I witnessed a sad moment today, sad and far too common. I was (and still am) baby-sitting my half-brother. He's four and a half. I took him to McDonald's for dinner so he could play in the playhouse. He kept running back to the table and then into the playhouse again. One time, he ran out to point out a little boy.
"There's a little boy playing with a doll!" he said.
"I see," I said, wondering where this was going.
"He's not supposed to play with dolls!" he cried.
Shit. I thought. I stopped him and told him that little kids could play with whichever toys they wanted to play with, it didn't matter if they were boys or girls. I don't know if he really heard me, but he at least didn't say anything to the other boy's face.
It can be so discouraging to see how quickly gender socialization becomes ingrained into children. My brother is only four, and, considering that his parents are about 45 and 58, hasn't been around a whole lot of other children. I like to think that my dad and my stepmom would never say to him "little boys can't play with dolls" (after all, I don't think he has a doll but he does have a vacuum cleaner, which could definitely be considered a "girl toy"), but I don't know for sure. I'm sure he's heard those kinds of rules enforced among other children, and possibly other parents. It just broke my heart to see my brother accusing a boy of doing something wrong, when he was clearly having so much fun with his doll.
And I think that's exactly what gender rules do: they label behaviors as wrong, and limit the ways in which people can express and enjoy themselves.
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