

Telling boys not to be girly - cjg
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/25/5_ways_america_tells_boys_not_to_be_girly/

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petercooper
The societal pressures involved here is why I now prefer having two daughters.
Now I get to see lots of kids on a regular basis, being a girl seems to be
easier these days than being a boy if you deviate from society's notions of
gender norms.

My eldest daughter flip flops between playing with dolls to wearing a knight's
costume and 'defending' her friend who's dressed as a prince. My daughters
oten wear boys clothes and have "boys" toys but can also pull off hot pink,
dresses, "girlie" shoes and all the rest. Could a 6 year old boy pull off
wearing a pink Barbie top to school in the same way?

Intriguingly, there's not a single boy in my daughter's street dancing or
gymnastics clubs and they're not gender limited or oriented. The odd one or
two have turned up but never lasted more than a single session.. Nor are there
any men at my daughter's nursery. Or likely to be at her first school. This is
rather sad because it surely must lead to kids becoming even more convinced of
gender norms and expectations.

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loup-vaillant
> _It’s easy to find news of boys suspended and expelled for growing their
> hair_

Huh? This one is not just scandalous to me, it's… _alien_.

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dfxm12
My high school had something of a dress code that you had to be clean shaven
and hair can't be past your shoulders. It was in no way a masculine thing, it
was more of a uniform sort of thing (schools making rules for the sake of
making rules).

I had been given a razor on more than one occasion to shave in the morning,
but never got into real trouble. I think the author is overstating this.

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loup-vaillant
He's not. He provides links to actual instances. I reckon there's the
possibility of reporting bias, though. (Extraordinary events are more often
reported than ordinary ones, leading us to believe they are more frequent.
Case in point: lottery winners.)

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0xndc
I'm sorry, but what is this article doing on HN?

~~~
markyc
<insert some comment about how this relates to hacking the status quo of
gender roles in our society>

