So it's cute huh? A boy, he's noise with dirt on him. But how many quiet clean boys do we know? And how many noisy dirty girls? And if it's not many then why not?
Science tells us that this stuff is not innate. It is instilled. By us. And a million trillion billion teeny social factors - for the subtlety of this see the BBC toys experiment - www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWu44AqF0iI - it's only 3 minutes long - I love one of the adults' reactions that she was astounded by her own behaviour because she thought she had a really open mind :D ).
Another factor to consider is that in our current cohort of 16-25's, 20% do not identify as wholly one gender or another. It's a big subject that I'll wonder about in the future but for the sake of this particular wondering :- if 20% of our kids are going to at the very least question their gender, then our stereotypes are really going to annoy them!!
So if we want quiet, sensitive, gentle boys, or bold, loud, whole-hearted girls or just fully alive engaged humans, then maybe we will have to start thinking out of our boxes, encouraging, cheering, cajoling, praising, calling them on to be whatever they are whatever the shapes of their bits...
Science tells us that this stuff is not innate. It is instilled. By us. And a million trillion billion teeny social factors - for the subtlety of this see the BBC toys experiment - www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWu44AqF0iI - it's only 3 minutes long - I love one of the adults' reactions that she was astounded by her own behaviour because she thought she had a really open mind :D ).
Another factor to consider is that in our current cohort of 16-25's, 20% do not identify as wholly one gender or another. It's a big subject that I'll wonder about in the future but for the sake of this particular wondering :- if 20% of our kids are going to at the very least question their gender, then our stereotypes are really going to annoy them!!
So if we want quiet, sensitive, gentle boys, or bold, loud, whole-hearted girls or just fully alive engaged humans, then maybe we will have to start thinking out of our boxes, encouraging, cheering, cajoling, praising, calling them on to be whatever they are whatever the shapes of their bits...
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