My Innate Sexism

On of my last posts was titled 'Chuck Norris in the 'Burbs', and in re-reading I noticed the phrase 'scream like a little girl' to describe an ineffective / weak response to something that demands action.   This kind of stuck out to me as sexist, and not the impression I want my daughter to have of what it means to be a girl.

In my defense, little girls definitely do scream, and I witness it first-hand almost every day.   Also, the description works, because everyone knows what it means when you say a grown man 'screamed like a little girl'.    Finally, the sexes are (generally) wired differently - men and women think, react and express themselves in subtly different, yet distinct, ways.   It would be unlikely (not unprecedented) if my son wants to excel at Dance and my daughter only wants to play hockey, and I don't think that's strictly based on 'nurture' or persuasion by parent, friends and society alone.

Still, as parents you really need to distinguish the stereotypes from the science.    This was clearly a bad message to send.

That doesn't mean I'd change what I wrote.   By eliminating or attempting to eliminate any 'sexist' references, you are in the position of denying that there is ANY difference in the sexes - when there are.   You also put yourself into a position of denying the perceived (societal) differences, making what society and friends will ultimately teach the kids all the more potent.   The child will then be very likely to find all the lessons from the 'good' parent wrong - trusting the more consistent and outwardly accurate miscues they find out in the real world.

I can't extricate the messages from my own mind, much less society, so there really is no other choice but to face them head on.  The right thing to do then is  to make it a point to explicitly point out the instances, regardless of source, and help the child find the root misconception, or even truth, in these views.   Confronting issues like this head on and accurately will have more effect than pretending that they do not exist.  

The book Nurture Shock had an excellent chapter that made a similar argument when it comes to race.    The point was that denying racial differences exist (traditionally: good parenting), only serves to reinforce many of the worst societal misconceptions of racial differences.