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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My son is in a school that bans media (waldorf).  Now, the parents don't live up to it 100%, but these kids watch A LOT less than other kids.  They do live in our culture and so aren't completely exempt from gender norms, but it is amazing what you see on the playground - all the kids playing together in very similar ways.  Biological differences do not manifest themselves in the ways we think they do (trucks on the one hand and tutus on the other is a great example of our nonsensical gender norming). Much of this stuff is learned though media.

That said.  I still think you should just smile and say, "sometimes."[/quote]

Is the end goal to have us all male and female dress alike and have similar social expectations and duties a la 1984? Will everyone feel better then? [/quote]

Nobody is making them do or not do anything - but without media influence they just look like kids (not boys or girls), planting seedlings, holding worms, filling wagons with leaves to bring to the "dump", jumping off tree stumps, playing ring around the rosey, sweeping the grass.  They all come in covered in mud.  In the classroom, my son spends a lot of time playing with trucks on wooden roads, but so do the girls.  He also cooks in the play kitchen, wears a baby doll, dresses up like a gnome (that part I don't get?), and loves the sparkly bracelet he got at a girl's birthday party.  He has no concept of boy or girl toys.

He's going to public school next year, and I know he will then be around peers who watch a lot of TV, so this is the end of that.  I am not looking forward to his shrinking his world to just what he thinks he is supposed to be interested in.  He does love (love!) trains, so no big harm done, but why can't he like trains and glitter?  Because he will be told so by his peers who have been told so by the media.

I have seen differences in my boy and girl children, but those mostly have to do with how wired the girl is for socialization - eye contact earlier, notices  kids much earlier than him, upset when her brother is upset (he isn't bothered by her crying but she is by his).  It has NOT manifested itself in stereotypical  girly girlness or all boyness.  Those are invented, imo.  She did like dolls earlier than he ever did - but that is social - and he likes them a lot now (though he likes trains and elevators more).
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