Letters to the Editor
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Absolutely!
Boys need the freedom from sex restrictions as much as girls do. In fact, this applies to adults even more! My freedom to work in an office job outside the home, as I always wanted to do, also allows my husband the reciprocal freedom to stay at home and watch our child, as he always wanted to do.
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Hell yeah!
And if my son wants to wear only lacy pink panties and Hannah Montana wigs, well then so be it!
^^^^^^^^
Since being gay is not a choice, but an innate genetic trait, then whether your boy plays with dolls or with trucks when he is a little rugrat is ultimately irrelevant to whose naughty bits he'll want to play with when he grows older.
That being said, it's gonna be all Tonka machines and Spider-Man jockey shorts for my son. If he's in the closet, he'll come out later. At age 7? Let the boy be a boy, gosh darn it.
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Why exactly
must boys be emasculated and feminized for "girlhood" to be empowered?
It is not enough for feminists that girls are empowered and offered a lot of choices. Nope - young male children must ALSO be pathologically sissyfied and indoctrinated into Emasculation (to the point of near castration) for these feminists to be happy...
Can you at least drop the pretensions of "Gender Equality" and be honest about your Pro-XX / rabidly Anti-XY final solution?
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Just leave boys out of it
You girls be whatever it is you want to be. The moment you drag us into that it becomes something else. Boys are not defective girls to be corrected or destroyed, thank you.
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Of course!
Boys who enjoy girl stuff should be allowed girl stuff, without being ridiculed as weak or weird. It's perfectly obvious that being feminine is simply strong in a different way than being masculine and that neither way is inevitably linked to particular chromosomes. Boys who like skirts or dolls or makeup (depending upon the age) should have them; just as girls who like pants, trucks, or mud should have those things.
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nature or nurture?
Looking back, I am fairly sure that either my parents wanted a boy or they had no idea how to raise a daughter. As far as I could tell, they wanted a child without any kind of strong emotion or at least one who would never, ever show it. So I played with boys a lot because I figured they could teach me all about acting stoic and tough. I always felt like my parents would be disappointed if I didn't act masculine or at least androgynous, so I tried to aovid anything "girly." They made comments like, "you don't really like dolls, do you?" so I obediently hated dolls.
Not all parents insist that their daughters act like stereotypical daughters. Those who don't can override any instinct the child has to be emotionally open, nurturing and "sensitive."
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Out come the haters
Methinks Anonymous and Roger Apocalypse do protest too much. Men who obsess about boys being "sissyfied" and "destroyed" by playing with their sisters' Barbies now and then are pretty clearly having some ... issues ... of their own.
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Of course!
Of course boys should have the same freedoms to be boyish and girlish as girls have to be boyish and girlish.
Why would anyone be opposed to that? Why would anyone call that "emasculating"?
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No don't label me
Unless you're TRYING to make my point for me. The problem is, be what you like. Girls, Be WHATEVER you like without dragging us into it. Just leave us out. It's not about us, it's about you. Do whatever it is you need to do to plant your identity politics flag w/o trying to tear anyone else down. Thank you.
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Um ... nobody is suggesting that boys be forced to play with girl toys
It's more that they not be harassed for playing with girl toys.
What the article suggests is that boys be given the same freedom as girls to experiment with things that our culture assigns to the opposite gender.
Traits and behaviors that we think of as "masculine" or "feminine" are really human traits that everyone has to varying degrees. To say that men cannot be nurturing, for instance, or that women cannot be aggressive is to deny reality.
I never liked it when people tried to stuff me into a little box marked "feminine" and chop off all of the bits that didn't quite fit. It's just as outrageous to stuff men into a little box marked "masculine" and chop off all the bits that don't quite fit.
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Let the kids choose
It seems as though boys have to navigate through a minefield of gender issues when it comes to toys. On one hand you have those who refuse to buy their boy anything that isn't overtly masculine, for fear of "turning them queer" (actual quote from a relative of mine). On the other hand, you have well-meant but misguided people who make a point of buying their boys dolls, in an attempt to raise a son who has no concept of traditional gender roles, even if the boy doesn't want a doll.
The issue is present for girls as well, but not anywhere to the same degree, from what I've seen. It really seems to be boys who are the focus of this particular line of thinking. Sadly, the "tomboy" still has a much easier time of it than her male counterpart. Even the language is different. "Tomboy" tends to refer to a Scout Finch type, who has spark and isn't afraid to climb a tree or get muddy. It's really not used as a derogatory term. What is the equivalent term for males who enjoy traditionally feminine pursuits? When I was younger, the common term for delicate, thoughtful boys who prefered quieter activities was "sissy" -- definitely not a kind term. There were no kind terms for those boys. It was really unfair and sad.
If a girl wants to play with Tonka, let her. If she wants to play with dolls, she's not making a statement about gender roles, she just likes dolls. And if a boy wants to play with dolls, great. And if he likes trucks and thinks that dolls are dumb, it shouldn't be interpreted as an early inclination towards chauvinism. We feminists need to stand up for these boys and these narrow roles that they're expected to fill. If we want girls to be able to play with whatever they choose, without gender constraints, then we need to demand the same freedom for boys.
Poor kids...they just want to play, and we're all wrapped up in what their choice of toys "says about them". But what do our neuroses about our kids' toys say about us?