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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2011 6:37:32 GMT
A pink shirt can look great on a man.
But whether we like it or not, we do think of pink as a girly colour, especially where children are concerned. I've seen toolboxes for children in bright pink, presumably to appeal to girls, and if it gets them wanting to learn how to use screwdrivers and hammers so much the better I suppose.
So if you want to encourage boys to play with certain toys, don't choose pink. It would be wrong of any nursery to have toys in that colour unless they want to put boys off playing with them.
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Post by iamjumbo on Jul 7, 2011 20:23:59 GMT
A pink shirt can look great on a man. But whether we like it or not, we do think of pink as a girly colour, especially where children are concerned. I've seen toolboxes for children in bright pink, presumably to appeal to girls, and if it gets them wanting to learn how to use screwdrivers and hammers so much the better I suppose. So if you want to encourage boys to play with certain toys, don't choose pink. It would be wrong of any nursery to have toys in that colour unless they want to put boys off playing with them. back when i worked in an office, and HAD to wear stuff like that, i had a pink dress shirt. it never bothered me to wear it at all. i wouldn't wear pink pants, or shoes, but a pink shirt does look good with black pants
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Post by Lauren on Jul 14, 2011 1:19:04 GMT
I don't think this is lunacy at all. All it is doing is offering both girls and boys a chance to explore the opposite sex without restrictions because of their sex. I mean, think about it. If a boy wanted to play with dolls instead of toy swords, you know how many people would freak (excluding the PC lunatics of course ). As a kid, I was a tom boy. In fact, I still am. My first toy I ever got to buy myself, that I actually got to chose, was a Batman doll with the Batmobile. My dad never seemed to care about which toys I played with, or which sports I played, but i remember, one day, I was 10, and I hit a ball over the fence. My dad got the ladder, and I was so excited to climb over it and go get the ball, but he told me I couldn't do it because I was a girl, and let my younger cousin by two years do it because he was a boy. That hurt me. And because I am a manipulative person, one time my dad asked me to mow the lawn, or that i should learn to mow the lawn, and I told him I can't because i'm a girl. He never asked me again. I think he got the point.
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Post by iamjumbo on Jul 14, 2011 13:27:07 GMT
I don't think this is lunacy at all. All it is doing is offering both girls and boys a chance to explore the opposite sex without restrictions because of their sex. I mean, think about it. If a boy wanted to play with dolls instead of toy swords, you know how many people would freak (excluding the PC lunatics of course ). As a kid, I was a tom boy. In fact, I still am. My first toy I ever got to buy myself, that I actually got to chose, was a Batman doll with the Batmobile. My dad never seemed to care about which toys I played with, or which sports I played, but i remember, one day, I was 10, and I hit a ball over the fence. My dad got the ladder, and I was so excited to climb over it and go get the ball, but he told me I couldn't do it because I was a girl, and let my younger cousin by two years do it because he was a boy. That hurt me. And because I am a manipulative person, one time my dad asked me to mow the lawn, or that i should learn to mow the lawn, and I told him I can't because i'm a girl. He never asked me again. I think he got the point. there's nothing manipulative about that. HE was the one who told you that you couldn't do what boys do. he didn't have any business asking you to do something that he had already told you that you couldn't
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Post by Liberator on Jul 14, 2011 18:51:06 GMT
Novak: 62 I mean, think about it. If a boy wanted to play with dolls instead of toy swords, you know how many people would freak (excluding the PC lunatics of course ).
That is what often worries me about most alleged gender equality in at least the English-speaking world. It is usually a one-way trip where for other reasons there might be some objection to girls playing with toy weapons (though oddly rarely to martial arts training) but they may well be positively encouraged to play with (for instance) construction sets instead of 'domestic' toys - and so will boys. That is, for the boys little has changed. So the outcome is even less of a true equality of value than when they were each segregated to different but equal. The message is closer to same style as long as it's traditional boy style and girl tradition as inferior for girls as it ever was for boys. Anyone who does the Funtrivia quizzes will at some stage have met the question Your son's teacher phones to say that he prefers playing with girls than boys, among possible answers being When he comes in wearing a dress then I'll start to worry. Now reverse the sexes and it does not work: Your daughter prefers playing sports with the boys to skipping ropes (like a boxer!) So when she comes in wearing jeans and a shirt buttoned to the right, then I'll worry. More than half the girls probably do already. Not one boy wears a dress. This is not equality. It is closer to modern feminist conservatism eternally preaching the superior value of traditional masculine activities over feminine without question instead denying any such superiority. Its closest comparison is colonialism where it is fine for the lesser culture (girls) to abandon their tradition for that of the colonial superior, but unthinkable for the superior (boys) to betray their superiority by going native. Comparisons exist with the fear of white degeneration with the rise of rock 'race' music, its corresponding attribution of Capitalist degeneracy in the Communist world and before either, the infamous Nazi exhibitions of degenerate art and racially inferior jazz which mostly proved so popular that they had to be closed down! So PC can cover unconscious sexist values that boy things are better than girl things that may be stronger than when they were separate but equal. Many times, I have seen mention of accepting girlish boys (but never boyish girls) as gay. Though the only connection between feminine boys and homosexuality (far less so masculine girls) is traditional prejudice and dinning it into the children concerned, whether with contempt or with misplaced 'support' for a choice that has been defined for them.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 14, 2011 21:15:21 GMT
People never buy baby dolls for boys, do they? My brother was the only one of the two of us to play with my dolls - I preferred soft animal toys. Neither of us had children so I can't tell whether the experience would have made him a better parent. He probably is more tolerant than babies than me, but I can't really say that is down to the fact that he liked dressing my dolls. He certainly wasn't a feminine boy - far from it.
