Re: Why All Boys Should be Put in Dresses -- Boys in dresses

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Date Posted: 21:12:51 05/22/16 Sun
Author: Melinda - a mom to 2 girly boys
Subject: Re: Why All Boys Should be Put in Dresses
In reply to: Julie Wilson 's message, "Why All Boys Should be Put in Dresses" on 12:53:09 04/29/16 Fri

>Boys begin to develop their contempt for the opposite
>sex at an early age. Certain aspects of this process
>have been documented in "Boys and Girls: Superheroes
>in the Doll Corner" by Vivian Gussin Paley, a vivid
>account of relations between the sexes in one
>kindergarten class.
>Kindergarten, it turns out, is a crucial time in which
>the boys separate themselves from the girls and define
>themselves as the opposite of female. The mother of
>Charlotte, one of the girls in the class, tells Paley:
>"They used to play so nicely in the doll corner, in
>nursery school, the boys and girls together. Now
>Charlotte tells me the boys are always fighting."
>Paley herself observes: "Like Charlotte's mother, the
>girls remember when boys were more at ease in female
>surroundings." According to Paley, this process of
>separation first began at the age of four: "The
>four-year-old boy is less comfortable in the doll
>corner than he was the year before; he may
>occasionally dress up in women's clothes or agree to
>be Daddy, but the superhero clique has formed and the
>doll corner is becoming a women's room." The process
>is then completed by the age of five or six: "A boy in
>a frilly bedjacket expects to be laughed at," whereas
>only a year or two earlier that same boy would have
>had no qualms about wearing feminine clothing.
>Boys separate themselves from girls because they are
>taught that they are superior to girls. They pick up
>this attitude from their fathers and from older boys.
>This is why it is the boys who form a clique that
>excludes the girls long before the girls develop any
>clique of their own: "Boys set the tone and girls
>follow on parallel paths."
>Boys achieve their separate identity by defining
>themselves as what girls are not: "'Here's what I
>think,' Charlotte states definitively. 'They don't
>want to be fancy because girls do. They just like to
>be not the same as us.'"
>The boys who adhere to this male supremacist
>separation from femininity then pressure the remaining
>boys to fall into line. The children in Paley's class
>take turns telling stories. Here is Teddy's first
>story: "Once upon a time there was this little boy and
>his name was Pretty. They called him Pretty because he
>was so pretty. His name was really Hansel. There was
>this sister. He didn't know he had a sister. The
>mother and father told him and then they had candy and
>then they went for a walk."
>Paley relates that the response of the other boys was
>"immediate and strong":
>Andrew, Jonathan, and Paul explode with laughter. "He
>calls him Pretty!" "Ugh!" "Pre-e-tty!"
>"He can call him that if he wants," Charlotte says.
>"No he can't!" shouts Andrew. "Not if he's a boy he
>can't."
>"It's Teddy's story," I add. "He didn't tell you what
>to say."
>Teddy is not insulted, only curious. He smiles at the
>boys, who continue to make faces. Teddy's use of
>"pretty" crosses over into female territory, a subject
>he will learn about from boys, who care more about
>boundary lines than do the girls.
>The boys care more about boundary lines than do the
>girls because the myths of male superiority are
>dependent on them. Boys must define themselves as
>different from girls before they can define themselves
>as superior.
>If girls are good, then boys feel that they must be
>something other than good, just as they must be
>something other than fancy or pretty: "The children
>see girls as good and find it difficult to
>characterize boys":
>Karen: Girls are nicer than boys.
>Janie: Boys are bad. Some boys are.
>Paul: Not bad. Pretend bad, like bad guys.
>Karen: My brother is really bad.
>Teacher: Aren't girls ever bad?
>Paul: I don't think so. Not very much.
>Teacher: Why not?
>Paul: Because they like to color so much. That's one
>thing I know. Boys have to practice running.
>Karen: And they practice being silly.
>This same flight from the feminine came up again in
>connection with the doll known as Strawberry Shortcake:
>Andrew: All the girls love Strawberry Shortcake now.
>Teacher: I wonder why that is.
>Andrew: They think she has a nice smell.
>Teacher: Do you like that smell?
>Andrew: Boys don't like smells.
>Teacher: Don't like smells?
>Andrew: I mean boys like bad smells. I mean dangerous
>smells. Like volcano smells.
>Jonathan: Vampire smells.
>Teacher: Well, Strawberry Shortcake doesn't have to
>worry about volcanoes or vampires. The girls never put
>those things in their stories.
>Teddy: Because vampires aren't pretty. We like stuff
>that isn't pretty, but not girls. They like only
>pretty things.
>This is the same Teddy who earlier told the story
