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Post by Liberator on Jul 1, 2011 17:15:49 GMT
There was a novel I read set in Warlord and Occupied China. It concerns a half-caste boy sent from Hong Kong to live with his Chinese cousins. At the British school in Hong Kong, he was an outsider additional to being mixed race because he had been brought up with strong Chinese influence whether the other mixed boys were more Westernized. Consequently, he preferred art to sports, was withdrawn, studious, a right little feminized nerd.
On arrival in the Native Quarter of Shanghai, he is of course the absolute ideal of a promising traditional Chinese gentleman and his girl cousin immediately falls in love with him, like most of the rest.
Thereafter, the story gets rather boring with political shenanigans as they get separated and find each other again and the Japanese invasion.
In general with some reservations, I agree with Mahatma Gandhi about Western civilization - "It would be a very good idea". Even Samurai developed into a highly cultured refined class over time, paying most of their attention to matters that we would not think of as traditionally masculine, even if we don't think them specifically feminine either. Perhaps its a result that because the men were so much closer to attitudes we normally associate with women, there was a much sharper gender contrast in other ways like language and deference (and often still is).
All the same, unless we are going to bring racial theories into it, it is only possible to say that if a boy wants to wear bright silk robes and write poetry about the beauty of cherry blossom, there is something going wrong in context that he has not seen other boys doing so. Out of context, he might be the Crown Prince of Japan.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 1, 2011 20:57:27 GMT
I think you're seeing it the wrong way round Anna. It's not restricting to sameness, it's giving everybody a fair crack at everything to grow up making their own choices from a full palette, not just from yellows to red for these, lime to blues for those or yellows to reds for everybody because they are better than inferior lime to blues for nobody. So you can end up with orange and violet instead of each being excluded from the range of options. Actually, I experienced this in school. British schools still require specialization to arts or science in the higher levels. I wanted to do German, Latin and Mathematics. Not allowed - Maths were Science, Languages were Arts. Since then, thanks largely to Noam Chomsky, Mathematics with Linguistics is a degree course in its own right, and I had to do Chomsky's mathematical linguistics as part of a computer science degree. But then, you were a boy or a girl - that is, same sort of artificial distinction as Science or Humanities. I went for German, French, English and Latin, but I would much have preferred Maths to English or French, just as growing up, I found no difference between knitting, embroidery, fishing and Meccano construction, model railway and a pet doll. And once I had passed my Advanced level languages, I used them to take a degree in 'Computing Science' with more mathematics than I ever wanted to see (none of it useful in a computing context). I was never taught to feel any difference or discouraged, so still do not understand why people make such a fuss about these differences. In any case, knitting was a national tradition that once had a law passed against it to get people out on the fields and a lot of my ancestors had been windjammer sailors for whom knitting and sewing and cooking were essential since there was no woman at sea to play nursemaid and do it all for them like they were helpless children. Good post. I was never allowed to play with Meccano because it was my brother's. I'm not sure about knitting being essential for sailors but I know that it was a traditional occupation on long sea voyages; it surely beats landcape painting!
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Post by Liberator on Jul 1, 2011 22:43:16 GMT
Knitting? It was a national tradition - which might be a bit strange because we can't support sheep. Every so often somebody tries a few and the grass is too rich for them. Back in the day, it's reported that Mary Queen of Scots went to her death wearing Jersey hose knitted white. About that time, they created a law restricting the time that could be spent knitting because farmers were finding it better all round to import wool and export stockings and then import food than to grow their own. They still didn't grow food (much) after the law either, they expanded their orchards and exported cider.
Where do you think the name Jersey for a jumper knitted from oiled waterproof wool comes from? I must admit to being a traitor because I prefer the Guernsey, made with separate arms and gussets sewn on, where the Jersey was knitted all in one piece on four or five double-ended needles. There are similar fishermen's sweaters in Cornwall and Brittany as well.
