Gender Ideals

I think gender ideals definitely are placed in our heads at a very young age. School is definitely a place where gender is socialized. I remember I was in pre-school and I was wearing my brother's old Spiderman shoes and one boy said they were boy’s shoes, so after that day I never warn them again just because someone said they were “boy’s shoes”. I think teachers and parents need to be sensitive of children’s gender and not try to treat them differently. There is one couple in Toronto where they are raising their child, Storm without a gender. Here are two links with more details about this: http://soniamarsh.com/tag/raising-kids-without-gender and http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/05/26/raising-their-children-without-gender-restrictions-had-no-ill-effects-say-parents/

This story is very controversial, as they are letting the child decide what gender they want to be. In a society that gender is strongly influenced on us, I thinking living without a gender would be very difficult, especially in school I think the child would feel out of place and not sure where they fit into society and where they fit in school. I think other children would be confused, as to how they would treat this child.

In class we had an activity where we were to select some well-known person as representing the ideal of each femininity and masculinity. Some of the people we listed were:

Masculinity	Femininity
·         Brad Pitt	·         Princess Diana
·         Channing Tatun	·         Marilyn Monroe
·         Tom Brady	·         Kate Milton
·         George Clooney	·         Katherine Heigl

In class we stated that masculinity was someone that was strong, muscular, caring, emotional but not overly emotional and attractive. We stated that femininity was someone that was attractive, well put together, and independent but not overly independent, as all the women we listed still want a man to take care of them.