No 'Him' or 'Her' in Preschool. Wait, what?

[HalfTangible]

And how is that different from saying 'I like girls'?

Not all girls have vaginas.

And what planet are you living on? Biology dictates that, weather you make the choice to THINK your something else is fine. But you aren't. Thats called a fact. Not a guess. Not a social political idea. Just a plain old fact. They are part of life and the sooner you start accepting some of them and moving on with your life the better off you'll be.

Boy and Girl mean fairly specific things. If you want to call yourself something else, again, thats fine. But if you think your "equal" rights give you the right to change the language because you don't happen to like it. Keep dreaming...

"Boy" and "Girl" actually do not. Gender is not relegated to reproducing, but the clothes you wear, the jobs yoou have, your hobbies, and many other things. Read a book or two and you will see that "Boy" and "Girl" are used for maannny different things other than defining reproductive roles.

I read many books but have yet to read a single story outside of Two Kinds and Questionable Content (the webcomic, not the type of material) that even thought about defining someone's sex/gender because of the way they acted, and in the former's case, it was defined as mental sickness by the character in question. Occasionally a character will (often venomously) deny it, but even they will admit that they ARE those genders, and their denial is purely to avoid society's preconceptions.

I have only heard 'gender' and 'sex' used as separate things in debates like this one, and quite frankly the distinction pisses me off. Gender is supposed to be a nicer way to say 'sex'. That's why i knew what a gender was in second grade but didn't know what sex (verb) was until the sixth.

 

[Antari]

To understand why this pre-school is doing what it is doing, you need to realize that most of what we define as gender characteristics are actually social constructs around gender stereotypes (and to make this painfully clear: Having a penis means you are a boy, being a boy doesn't instantly make you less sensitive than a girl, more likely to play with lego or like the colour blue). Many of these stereotypes are harmless (girls like pink, boys like blue) but some of them can severely limit the options a person has in his or her life (men can't wear skirts, women are more nurturing than men, men should make a career, women are better at taking care of their loved ones etc.) and are often established around the ages of 2-6.

What this preschool, and others like it that are doing similar things, wants to do is give all of their children as many chances as possible to shape themselves. Instead of telling the girls to play in the kitchen section and the boys to play with the cars, they let the kids play with whatever they want. By using the word hen (the amalgam of han/hon, genderless singular) they are also not subjecting the children to implied stereotyping by association.

No one is arguing that boys aren't boys or girls aren't girls. But this preschool understands that the social constructs around our genders are powerful enough to shape children long before the children understands the implications of these constructs. That is what they are trying to fight, in order to make every child in their care an "individual" as opposed to shaping them into "boys" and "girls".

I for one think it is a great way to lay the foundations of a truly equal society in the future, if we can get rid of the gender stereotypes.

When the doctor takes you from your mother's womb, slaps you on the butt, and looks at your crotch announcing, "Its a .... " ... Hes not trying to make you live your life a certain way. Thats not a social construct. Its a mean of identifying you as being human, of one gender or another, and not a self reproducing reptile. Weather your brain hasn't got a clue what it is, genetics and science do. It doesn't have as much to do with society as it does REALITY. And to be honest we do need words to describe things. Just because it describes something someone doesn't like, really isn't the languages problem, or the society's, or even mine. It would be the person who's having the problem.

 

[ryo02]

"Lego bricks and other building blocks are intentionally placed next to the kitchen, to make sure the children draw no mental barriers between cooking and construction."

encouraging play and construction in a room filled with sharp metal things hot foods and hot liquids ... oh that wont end badly at all.

 

[The Apothecarry]

My college English professor had to break us of replacing "he" or "she" with "they" in our essays. I'm all for not pissing people off, but I never freaked out when someone refers to a figurative person as a he or she.

Modern schools are messed up.

 

[iDoom46]

Yeah, I'm all for equality- in fact I'm usually the one cheering these kinds of things on. I really do think we need to do something about changing the way we raise our kids to obey these gender stereotypes.

But I have to agree, some of this stuff is just too much. I like the things like putting the Legos near the kitchen (though I always considered Legos to be a gender-neutral toy) and not exposing kids to content that can be seen as enforcing gender stereotypes but, while in most cases gender-modifiers are a good thing (Police man/woman turned to Officer, waiter/waitress turned into server, etc.), getting rid of "him" and "her" seems a bit over the top.

If you read the article, you'll see that they aren't getting rid of 'him' and 'her'.
What they're saying, specifically, is that if for example a plumber is coming to visit, and they do not yet know their sex, they will refer to the plumber with a gender-neutral pronoun, the way I did in this sentence.
I'm sure they will still refer to Julie as 'her' and Jake as 'him'.

Oh, well that makes a whole lot more sense. Thanks for clearing that up. I really should have read the article, OP's sensationalist post really didn't convey that meaning at all. Sorry.

getting rid of "him" and "her" seems a bit over the top.

Why?