As for your Meccano comment - of course that is ridiculous and sad, and the traditional opinions about these things don't make sense. There's no real difference in the pattern-following and imagination required to bolt Meccano together or wire a circuit up or knot macramé or make your own furniture or your own clothes or your own food or anything else. But if you look at how things have changed, it is much more towards encouraging girls into traditionally masculine activities than boys into feminine, and encouraging girls to think of themselves in the same way as boys, worth only what employers will pay them to be available for use without personal commitments.
The Alternative Society of co-operatives providing what people actually wanted to do it for themselves and drop-out communes valuing women's traditional making meals and clothes against Industry died and the women standing up for themselves against the depersonalization forced on men were succeeded by women surrendering their own traditions to become part of what they called Patriarchal values.
Exactly the same thing happened in the USSR, when the revolutionary ideals of all working together for mutual benefit became even stricter hierarchy than had been before, because the Commissars could pretend that they represented The People, so anybody disagreeing with them opposed The People.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 1, 2011 22:53:41 GMT
I hadn't realised that a Jersey was knitted in one piece. For heaven's sake, how long are the needles? More to the point, you'd need to be a gorilla to work them.
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Post by Liberator on Jul 1, 2011 23:14:23 GMT
I hadn't realised that a Jersey was knitted in one piece. For heaven's sake, how long are the needles? More to the point, you'd need to be a gorilla to work them. About 8", pointed at both ends and takes 4 to 6 as a rule, slip stitches from one to the next. These days of course, they are machine-made.
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Post by Liberator on Jul 1, 2011 23:27:00 GMT
It is true that in the 1950s, girls' schools pushed their pupils into sciences, in an attempt to break out of earlier stereotyping; but even then, it was possible to mix Arts and Sciences at A level, though it was safer if you were doing four subjects rather than three. When I was teaching, such a combination was not unusual; My niece's A levels were Art, Chemistry and Biology. And some medical schools in particular liked evidence of a wider range of interests than just three sciences could show. (It's always seemed to me that woodwork or needlework might be a better preparation for being a surgeon than A level physics.) Well it may have been true in the 1950s that girls were encouraged to do what were considered boy things, thus superior, but languages with mathematics, or physics with a language was just not possible in my public/grammar school 6th forms in the 1960s because the classes ran at the same time. We did do woodwork in the 1st year. I was always envious of the secondary-modern because they did metalwork, which I would like to have as more useful to sell jewellery than to plane wood. Of course neither boys nor girls were taught to respect traditionally feminine interests mostly involving craft decoration and self-sufficiency on the same level. It took Hippies and Women's Liberation to force that equality. But it soon died.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 2, 2011 0:00:26 GMT
And the wooden spoon award for stirring goes to....
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Post by jean on Jul 2, 2011 8:40:41 GMT
Well it may have been true in the 1950s that girls were encouraged to do what were considered boy things, thus superior... Now you're spoiling it. Who said anything about superior?That was the problem with grammar schools - too narrowly academic. They didn't pay much attention to practical subjevcts at all, whether traditionally masculine or traditionally feminine ones. And if early feminists did not value needlework enough - and they probably didn't - it was because they were trying to get out of the hole that had been dug for women for centuries, where that that was all they were supposed to do. If you read what people have written on this thread, you'll see that more recently both boys and girls have been encouraged to cook, sew and make things. If they're all doing it less these days, it's down to a combination of cost and the baleful influence of Health & Safety.
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Post by Liberator on Jul 2, 2011 17:07:13 GMT
I'd agree with that more recently. Where I think there's a danger is that more recently still, the idea has arisen of school as training toward getting a good job, meaning a highly-payed job more than a productive, creative, satisfying one or even one with the satisfaction of service. I don't intend to repeat what I've sent elsewhere about the National Health disaster of phony privatisation replacing the service ethos with one appropriate to profit-making enterprises - and the same applies to other public services - but most people will be well aware of them and work out for themselves that when cuts are required, upper management cuts the people doing the actual work, not themselves.