>about a boy named Pretty. Here he renounces that which
>is pretty, and we can see that the other boys have won
>him over.
>The boys reinforce each other in their negative,
>antifeminine behavior. This comes out clearly whenever
>the girls try to get boys to play house with them:
>"All the boys, even Andrew, will agree to a brief
>stint as father if they are alone when asked.
>"The girls understand what turns a guest into an
>intruder: The magic number is 3. If one boy is
>summoned into the doll corner, he is likely to
>cooperate; two, in certain combinations, might still
>be manageable; three, never. Three boys form a
>superhero clique and disrupt play."
>When girls play house, they are playing at
>responsible, adult roles. When boys disrupt such play
>by wrecking things in the doll corner or running off
>with them, they are rejecting the role of responsible
>husband and father as something that is not for a real
>male. The girls are playing at being responsible,
>mature adults, and the boys are reacting by defining
>themselves as irresponsible.
>Still, these young boys play at this destructive
>behavior only because they are with other boys. There
>is hope. If boys can be separated from each other and
>induced to play with girls, such negative behavior can
>be avoided.
>This fact highlights the significance of the home as
>an educational institution over against the school.
>For in school it is not feasible to break up the
>superhero cliques and absorb the boys individually
>into girlish games, but something on this order can be
>done in the home.
>This contrast between school and home comes out again
>in Paley's description of the "near riot conditions"
>that emerged when Jonathan brought his Star Wars album
>to class for the Friday afternoon rhythm period:
>"Customarily a new record needs a brief introduction
>before we move with the music. Star Wars needs none;
>as soon as it is played, everyone immediately imitates
>a flying machine. Arms out, heads pressed forward, the
>children fly around the room. Suddenly the boys turn
>on one another, leaping and screaming, "You're dead!"
>"I killed you first!" Robots run into spaceships,
>rockets destroy TIE fighters, storm troopers shoot at
>everyone. Each boy is fighting every other boy. Even
>Teddy is pulling someone down."
>Paley had the boys sit for a while and watch how the
>girls danced. But then when they rejoined the group,
>they started in just as before. The teacher finally
>gave up, had everyone lie down and read to them from
>Charlotte's Web.
>This is how the Star Wars album played at school, but
>at home it was a different story: "When I describe the
>scene later to Jonathan's mother, she is surprised.
>'He's so quiet at home when he listens to it.' Of
>course, he doesn't have twelve other boys at home."
>It is the presence of the other boys that makes it so
>difficult to control this sort of unacceptable
>behavior and limits the usefulness of the school for
>the socialization of young boys. Only the home can
>perform this function in an adequate way. If a boy
>thinks that he should be bad because girls are good,
>then the home is the place to work on changing his
>attitude. If a boy thinks that he should do poorly in
>school because girls do well, then it is in the home
>that he should be taught otherwise.
>Cliques of boys encourage their members to engage in
>bad behavior. These cliques need to be broken up and
>the individual boys made to play with girls. They
>should be made to play the wholesome games that girls
>prefer, not the violent games that groups of boys go
>in for. Whatever games the girls want to play, the
>boys should be made to join them.
>Boys can be made to spend more time with females in
>other ways too. They can spend time with their mothers
>and older sisters, going shopping together and
>learning something about fashion. A boy who is
>attached to his mother often gets put down as being a
>"mama's boy," but the fact is that mama's boys are
>better behaved—they are more moral—than other boys.
>This is a good thing, and not (as the male
>supremacists try to tell us) a bad thing.
>Boys in cliques grow up to be men in cliques, and
>these too need to be broken up. These cliques are
>hotbeds of negative attitudes toward women. The "night
>out with the boys" needs to be ended. Nor should
>husbands be allowed to stop off with their buddies at
>a bar after work. Husbands should do what their wives
>want them to, whether it be going dancing, joining a
>bridge club, or whatever. They could be with other men
>at these events, but that will be all right as long as
>married men's social activities are completely under
>the control of women.

Hi..I'm a mom to two girly boys...and with my girlfriend being the breadwinner, I am staying home and making sure they are girly boys...the oldest is 5, and he has girls as friends...

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Re: Why All Boys Should be Put in Dresses -- Mom of 4, 14:05:39 06/01/16 Wed