But can you give some examples of "girl things" that aren't valued as much as "boy things"? I can't think of any at the moment, unless you mean the dolls. Even then, I'm not sure that playing with dolls is regarded as inferior, is it?
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Post by jean on Jul 15, 2011 9:55:57 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2011 14:56:24 GMT
Ah, but just imagine what would happen if a boy wanted to play in a girls' football team!
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Post by firedancer on Jul 15, 2011 20:41:36 GMT
;D I used to play in a mixed hockey team (as an adult). My lordy, it was vicious. ;D
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Post by Big Lin on Jul 15, 2011 21:41:27 GMT
But our girls got to the semi-final of the World Cup and only lost on penalties so where were the FA then? (Doing sweet FA?
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Post by Liberator on Jul 16, 2011 0:46:40 GMT
But can you give some examples of "girl things" that aren't valued as much as "boy things"? I can't think of any at the moment, unless you mean the dolls. Even then, I'm not sure that playing with dolls is regarded as inferior, is it? I can't really believe that you are serious here. Wearing pretty clothes, using cosmetics, painting finger and toe nails, fancy hair, clothes to look good instead work practical, expecting to be valued and valuing yourself as a person by how you choose to present yourself instead of what some 'owner' pays you for doing, caring about personal relationships more than money for 'work'.only enjoying a relationship when you feel appreciated for pleasing your partner instead of seeing them as a sort of servant for sexual thrills, valuing emotional personal commitment and 'being wanted' above paid service, emotional satisfaction from pleasing more than from being served - Though OK, most pre- Women's Liberation girls did take it as their right for men to be their servant, and modern feminism has been trying to restore that traditional privilege ever since some privileged bitches found themselves faced with men treating them as equals and - worse - expected to respect men as equals instead of their traditional servants grovelling to be allowed to serve the traditionally unfeeling emotionless sex expected to make equality of making love a commodity for sale, one condemned as what feminist despise as sex objects and Women's Liberation sought liberation from seeing women as the subservient mindless, emotionless, sexless passive morons that feminist misogyny denounces women as, who have freed themselves from feminist belief in female inferiority and assert themselves with men as equals - the ultimate that no feminist can bear, that women might not be as inferior to men (or men the dominant stomping macho rapists) as feminist want to drag all other women down to their foul rape fantasy that they envy so much. That is why Feminist today has much the same implications as Communist in Hngary.
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Post by jean on Jul 16, 2011 7:59:32 GMT
Wearing pretty clothes, using cosmetics, painting finger and toe nails, fancy hair... ....expecting to be valued and valuing yourself as a person by how you choose to present yourself... Women who don't especially want their personality to be encapsulated in wearing pretty clothes, using cosmetics, painting finger and toe nails, fancy hair, find such a requirement every bit as tyrannical as what you see as the alternative. Your own all-consuming desire to be allowed to do these things blinds you to this fact. There is also no correlation between wearing pretty clothes, and caring about personal relationships more than money for 'work'. Nobody has greater emotional empathy because their fingernails are pink, or blue, or any other colour. The rest of your post is the same old nonsense that you've been regurgitating for years and really doesn't deserve a reply.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 17, 2011 7:10:44 GMT
Liberator, we were talking about children's toys, and that is where I struggled to think of any specifically "girl things" - or at least "girl things" which children should be encouraged to enjoy. Cooking for example is no longer treated as a female pastime. I'm not sure about knitting and sewing.
Jean is quite right in what she says about dress. Much to my mother's sorrow, I hated wearing frilly frocks, and she had the good sense to allow me to wear dungarees. My male cousin used to dress up in grass skirts.
As for your : expecting to be valued and valuing yourself as a person by how you choose to present yourself instead of what some 'owner' pays you for doing, caring about personal relationships more than money for 'work'.only enjoying a relationship when you feel appreciated for pleasing your partner instead of seeing them as a sort of servant for sexual thrills, valuing emotional personal commitment and 'being wanted' above paid service, emotional satisfaction from pleasing more than from being served
All worthwhile, but surely not "feminine" qualities at all?