I don't think anybody has to really say that traditionally masculine enterprises are considered superior to feminine, since it is implicit in requiring the expectations and attitudes traditional to boys of girls too more than the other way round, and in not recognising (and paying) child-rearing as a career like any other. It is more often seen as a problem that women persist in choosing work they can combine with home life, than that a lot of men still do not. That makes it obvious that personal commitments are expected to take second place.
Sadly, there is no real difference between capitalism and socialism in that respect, only a squabble about ownership. The public owning the means of production does not go far enough in giving the public control, especially when the reality has been proxy ownership as unconcerned with the public as its predecessors.
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♫anna♫
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jul 5, 2011 1:21:12 GMT
Those PC police at that Swedish school would sure go bonkers, if someone smuggled some big toy monster trucks in for the boys and some Barbie dolls with a dollhouse for the girls!
We'd have to have someone filming it for for YouTube, when the horrified PC popes move in and confiscate these non gender neutral toys!
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Post by Liberator on Jul 5, 2011 4:16:03 GMT
Maybe the boys would share their trucks with the girls and the girls their dolls with the boys. Boys have been allowed to play with dolls ever since they were dressed in military uniform and called Action Man, maybe before, if we take Tin Soldiers into account.
Or they might both work together making stuff out of construction kits knitted together ...
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♫anna♫
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jul 5, 2011 17:24:09 GMT
Maybe the boys would share their trucks with the girls and the girls their dolls with the boys. Boys have been allowed to play with dolls ever since they were dressed in military uniform and called Action Man, maybe before, if we take Tin Soldiers into account. Or they might both work together making stuff out of construction kits knitted together ... No Liberator! Those PC bigots would quickly move in and confiscate the "gender specific toys". Their aim is turn these children into unisexual, intergrated units! They deceitfully claim to promote diversity, but in reality envison a "melting pot" for society where everyone is as identical to each other as possible!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2011 18:25:51 GMT
Anna, why do we need "gender specific" toys? A toy cooker painted pink with a picture of two girls tells a boy it is not for him, so this nursery is encouraging boys to do what many boys and girls love to do.
If they don't like the kitchen, I dare say they are not forced to use it. But at least the boys are not put off venturing in there.
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Post by Liberator on Jul 5, 2011 20:27:16 GMT
I think Anna's missed what is going on here. The toys only become gender-specific when made specific to either gender. It's not the toys that are the objection, it's making them specific. So there's a wide variety of toys and each sex encouraged to play with the ones traditional to the other sex. It's been going on for a long time in nurseries and in homes. There's more likely to raised eyebrows if somebody tells a girl that she shouldn't be interesting because it's for boys.
That is where it isn't as neutral as claimed, because people are usually much more relaxed and encouraging about girls doing boy things than the other way round. So there is still a message, either that traditional boy things are better for both, or that girls have special privileges forbidden to boys.
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♫anna♫
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jul 5, 2011 21:55:40 GMT
Anna, why do we need "gender specific" toys? A toy cooker painted pink with a picture of two girls tells a boy it is not for him, so this nursery is encouraging boys to do what many boys and girls love to do. If they don't like the kitchen, I dare say they are not forced to use it. But at least the boys are not put off venturing in there. So we ban the color PINK and colors associated with masculinity too in that nutty school! www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2008453/School-bans-bid-stop-children-falling-gender-stereotypes.html QUOTE: Meanwhile, nearly all the children's books ( "in this nutty school"-anna quote unquote ) deal with homosexual couples, single parents or adopted children. There are no 'Snow White,' 'Cinderella' or other fairy tales. What's wrong with Cinderella, Snow White and heterosexual fairy tales?? Why this preference for homosexual fairy tales?? I pretty much said everything on this other thread! biglinmarshall.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=ethics&action=display&thread=1067
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2011 7:20:58 GMT
Nothing wrong with pink or blue, but we should try to stop associating the colours with a particular sex.
