Appropriate Gender Roles Should Be Taught In School

[longskirtlotsakids]

I remember being told that both girls and boys had to take shop and home ec in middle school, because both taught important life skills that everybody would learn.

I've used the concept of proper measurement many times, but never did make those damn english muffin hot dog pizzas again.

I wonder if he has thought this out... the lessons that are learned best are ones that are taught by teachers that love and value the lesson. How believeable is it going to be for a female calculus teacher to tell the idiot 17 year old boys that they are naturally better at what she is teaching?

[JenniferJuniper]

So which Native America tribes' gender roles should be taught in schools? ... Oh, he means white Biblical Christian gender roles of 1950's America. What an ass.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

No way, in my family dad was the bug killer. Women don't like bugs and spiders and stuff, you know? Maybe they should have taught you that in school. ;)

My parents had a nice division of labor there. My mother can't stand roaches - doesn't wanna look at 'em, doesn't wanna squish 'em. Meanwhile, my dad can't deal with spiders.

So Mom killed/took out the spiders, and Dad smashed/cleaned up the roaches. Problem... solved.

[burntnorton]

I still bought him the easy bake since neither of us cared what color it was but it would have been nice to see at least 1 boy somewhere in the ads! But then again I'm sure he's the only boy who EVER liked to bake 'm I rite?

I have 2 1/2 boy-girl twins. They both like cars and housekeeping and princess stuff. My son likes sports stuff more and my daughter likes babies more, but other than that their interests are pretty similar. Still, my daughter gets the pink crape = girl stuff mmessage. Oh well. At least they make doctor kits in pink.

[OkToBeTakei]

Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) told colleagues on the House floor on Tuesday that young boys and girls should take classes on traditional gender roles in a marriage because there are some things fathers do "maybe a little bit better" than mothers.

"You know, maybe part of the problem is we need to go back into the schools at a very early age, maybe at the grade school level, and have a class for the young girls and have a class for the young boys and say, you know, this is what’s important," Gingrey said in a speech supporting the Defense of Marriage Act. "This is what a father does that is maybe a little different, maybe a little bit better than the talents that a mom has in a certain area. And the same thing for the young girls, that, you know, this is what a mom does, and this is what is important from the standpoint of that union which we call marriage."

Hello?

Does not compute. Thick twat. You know.

[CelticGoddess]

Until it's acceptable to dice vegetables and mop the floor with my vagina, there's no way I'm going to believe that women are better at those things than men.

Exactly! My husband cooks. He loves to cook, and he's damned good at it. I like cars, and if I had the money would be rebuilding a muscle car right now.

Appropriate gender roles: Women give birth, if they choose too and men have sperm. Women can choose to say no to men. Men have to accept it. If not, they are assholes.

[AnywhereButHere]

Yeah, somehow I became the bug killer in the family. My husband and son will cringe at the sight of them and call for me, while the cat plays with them until they beg me to put them out of their misery. It's sad. We get those millipede things in the summer. I hate them! They're too icky looking and fast. I saw one in the basement recently, and it wasn't moving, so I snuck up behind it, picked up one of my husband's old textbooks off the table (major basement clean in progress) and dropped it on the thing. The loud thud brought everyone running, interrupting my victory dance. After being told that I had heroically textbook bombed a millipede, all my husband did was cry that "You used the Janssen? You had to use the Janssen?!" He then picked it up to make sure it was okay only to start laughing hysterically. I, in all my glory, had "killed" an interestingly shaped piece of cat fur. Three facts came out of that adventure. I need new glasses, we need to vaccuum the basement more often, and he is a little too attached to his old art history books.

Back on topic... My son took Home and Careers this spring. His only issue with the class was they wouldn't let them use the sewing machines. He was looking forward to that, but hey, he hand sewed a pillow and was pretty damn proud. My sister in law has a great picture of my 3 year old nephew cooking in his toy kitchen, wearing a hockey jersey, his sister's dress up shoes and a tiara (no pants). He loves tractors, sports, cooking and dressing up (in no particular order). Teach gender roles in school my ass. We are who we are. The point is to be the best us possible.

[Carla Bruni]

I remember being told that both girls and boys had to take shop and home ec in middle school, because both taught important life skills that everybody would learn.

I attended middle school in the charmingly (maddeningly) misogynistic backwater known as Russia, and even at my seemingly progressive school in an era of something approaching liberalism (the late 90s), boys took shop and girls took home ec. This is, of course, unsurprising in a society where Orthodox Christianity, known for banning things like menstruating women in attendance at church because THEY'RE DIRTY, OBVIOUSLY, quickly filled the void left behind by the CPSU in the brains of 100 million beeehing Russian sheep. This is also why my evolving interest in computers/technology/web development throughout high school was seen as really weird, because only boys are allowed to like computers, obviously.