Because while referring to a police officer as a policeman/woman conveys not only an unnecessary piece of information (all you need to know is that they are an officer of the law, nothing more) it also gives off the sense that there is a difference between a male and a female cop, when there isn't (and sexists, being who they are, will obviously assign a value of higher importance on one over the other).

Its the same as calling someone a "good black doctor". Its offensive because there's no difference between a "good black doctor" and a "good white doctor" so the issue dealing with the doctor's race is unnecessary information. They're just a "good doctor." Your gender doesn't affect your ability to do your job any more than your race, therefore it isn't necessary information.

But can you really say calling someone "him" or "her" is offensive? I, for one, don't. Yes, the words DO provide information on the person in question's gender, and that information may-or-may-not be important, but there is no implied predisposition that one sex is better than the other. Women and men are different, after all (see what I did there, I put "women" first for a change), and while that fact has no bearing on a persons ability to practice their profession well and efficiently, it is still fact.

Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not against having a third, gender-neutral term to refer to someone when you don't know their gender or the person's gender in context is a non-issue. In fact, I'd say it would be pretty damn useful. Another thing we really need to fix is the (predominantly male) mindset that a default human being's gender is male.
(Although, I always figured "they" or "them" were already gender-neutral terms that can be applied to a single person, as well as a group.)

 

[HalfTangible]

"Lego bricks and other building blocks are intentionally placed next to the kitchen, to make sure the children draw no mental barriers between cooking and construction."

encouraging play and construction in a room filled with sharp metal things hot foods and hot liquids ... oh that wont end badly at all.

Forget that, why is there a kitchen for them to play in in the first place?

 

[Bobbovski]

I think this is mostly a good idea. I'm not sure if it's going to be that effective, but it's worth a try. I find the "hen" buissness mostly pointless though. I'm not against it, but most people will find the word really confusing most of the time and it's inprecise in certain situations.

 

[Iron Criterion]

This sounds worryingly like it should serve as an origin for countless fictional dystopian states. What next, give them a number instead of a name? Shave all their heads so those with long hair are not mocked by those without? Put them in identical non-gender uniforms so there is no discrimination based on fashion sense or perceived 'lack of'? Destroy their individuality?

What the fuck? The ONLY thing they are doing is removing social expectations: that boys and girls can choose to play and hang out with anything and anyone regardless of gender biases constructed and enforced by us adults. If anything, it's emphasizing individuality. Raising kids in the spirit of mutual understanding and respect is the recipe to avoid mocking and discrimination.

You're acting like you can't put the same spin on conventional preschools. Here, let me try: they still adhere to and propagate 1950s-era morality and systematically indoctrinate children to conform to scientifically-debunked "true" gender models which they can never hope to live up to, dooming them to a life of feeling inadequate and insecure. HOOO, repression of subversive "womanly" influences, elevation of the chronically-phobic-and-insecure irrational male ideal, celebration of "diversity" in the form of slavery, racism and xenophobia.

Oh wait, that second part actually happened. They were called the Middle Ages.

It's not about breaking down stereotypes that I'm concerned about. It is more that if a kid in this school says a simple sentence like "Your a girl, I'm a boy" are they going to say "No you are both friends"? Not only is that lying to children, but your also saying that everyone is the same... I will say this without any prejudice, Everyone is different, nobody can be expected to be treated the same as another person because we have different opinions of different people.

 

[cobra_ky]

1st. Very, very few have an extreme problem because they don't feel like what society calls a man. And at that point it becomes their job to be who they think they should be.

2nd. Faith doesn't necessarily mean believing in a/many gods. It is synonymous for numerous things.

I agree that biology can influence gender identity (not gender roles). And that is why most of these children are going to grow up cisgendered regardless of what this preschool teaches them. The only difference is that if some of those kids happen not to fit into a particular gender role, they'll know from an early age that that's ok.

i take back the second part, religious faith is a good deal more constructive than the kind of faith Cinderella would inspire. The Cinderella story teaches faith in a magical lady who will spontaneously appear and fix your problems; church will at least teach you that "God helps those who help themselves."

 

[zarix2311]

.....wait,what? You can't NOT acknowledge what gender someone is, that doesn't make any sense.

 

[Rockchimp69]

There already is, "them", "their", "they" and "they're" can be used to describe someone regardless of gender.
E.g. "Who's this new guy I keep hearing about?"
"I don't know their name but I'd like to meet them. I heard they're starting next week"

Ah but if you'd read my first post I was talking about a gender-free pronoun in the singular =)

True, the English language might go that way and maybe it'll sound natural then, but to present-day-me that example you wrote made my brain hurt a little. And I'm pretty sure it's still grammatically incorrect to use in formal situations.

Hmm well I don't know about your area but where I live it can be used like that. It always sounds kind of off because most of the time people just use a "him" or "his" even though they don't know the gender.

