My Day

[botias]

My grandmother lives on the edge of a college town. A lip of pasture flanked by industrial property. What tickles me is the way people respond to the horse. I've been taking care of her lawn so I've been out and about to see people make much of him as they walk by. One day a mini-van full of folks pulled up. They had brought their out-of-town guests to see 'the horse' the way other folks might show off a local monument or a favorite restaurant. ???? It's not like he's the Black Stallion or anything. Just a roan gelding.

Today, a young woman walked up to him and spent 10 or 15 minutes stroking and scratching, hugging his big solid neck. He's a bit lonely I think, no other horses, and an owner who is only now admitting that he doesn't have time for rodeoing any more, and he really seemed to enjoy the attention. He stood at the corner and watched her walk away.

The red airplane was back again. A little red underwing jobbie with a white stripe. The pilot flies it the way people probably imagine flying when they first wish they could. Swooping and turning and wagging her wings. It makes me smile, I waved broadly to it.

Comments

[botias.livejournal.com]

I disagree too, though I think it's an interesting observation.

I still tease my mom about the Christmas when my new grandparents got me Barbies and a doll house. :) I'm much too mature nowadays to whine about my brother getting the chemistry set, however. I prefered to play with animal toys. A family of dogs came to live in the doll house.

Have spent some time with developing kids, I think the important thing is to let kids be who they are and like what they like. Is trying to nudge them into being neuter really any better than trying to nudge them to be more masculine or more feminine than they would wish? To me gender is morally neutral, so I don't feel like it's something I need to do as a parent to attempt to mold them in this area.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

Nudge, I don't think I have a problem with; force, as in denying a child a particular kind of toy because of their gender, or removing a favored toy because it's gender inappropriate, I have problems with. And I can't even get started on how toys are marketed exclusively to genders. But yes, offer the kids a range of toys, and let them decide what they want to play with. My parents (my mom, really - my dad didn't care) let me play with whatever the hell I wanted to, and I turned out FINE! I'M FINE! RIGHT??? ;)

But yah, I disdained traditional boy- and girl-typical toys for animals. It's certainly possible to make a case for stuffed animals and model horses being "girl" toys, but I strongly avoided any toys with any semblance of... overt gender markings, or anything I thought of as too cute (little dresses/suits, hearts for eyes, that kind of thing).

Actually, given a choice, I liked making my own toys. I had a hell of a collection of found objects turned into toys in my pre- and pubescent years.

[botias.livejournal.com]

It makes me sad to hear feminist moms denying their daughters tutus, and traditionalist dads telling their sons that Care Bears is for girls. Mostly it seems to come down to 'feminine is bad'.

I let them play with what they like, but I was surprised to the extent they prefer traditional boy toys in the absense of television or shopping malls, and the way they went ballistic over heavy machinery even before they could talk. When they make their own toys they are always weapons or space ships or ghosts or dangerous animals or carnivorous plants. I don't see a lot of 'teh pretty'.

From an evolutionary standpoint I would be surprised to find that most people weren't born with a strong sense of what their sex is and a strong desire to learn their culture's gender role. It seems like the sort of thing that would affect reproductive success what with it being all bound up with sex and sexual attraction and status, yada, yada.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

Oh yah - there's some pretty convincing and compelling evidence that boys are much more mechanical thinkers than girls, and girls are more social thinkers, and given a choice, they'll wander into categories that are close to "traditional" definitions on their own.

Evolution is a mean, nasty, non-PC bitch. She doesn't care what people want to be; she cares about what people need to be. There's also mounting evidence that homosexuality is an evolutionary response to overpopulation; when you have too many kids for the environment to support, it makes sense to have some of your potential breeding stock not be interested in breeding, but still be intersted in raising or helping to raise offspring.

[botias.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about that theory. Mother Nature is a big ol' nasty bitch and her quick and tidy solution to overpopulation is death. Death by disease, starvation, predator boom, infanticide, war. Increasing the number of non-reproducing members of a population would take generations to have an effect, and homosexuals are not necessarily non-reproducing. Women historically haven't had a great deal of choice in the matter.