Luckily, I had a grandfather who always wanted a son and got a daughter, and then really wanted a grandson and got a granddaughter; this is why my mom was able to remodel her kitchen by herself and I played with nails and hammers and blocks of wood as a toddler. This is also why, many years later, I disassembled our vacuum to clear a blockage in five minutes flat, while my boyfriend at the time stared in bewilderment while typing up a Facebook status about weird Eastern European women and their fascinating abilities with tools.

The Russia we see in the news today (light years away from the Yeltsin era, where it actually felt like you were living in an approximation of democracy surrounded by intelligent people) would be PERFECT for all these fuckers. They should all move there and leave normal societies alone. Please and thank you. :mrgreen:

[LadyBlue]

QFT

My son has loved to bake and cook since he was old enough to hold a spoon so I looked for an easy bake oven for him when he was 3ish. Bright garish pink, lots of happy girls pictured on the box and in the ads. The only thing that showed even one boy was the insect maker (don't remember the name but it had the tagline of gross out your sister)

I still bought him the easy bake since neither of us cared what color it was but it would have been nice to see at least 1 boy somewhere in the ads! But then again I'm sure he's the only boy who EVER liked to bake 'm I rite?

My eldest son wanted one too, but I didn't buy it. Not because it's a "girl" toy, but because both the oven and the mixes are extortionately priced. We bought him some real baking stuff and some cake mixes instead. We did buy our 2nd son a toy kitchen, beige & green which is miraculous, and he still loves it at nearly 8, but it's mostly played with by the younger 2 boys now.

[alcharisi]

Being in a same-sex relationship, I've seen ample (though anecdotal) demonstration that these things vary not based on gender, but from, y'know, person to person.

I'm *vaguely* more butch than Fiancee (i.e., she will happily go out in a dress, where as I feel very weird in one). I'm in academia, she's in elementary education. I'm the argumentative, "thoughts" person, she's the peace-making "feelings" person.

In our house (though nothing is hard and fast), I am generally responsible for most of the "man" jobs--minor repairs and household projects that require something from the toolbox, and most other things that utilize spatial reasoning in any significant way. I'm also responsible for most of the cooking, and most of the cat related chores (since I am the one who brought the cat into the relationship.) Fiancee, conversely, does most of the baking and cleaning, and is probably the person to go to if paperwork or schedules need to be kept in order. She's also our unofficial quartermaster, since I am absent-minded as all hell and generally have no idea whether we are out of dish soap or have a ton of it.

With the exception of the cooking, so far, so gendered. Except that Fiancee is better than I am at math and science by a country mile, is much more tolerant of physical discomfort (she loves camping, whereas I require an actual mattress, climate control, and clean sheets if I'm to sleep at all), and isn't anywhere near as terrified as I am of flying insects. If we're trying to think of more stereotypes, I'm more likely to ask for directions and am definitely the artsy one in the house.

What's more, I think a lot of the respective skills we've developed have as much to do with upbringing as anything else. Both my parents were artists, so I learned to draw, paint, and sculpt as a kid--an excellent way to develop spatial skills. Her dad's an engineer, so science and math were heavily emphasized in her home--not to mention that she lived in an excellent school district, one that was especially strong in STEM. Et cetera.

Also I totally had a version of that insect-maker oven when I was a kid. Is it the one where you pour some sort of liquid rubber into a metal mold and then bake it? I think they were called CreepyCrawlies? I once played an April Fool's joke on my mom by sticking some of them in a glass of milk and giving it to her. I loved those things. I was one sad girl when the oven finally broke.

[emiliawasframed]

God, why are all the representatives from my home state such douchewaffles? Between this guy and Paul Broun, I'm glad I moved.

[RachelB]

"Daddy, can you teach me how to cook? Girls can cook too, you know."

-CFK, age 3

My father was primary cook in our household when I lived with my parents. Mom basically cooked if her side of the family came to visit. (That is the side that felt it was okay if women worked outside the home, so long as they also did all the cleaning, cooking, and other Ladybusiness. Argh.)

He did not teach me to cook, though, as he was convinced I would ruin the pots and pans. I learned a little bit from my regular babysitter and a lot from cookbooks.

[AnywhereButHere]

My parents marriage was pretty much split between traditional gender roles. The fundies would have loved them. My dad though, could actually cook quite well, and once or twice a year they would have a "Men's Party" where all of their friends would gather at our house, and all the men would put on quite the feast, and it wasn't barbeque either. It really was a sight to see about 10 men in the kitchen, all wearing aprons, cooking up a storm, arguing over seasonings and telling jokes. If anyone had tried to tell them cooking wasn't a manly activity, they would have been beaten with spatulas. :D

[Childless]

I do most of the cooking because I'm marginally better at it than my husband (although neither one of us are very good). No one bakes. If a baked item is needed, a trip to the grocery store happens. My husband stays home and provides childcare while I work outside the home (a STEM job no less). I clean the bathrooms, he vacuums. I dust, he deals with the garbage. I mow the lawn, he does the laundry. I'm in charge of bathing the child, he does most of the diaper duty. I do the bed time routine, he does the morning routine.

