The Gender Equality Checkpoint

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

But is your gut reaction against the idea that the girls aren't being taught practicality (as you were with your jeans and trainers,) or that they're being spoiled (as you only wore jeans and trainers because they were less expensive and could be handed down from your brother?)

I never had hand me down clothes from boys, only girls. My brother, in fact, had some of my hand me downs, because clothes were more gender-neutral then. I did wear dresses of course (in fact probably all my family photos have me in a dress, because photos were taken on special occasions).

I've thought about this a bit now. And I have to admit I'm still not sure why I don't like it. Maybe I'm a bit of a dinosaur myself.

I think it may be something to do with the lack of choice. Although I only took a photo of one of each item of clothing, the whole aisle was similar. Boys' clothes had dinosaurs, cars and trucks - right down to pants and socks. Girls' had fluff and froth and polka dots and frills.

And the market is driven by parents, which means long before these children have a sense of their own identity, they are being dressed in a gender specific way. And in my mind an outdated idea of gender.

But what would I prefer? Parents having no choice and everyone dressing in Communist era boilersuits? No, not at all. And you weren't suggesting that either, Clod - this came as part of my self-questioning.

It just seems odd to me that in the West we live in a time and place where a woman can be a programmer, a pathologist, a lawyer, a doctor, a dentist. But she grew up wearing sparkly polka-dot frou-frou little tops and knickers with sparkles on them. Whereas her brother can be a stay at home Dad, a carer, a nurse or a teaching assistant and he grew up wearing dinosaurs, monsters and trucks on his socks.

Obviously I'm painting with a broad brush. It may simply have been the impact of seeing row after row of separate identity clothing which startled me.

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by DanaC

jebus those are ugly jumpers.

Actually I'd wear both if they were in my size

[xoxoxoBruce]

Today's installment of Girl Genius ended with this...

[DanaC]

Looking at the global picture the anti-FGM movement is gathering force. I wonder how many more generations of girls and young women will have this barbarous act performed on them.

This is another of those things about some cultures' approaches to gender that fucking baffles me. It is so counterintuitive at a species level. Like parents driven by honour to douse a daughter in petrol and set her alight because she looked at a boy a couple of times and dishonour in the eyes of the community means a kind of social death for families. FGM, practiced in cultures that have as one of their central family goals the production of healthy babies, particularly sons, runs utterly counter to those goals. In order to control the sexual urges of girls and make them pure mothers and wives, they inflict physical injuries which massively increase the chances those women will be infertile, or unable to bear a healthy child.

What the almighty fuck was going through the minds of the people who first decided this would be a cracking good thing to do to their little girls?

[sexobon]

Originally Posted by DanaC

... What the almighty fuck was going through the minds of the people who first decided this would be a cracking good thing to do to their little girls? ...

It was probably conceived by some rough equivalent to an MBA who figured it would work out cheaper than either chastity belts or letting nature take its course. The older women jumped on the bandwagon and made it trendy. They still do that today.

[xoxoxoBruce]

It would appear that barefoot and pregnant isn't the only option.

[xoxoxoBruce]

In the early fight...

[xoxoxoBruce]

Just the tip of the iceberg, so many more who never got credit...

[BigV]

http://www.prb.org/Publications/Arti...-violence.aspx

The UNICEF-supported survey examined women's attitudes toward domestic violence as part of a larger study on maternal and child health. Women were asked a series of questions posing scenarios, or reasons, under which a husband would hit or beat his wife.

Overall, 92 percent of women in Afghanistan feel that a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife for at least one of these reasons: going out without telling the husband, neglecting the children, arguing with the husband, refusing sex, and burning the food. Seventy-eight percent of women believe that going out without telling the husband is justification for beating, while 31 percent think the same about burning the food.

This same list of reasons has been used by the Demographic and Health Surveys in dozens of countries worldwide to measure attitudes toward domestic violence. The Afghanistan survey added an additional question to reflect local attitudes—wearing inappropriate clothes. Sixty-three percent of Afghan women feel a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife if she wears inappropriate clothing.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Not surprising, that's all they've ever known. One lesson they all... well, the ones still alive, learned young, is don't rock the boat, don't make waves, don't attract attention, don't piss anybody off. That's been passed down from mother to child for a thousand generations.

[sexobon]

Naaaaw. They're just kinky, consider disobedience foreplay, and like their foreplay rough.

[xoxoxoBruce]

And everyone knows the area is full of dope, so when someone says, stone her, they all cheer and pull out their BICs.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The first female cop in the US.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Uh Oh...

[Happy Monkey]

One politician was so sure of his gender stereotypes that he thought that introducing a gender equality amendment would be a poison pill.

It passed (in committee at least).