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Post by Liberator on Jul 18, 2011 22:00:21 GMT
All of what I said does start aimed at children because there is today something of a backlash against the tradition of feminist masculinism producing excessively 'girly' ornaments and toys covered in pink and sparkle. I suspect a generation of mothers subconsciously rebelling through their daughters against being brought up to despise all things girly, just as the 1950s saw a similar revolt against wartime militarisation and austerity for all, and in both cases overdid it.
These nail kits and toy jewellery, hair beading and ribbon-plaiting are very obviously aimed at girls, since they never have been associated with boys and where occasionally with young men, on a far less elaborate scale. Practically every boy in my teenage school wore an identity chain bracelet (we even envied those with a real Medic-alert) and often a coper rheumatism bracelet but that kind of jewellery stopped far short of the over-prettified stuff aimed at girls in single figures to get them used to the idea of feeling free to dress up. There is a distinct difference between encouraging a boy to play with dolls (which they have always done as long as the dolls wore military uniform) and something like the dreaded My Little Pony, which I expect to see making a come-back any time (but hope I don't!)
There could be something more devious than simple maternal over-compensation for what they grew up feeling deprived of, in preparing the girls for a life of ornamental display and cosmetic daub that has become rather more retrained than formerly. Though I wouldn't that most of the teenage girls I see around actually do show much restraint in the mascara department. Still, they are not dripping with sparkle like their little sisters either, who would no doubt continue to want to cover themselves in shiny plastic with stickers on their nails and transfer 'tattoos' everywhere else until they get a real one like Mum. If it leads back to dangly stained-glass earrings instead of silly little rings and spikes, there may still be a blessing disguised in it!
All the same, these ornaments and transfers are so baby-girly that there is no question of the sexes meeting in the middle to share them. Purveyors are cashing in on a sense of girls feeling free to show off from day to day (so the more babybling the better) that they have never lost and boys have never regained since Disraeli got laughed out of Parliament for wearing more chains than a convict. They happen to be doing it to an excess, but an excess quite compatible with the tradition that girls are entitled while boys have to earn.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2011 16:18:17 GMT
Interesting thoughts, Liberator!
In my last post I did add the rider about girly things that children of both sexes should be encouraged to enjoy !
I suspect that girls will be girls, and that they are attracted to different things than boys. A lot of girls seem to go for pink and jewellery to the despair of their parents. I seem to have remembered reading some research about it. But I like the idea of a nursery school that aims to get children sharing the same activities, even if they don't always succeed.
I'm not so sure there is so much these days of "girls being entitled while boys have to earn", but if little girls still dream of being Princesses, what do little boys dream of? Winning the Lottery (don't we all) ?
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Post by jean on Jul 19, 2011 17:02:09 GMT
A lot of girls seem to go for pink and jewellery to the despair of their parents. A lot of parents would like to buy something different - but it's just not available. Why that is, I've no idea. There is plenty of demand. There never was, skylark.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2011 19:12:04 GMT
I've just been onto M&S and Mothercar, and although pink features large on the girls' clothes pages, there are plenty of other colours.
As for "entitlement" - well, there was an expectation that the Man of the House was the breadwinner. It still exists in Islamic society; the Koran puts a duty on the man to provide for his family.
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Post by jean on Jul 19, 2011 19:30:53 GMT
The message we got in the 1950s from the society around us was was that what we were entitled to was to be decorative, not to be too clever (or we'd never get a husband) and not to upset him once we'd landed him.
Fortunately our schools gave us a different message.
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Post by Lauren on Jul 22, 2011 3:29:06 GMT
The message we got in the 1950s from the society around us was was that what we were entitled to was to be decorative, not to be too clever (or we'd never get a husband) and not to upset him once we'd landed him. Fortunately our schools gave us a different message. 100% Agree. I don't think this school is telling boys they cannot be boys, or girls they cannot be girls. It is teaching them that it is okay for boys to like girl things, and girls to like boy things. No restrictions. No judgement. Basically, it is teaching equality, and since people have been fighting for a long time (and still continue to fight) for equality, I thought this school would be more readily accepted then criticized.
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Post by Liberator on Jul 22, 2011 4:47:52 GMT
I agree there, but as far as I am concerned, all that was hacked out in the late 1960s, early 1970s,. so if it needs to be repeated now, it is because women denying masculine superiority then were trampled because their denial threatened conventional values.It was and is fine for girls to be boys, because boy is the traditionally superior state, but to assert equality of traditional girl-value to boy-value that risks changing social outlook to more humane instead of corporate must be stepped on at all costs.
Whereas the 1960s feminists mostly opposed [American] conservative beliefs in the superiority of activities and attitudes traditionally associated with men over those associated with women and sought to assert equality of both, resulting in the enormous political and social conflicts of the 1970s, post-1980s feminism has re-interpreted Equality in an Orwellian sense as meaning traditionally masculine (ie industrial) values superior to feminine (ie personal) and no need to change the traditional corporate structure to accept women's values as equal, but rather to change women to believe themselves inferior unless they conform to the same corporate values as the males that feminists command them to believe their superiors.
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