So, we're pretty evenly split in that each of us do traditional gender related tasks and non-traditional gender related tasks. The most important thing though? It works for us. There are no proper gender roles. What works for one family might not work for another. I say, do what makes you happy and what gets things done around the house. That's all that matters. This guy and his attempt to cram his lifestyle down the throats of small children are moronic.

[lizziesmom]

This guy is nuts. If Congress is going to meddle in education, they should be concerned about make sure both genders focus on their basic skill sets -- reading, writin and rithmetic, as well as concentrating on how to get more kids involved in math and the sciences. What a tool

[Peppercorn]

I'm single. I do everything. Flower gardening, home repair, killing bugs, freeing bats, balancing the bank account, painting the house, painting pretty pictures, baking cupcakes, grilling mastadon, mowing, etc. etc. etc. I'm so confused. And tired.

My school segregated home ec and shop class. I wanted to learn woodworking, but instead I was taught how to melt caramels for caramel apples and make instant pudding from a box. Valuable life skillz there.

[FJismyheadship]

Seriously. Just look at the color of children's toys. Ever try to find a broom or other household toy NOT covered in pink at Target? And if you could, it would still be in the girls aisle - i.e., the inside of a pepto bottle. We dont need help reinforcing gender norms.

My dad told me about Johnny Jumpups for my 6 month old. When I went to investigate, I found Johnny Jump Up with electric guitars and headphones..... and then I found Jenny Jump Up with butterflies.

When buying toys I try to think like a baby. I have bought several "boy" versions of toys because they were way more colorful. Its like girls get pink and lavender, boys get all the other colors. I think a baby doesn't care. However she probably likes the toy with five different colors than the just pink.

[emiliawasframed]

My dad told me about Johnny Jumpups for my 6 month old. When I went to investigate, I found Johnny Jump Up with electric guitars and headphones..... and then I found Jenny Jump Up with butterflies.

When buying toys I try to think like a baby. I have bought several "boy" versions of toys because they were way more colorful. Its like girls get pink and lavender, boys get all the other colors. I think a baby doesn't care. However she probably likes the toy with five different colors than the just pink.

Yes, all the other colors tend to default male. Riley nails it:

[JesusFightClub]

I attended schools, both public and private, for twenty years, and I can say with certainty: traditional gender rules are being well-taught in schools.

In my own life, for example, a boy pushed me down on the playground in first grade. I got up and pushed him back. I got kept in at the next recess and told "he just does that because he likes you". He got nothing. I have never seen male physical aggression treated with as much severity as female physical aggression.

In sixth grade, boys took shop. Girls took home ec. One girl wanted to take shop and was allowed to but was mercilessly teased by both sexes (This was not me. I wasn't all that courageous of a preteen. I have no idea what would have happened if a boy had wanted to take home ec. but I can only imagine it would have been worse.)

My 11th grade chemistry teacher said "You know, engineering isn't a great trade for a woman. Lot of rough characters, and it's kind of a waste to work that hard if you're just going to have kids."

I am thirty-three, but the exact same shit going on among the current generation of children. "Girls are nurturering followers" and "Boys are aggressive leaders" gets stamped into their faces from birth regardless of their individual characters. No need to make it official.

Totally agree. Girls should be in pink, pretending to nurse dollies, and boys should be rough and tough and manly. That's what schools teach, even now in the 21st century, as far as I can make out.

Of my two nieces, one wants to be a boy because boys are smarter than girls and are clever and have fun. She sure as hell wasn't taught that by her dad. That came up once she started school and was immediately told "You're a little *girl*, dear. You can't do that."

I think they can't actually accept that humans have differing characters and talents. If I get stuck with a work situation I ask my mum, not my dad, because we work in the same field and my mum's considerably senior to me (we're also both union reps) so she will give me a helpful answer. I would ask one of my brothers anything about music because he's pretty much an expert and my dad as well because he loves music (my mum hates music). I would ask the other brother anything about sport or what he thinks about religion as he's always got a new way of looking at things. About books, my mum again because she loves reading and my dad and brothers take ages to read a book. About TV or how best to clean the bathroom, my dad. About cooking, my mum or my youngest brother, they're both really good cooks. I don't think any of their interests and talents are intrinsically to do with their genitalia (or, er, at least I hope not :pink-shock: I have to eat that food. )

I'm the go-to insect or spider removal person. I also have a nice sideline in cleaning up warm cat sick (because it makes everyone else throw up) and me or my mum remove all dead mice, rats, birds and rabbits because my dad gets sick looking at it and goes "I cannot deal with this" :lol: "Do you want to see the eyeball, dad? At least I think it's an eyeball, what do you reckon?" "NO."

Fundies want to stick everyone in a tiny box and so completely neutralise the humanity they've got.