 

[Twilight_guy]

The main problem with hat is that they are ignoring the fact that the vast majority of couples are heterosexual. I can understand trying to introduce them to other types of relationships but ignoring the relative proportions of these things is like saying that whites don't exist because they are the majority and we want to teach kids about blacks and Asians.

Most children do not need to be told about heterosexuality. As you say, the vast majority will see and learn about it from their own families and those of their friends.

Many children, however, may not see a homosexual couple because they aren't immediately apparent in many societies. Surely we should be combating ignorance. And many people actually pretend homosexuality doesn't exist, or tell them that it is wrong. This kind of thing is probably an effort to combat that.

Yes and I said that I support media that teaches children about various types of relationship snot just heterosexual ones but I still think that teaching them just about the non-heterosexual ones is a folly. Imagine a child who is exposed to only his home environment and his school environment. He sees a heterosexual couple at home (his parents) and only non-heterosexual couples at school. This will skew his perception so that he thinks heterosexual couples are abnormal and rare and other couples are the norm. This is misinformation. I'm just saying that there needs to be equal treatment of all the types of relationships and teaching one exclusively while making the effort to remove the "norm" one seems extreme. I understand the issue that its a sort of white privilege but when you completely cut out one group due to their privilege you've just tipped the scale in the opposite direction rather then balancing it.

 

[Filiecs]

What the hell...

Teaching children that they are all the same physically and mentally would do more HARM than good.
Children don't need to be taught that there are no differences, they need to be taught that there ARE differences but differences are OKAY and that they are what make us special. They need to be taught TOLERANCE and that "We all have the same rights" not "we are the same in every way. shape, or form".

If children are taught and made to think that no one can be special than when they come in contact with someone or something that IS different or special to what they consider normal it will most likely be received with negative treatment.

 

[Amondren]

Wow next thing you know they will ban classic books...wait.

Yeah this is over the top and Is just all around dumb, It will blow over probably in the near future.

 

[Psycho Cat Industries]

This gentlemen,is why they should be fired for disorderly conduct,ill treatment to children and otherwise utter stupidity,but what do I know?They probably don't show ma and pa or in this case I guess, pa and pa that they're doing this.

 

[Verp]

Although I do think that what this preschool does is perhaps too hardcore (and this is coming from a person of atypical gender, possibly sex too although this is untested, as is with most people!), what makes me truly depressed is this thread. It makes me feel incredibly fortunate that my (primary) native language doesn't have gendered pronouns at all.

 

[Ig88]

We are all different, and those differences define us. To act as if everyone is identical is, silly. Everyone is equal, but we are all different from one another(some people are tall, others are short). I am all for the addition of the stories such as the one about the Giraffes, but the removal of fairy tales which have "negative" stereotypes or undertones strikes me as a step too far. It makes me think of all those people that try to ban things like Huck Finn, an attempt to cover up what is(Inb4 negative misinterpretations) with what is PC.

 

[cobra_ky]

What the hell...

Teaching children that they are all the same physically and mentally would do more HARM than good.
Children don't need to be taught that there are no differences, they need to be taught that there ARE differences but differences are OKAY and that they are what make us special. They need to be taught TOLERANCE and that "We all have the same rights" not "we are the same in every way. shape, or form".

it's a good thing the school isn't doing that, then.

 

[Theseus32]

Just to raise a point here, gender stereotypes have existed for, oh, roughly forty thousand fucking years. The reason? Well because men and women are *gasp* Different!! shock!!! horror!!!

Now I have no issue with women getting paid the same, being treated the same, having the same opportunities etc. But women, and men are DIFFERENT. Not just the obvious genitalia differences, but in many many ways. It's part of the entire hunter-gatherer concept.

There comes a point where you have to separate the notion of having the same rights with BEING the same. Gay marriage? Sure. Pretending two gay men can reproduce? Fucking stupid. Admitting that many women are highly athletic? Naturally. Expecting your buck ten girlfriend to shift a 300 lb dresser while you and your buddy take a break for a beer? Fucking stupid. Gotta draw a line somewhere people. This politically correct bullshit MUST END.

 

[Filiecs]

What the hell...

Teaching children that they are all the same physically and mentally would do more HARM than good.
Children don't need to be taught that there are no differences, they need to be taught that there ARE differences but differences are OKAY and that they are what make us special. They need to be taught TOLERANCE and that "We all have the same rights" not "we are the same in every way. shape, or form".

it's a good thing the school isn't doing that, then.

But they ARE!

Calling boys and girls by the same name, having no traditional fairytales, putting legos in the KITCHEN(wtf), that school is telling kids that a boy is EXACTLY THE SAME as a girl. It is not telling them that boys and girls are different but that's okay. If say in kindergarten a kid who did not go to that preschool starts talking about how boys and girls are different to kids who did attend that preschool, what's to stop teasing or bullying for being "stupid" from happening?

(Also, why specifically place toys at all? Why not have them all in a big pile instead of using a VERY ineffective method at trying to teach kids "equality".