on and on on this topic, lol!

Best,
Mary

P.S. My sister has 3 boys and 1 girl. She DID come crying to me when her DD wanted to wear pink and play with Barbie, LMAO!

[holliam]

Jude, I've loved reading your perspective, and I share much of it. But, I am planning on taking a completely different approach. Rather than doing everything "neutral", we are purposely buying things we love right now, which some people may consider overtly genderized (in both directions) but we don't.

DH and I are very much not stereotypical man/woman. We break the "rules" in so many areas. I'm sure society looks at us as "tomboy" and "girly boy" if I were forced to categorize us. That's simply for things like I don't wear make-up, DH prefers home and cooking shoes to sports, I work, he stays home, on and one. So, we are well aware of these issues because we live them daily! As a result, I expect our DD to get exposure to this naturally.

We don't like overly feminine or masculine things. I cringe at many of the outfits for little girls and little boys equally! When we shop, we look in both sections always. We don't like any sports except soccer, hockey, and water sports, which are all equally for boys/girls in our opinion. We don't like race cars or princesses. But, we do like fairies, gnomes, knights, unicorns, dragons, cats, flowers, tools, camping, gardening etc. We'd put this stuff on our kids regardless of their gender. I guess as long as we're dressing them, they'll wear what we like until they voice an opinion.

Does it bug me that it's hard to find cool fairy things that aren't pastels? Yep, but I manage to do it. It also bugs me not to find dinos that aren't primaries. I've become very drawn to jewel tones like purple, raspberry, turquoise which I would put on any gender child in our house.

But, I guess I don't assume that things like dinos are overtly boy, nor do I assume that fairies are overtly girl.

We do buy dresses, and they are mostly cotton knits. So, in that regard I guess it will be obvious to society that she is a girl sometimes.

Holli

[Judegirl]

Yes, Beth, I completely agree! It's pretty much impossible. We can only do the best we can; a lot of socialization doesn't even come from the parents. Unless we move into a hut underground in the west somewhere, we're not going to be able to keep her from the ideas.

And we wouldn't want to. But it's our hope that we can keep them from her long enough to help her develop a world view without them, so that we can explore them critically when she is exposed to them.

In our case, we are fortunate that our circle of friends feels the same way we do about this, so that will help a little bit, at least. We plan to homeschool (not because of this issue) but that might make a very big difference, since peer socialization is very, very powerful. And although we're not tv-free (and won't be because we're big football fans), we're awfully close, and since this is another big issue for us, her exposure to tv shows and commercials will be very limited for as long as we possibly can. I think that will help also. And you can imagine the amount of time I've put into selecting - and vetoing - her books! *grin*

As she learns about sex differences, we will do whatever we can think of to teach sex differences and not gender differences, and hope that she can understand. (So that Joe having a penis and Riordan having a vagina is a lot like Riordan having green eyes and Sue having blue eyes, yanno, that kind of thing.) Beyond that, encouraging her to challenge gender, making it explicit, talking about it - all of this can start early.

All I can do is hope it helps.

And I LOVE that outfit! Dd wears a lot of green..it's my favorite color. :)

Jude

[Tracey]

Just throwing this out there as food for thought....

A potential problem I see with the gender neutral idea is that people DO relate to males and females differently. I realize this is what you are trying to minimize, but what happens is this. When someone sees your daughter, they will not say to themselves ..."Hmmm I can't tell if that is a girl or a boy, therfore I will see this child as having no gender at all and just as a child." What they will do is search for clues to her gender. If there are no overtly feminine signs, they will just default to male. Until secondary sexual characteristics kick in, most will just assume she is male.

I remember an interesting lecture in sociology class dealing with gender. It seems that people are not nearly so hostile to women who have sex changes to become men as opposed to men who want to become women. The switch from female to male is more (subconsciously) understood because it is a more "powerful" position in society. Like another poster said, girls can wear "gender neutral" and feminine colors and it's "ok", whereas a boy child could not. I see gender neutral (not what you are aiming for, but in actual application) as a rejection of female, not an equal marginalization of both male and female.

We all want our children to have wonderful traits that have nothing to do with being male or female...courage, compassion, kindness, etc. I think there is a danger of your DD getting the message that being female is bad and that being male is good. I know this is not what you are after, but I just see it as a possible hurdle. I also realize you didn't ask for my opinion, so feel free to blow me off LOL.

[Judegirl]

Mary,

Thanks for the compliment! We love her wardrobe, and we think she'd look strange in more feminine clothes, anyway. :)

Dd has been called handsome on a couple of occasions, but most of the time people just avoid making a choice and use generic compliments, which is nice. Many of them don't even ask anymore, which I like.

Several languages (Turkish, for one - can't think of the others right now) have gender-neutral pronouns. All of the attempts in our country thus far have failed except for in the fringiest of fringes (and believe me folks, I'm not there!) but I hope that in my lifetime a gender-neutral pronoun will become common again.

And yes, I'll admit...pink I can deal with, but Barbie would cause me some tears....*grin* (Karen, if you're reading this, no offense to you! :))

Jude

[Judegirl]

Holli -

YES! I wish I had your guts. :) That's a much better way to go than ours, ideally, but when shopping for dd before knowing her sex, I found I just didn't have the you-know-whats (can't get more sexist than that expression, btw!) to buy clothes that I thought were really pretty for a boy. And then I'd decide that if I couldn't put ot on a boy, I shouldn't put it on a girl.

I did buy all the jewel tones I could find (Gosh, they're hard to find - where do you go??) Cranberries, plums, hunter greens...I remember the first time I put burgundy on dd I realized I had been excited to put those on a boy. LOL.

Dh and I don't much like most prints, or we'd be with you on some of that -we like sea horses, monkeys, dragons, wizards, but not so much the other stuff. If I really liked fairies, though, I'd put them on either a boy or a girl. (And what on EARTH is up with the dog=boy and cat=girl thing?? I see that all the time. How bizarre.)

Where'd you find fairy stuff in darker colors? I'd love to see those, and my SIL, who loves fairies and angels, is about to have a baby. :)

Thanks,
Jude

[Judegirl]

Lisa,

I'm going to check out Gardner's Multiple Intelligences...THAT sounds interesting. Thanks!

Jude

[stillplayswithbarbies]

LOL Jude I was reading these last few posts and thinking what would happen if a Barbie showed up in your apartment and picturing you and your DH recoiling in horror! :)


...Karen
DS Jake Feb 91, DD Logan Mar 03
http://members.aol.com/khowe14494/superpower.gif http://members.aol.com/khowe14494/bo...breastfed2.gif

[Judegirl]

LOL Karen!!! Thanks for letting me know you were reading along; I know you and I have talked about this on other threads before, and was thinking about you too as this went along.

:)
Jude