I never had hand me down clothes from boys, only girls. My brother, in fact, had some of my hand me downs, because clothes were more gender-neutral then. I did wear dresses of course (in fact probably all my family photos have me in a dress, because photos were taken on special occasions).

I've thought about this a bit now. And I have to admit I'm still not sure why I don't like it. Maybe I'm a bit of a dinosaur myself.

I think it may be something to do with the lack of choice. Although I only took a photo of one of each item of clothing, the whole aisle was similar. Boys' clothes had dinosaurs, cars and trucks - right down to pants and socks. Girls' had fluff and froth and polka dots and frills.

And the market is driven by parents, which means long before these children have a sense of their own identity, they are being dressed in a gender specific way. And in my mind an outdated idea of gender.

But what would I prefer? Parents having no choice and everyone dressing in Communist era boilersuits? No, not at all. And you weren't suggesting that either, Clod - this came as part of my self-questioning.

It just seems odd to me that in the West we live in a time and place where a woman can be a programmer, a pathologist, a lawyer, a doctor, a dentist. But she grew up wearing sparkly polka-dot frou-frou little tops and knickers with sparkles on them. Whereas her brother can be a stay at home Dad, a carer, a nurse or a teaching assistant and he grew up wearing dinosaurs, monsters and trucks on his socks.

Obviously I'm painting with a broad brush. It may simply have been the impact of seeing row after row of separate identity clothing which startled me.

Actually I'd wear both if they were in my size ;)

Today's installment of Girl Genius ended with this... :D

Looking at the global picture the anti-FGM movement is gathering force. I wonder how many more generations of girls and young women will have this barbarous act performed on them.

This is another of those things about some cultures' approaches to gender that fucking baffles me. It is so counterintuitive at a species level. Like parents driven by honour to douse a daughter in petrol and set her alight because she looked at a boy a couple of times and dishonour in the eyes of the community means a kind of social death for families. FGM, practiced in cultures that have as one of their central family goals the production of healthy babies, particularly sons, runs utterly counter to those goals. In order to control the sexual urges of girls and make them pure mothers and wives, they inflict physical injuries which massively increase the chances those women will be infertile, or unable to bear a healthy child.

What the almighty fuck was going through the minds of the people who first decided this would be a cracking good thing to do to their little girls?

It was probably conceived by some rough equivalent to an MBA who figured it would work out cheaper than either chastity belts or letting nature take its course. The older women jumped on the bandwagon and made it trendy. They still do that today.

It would appear that barefoot and pregnant isn't the only option. ;)

In the early fight...

Just the tip of the iceberg, so many more who never got credit...

Most Women in Afghanistan Justify Domestic Violence
 

http://www.prb.org/Publications/Arti...-violence.aspx

Not surprising, that's all they've ever known. One lesson they all... well, the ones still alive, learned young, is don't rock the boat, don't make waves, don't attract attention, don't piss anybody off. That's been passed down from mother to child for a thousand generations.

Naaaaw. They're just kinky, consider disobedience foreplay, and like their foreplay rough.

:bolt:

And everyone knows the area is full of dope, so when someone says, stone her, they all cheer and pull out their BICs.

The first female cop in the US.

Uh Oh...

One politician was so sure of his gender stereotypes that he thought that introducing a gender equality amendment would be a poison pill.

It passed (in committee at least).