The paragraph on the books worried me a bit; would they make an able bodied child with a Mum and Dad feel a little odd? But of course such a book can include the more usual type of family as well.
I dare say that the school doesn't instruct parents not to read fairy tales at home. But don't you think that Snow White and Cinderella glorify the idea of a girl's beauty and the ideal of finding a handsome and wealthy man to keep her happy?
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Post by firedancer on Jul 6, 2011 13:10:33 GMT
But Anna, the same is true when you decide that boys like certain things and girls like certain other things. In this case you are trying to make all boys identical and all girls identical. You said earlier "let boys be boys and girls be girls". This is fine, as long as you don't have fixed ideas of what girls and boys are.
For example, I find it annoying that, as a female, I am supposed to like shopping for clothes, fashion, domesticity and gossiping about my private life with other females. I don't. I happen to like sport, having an adventurous job (before I retired) and getting through any domestic necessities e.g. cleaning and cooking as fast as possible so I can do something that is (to me) more interesting. I loathe shopping and refuse to talk about my private life with 'the girls'. As a child I preferred train sets and meccano to dolls and toy cookers. This did not make me any less a female. It simply made me a person with certain interests and certain dislikes that were down to my particular personality.
Not all of us fit into the 'girl' and 'boy' boxes society has decreed is suitable. If a girl likes so-called "girl" things - fine. If a boy likes so-called "boy" things - fine. But if you happen to be a girl who likes so-called "boy" things or a boy who likes so-called "girl" things that should be fine too.
The point is that no one should be forced etc. into a role whether by upholding tradition as has been the custom for centuries or defying tradition as now seems to be popular.
Let us all find out who we are and what we like in our own way. Opportunity is everything.
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jul 6, 2011 19:18:46 GMT
Dearest SkyLark and Firedancer, What's wrong with having social norms, tradition, etc.? The destruction of social norms leads to an undesirable sociological sickness called "Anomie" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie
What's wrong with the red, white and blue for the USA and other colors for other nations. I'm fine with pink for little girls and blue for little boys! What's so terrible about tradition? Sure we can criticize aspects of tradition and social norms and disagree or work to improve things. Why should everything be reduced to "equal nothingness"?
Let's celebrate our uniqueness and improve ourselves instead of being sidetracked by some dumbed down PC lunacy that wants to abolish gender.
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Post by firedancer on Jul 6, 2011 21:27:36 GMT
But that's exactly what I am saying Anna. Each of us is unique and therefore may not fit into the little pink or blue box that tradition decrees, or like or excel at the things that tradition decrees is suitable for our sex. Expecting us to do so is the very opposite of celebrating uniqueness - it's demanding conformity
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Post by Liberator on Jul 7, 2011 0:25:37 GMT
Nothing wrong with pink or blue, but we should try to stop associating the colours with a particular sex. There's a lot to show that about 100 years ago, we did and swapped them round. In most 19th century illustrations, girls wear pale shades of blue, while in earlier portraits, boys and men often wear red and pink. Of course, all the pop-psychology of the time explained why it was obvious that as the gentle colour of sky and calm sea and cornflowers, blue matched the calm gentle feminine temperament (no doubt only their servants had to deal with female market traders!) while pink was the shade of healthy robust active boys anticipating their red martial destiny. Had the colours been yellow and puce, I am sure that whichever way round, there would be an explanation as to why they are obviously natural for each sex. Traditional Ottoman Turks had some similar argument as to why it was natural for women to wear trousers and men robes (so Europeans obviously a bunch of perverts). The first Roman Emperor banned trousers as Barbarian effeminacy, presumably thinking of some Easterners because Celts and Germans at the time might have been Barbarian but the last thing they were was effeminate! Sometimes the prejudices even contradict. At the same time that reading and writing novels is girly, only men can write a decent novel. Absolutely: how could the likes of Doris Lessing and Ursula le Guin compare to the profundity of Geoffrey Archer and Nicholas Hornby?
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