I’m passionate about this issue. Here’s why: I’m a girl, but I just happen to dislike most of the activities, colours, behaviours and products that are marketed as being typically female. I’ve been like this ever since I can remember. 

Here’s where it gets scary: the dissonance between how I wanted to be and how society and advertising was telling me I should be was so significant, that by the time I was a teenager, I had actually become a misogynist. I hated women. I wished I was a man, not because of a gender identity crisis, but because I actually thought men were BETTER.

It took years to realise that I don’t actually hate women, because 1. I am one and 2. that’s stupid. What I actually hated, and still hate, were the limitations placed upon me because of my female gender, the rules that say ‘if you don’t do this, you’re not a real woman’.

Now, I am fortunate enough to live in a fairly large city in a relatively modern country. No laws are stopping me from behaving according to my preference. I can, in theory, do anything a man can do.But that’s a long way from being accepted, understood, and actually valued as a real woman…even if I don’t look like what people think a real woman should look like.

I also work with children, from pre-schoolers to teenagers, and the projects we do require them to work in a group. There isn’t a day when I don’t hear ‘ew, boys are icky’ or ‘girls have stupid ideas’. There isn’t a day when I don’t see a boy mocking another boy by suggesting he likes a ‘girly’ colour, or toy, or film. And of course, every day I also see the parents of those kids conforming so perfectly to gender roles that some people in this discussion thought were obsolete.

I even find myself wanting to revert to harmful gender comparisons… telling boys they can’t possibly be scared of something, or praising girls for being so much tidier than boys.After all this learning and personal growth, I’m still conditioned, and PASSING IT ON. How fucked up is that?

So that’s me, a conscious grown-up making mistakes…and then we have kids, helpless at the hands of advertisers. Most kids still aren’t being raised in an atmosphere of equality. How can they be? Even assuming their parents are conscious of the problem (most are not), once they leave the bubble of their houses, the world around them screams PINK IS FOR GIRLS AND BLUE IS FOR BOYS!!! I can very clearly remember the gut-wrenching confusion of wanting a boy’s toy, but worrying that people would think I’ve made a mistake. And then, at the same time, the ache at liking a pink toy, but worrying that if I chose it, people would think that I can only play with girl toys!

I wouldn’t wish this kind of torment on any small child. So I am protesting the binary environment. Down with that crap.

Religion is so pernicious, in that the indoctrinated adults think it’s imperative to brainwash and shelter children to the point that they simply won’t engage with thinking society.  The thinkers are all unrepentant sinners.  Everything they do is “against god’s will.”  You can’t pay attention to anything the agents of say, because satan’s tricky and uses logic to confuse you.

Well, logic works bitches.  It works, and so does science, and freethought.

And I wasn’t even part of a cult.  Just brought up in churches that liked to think of themselves as “god’s spiritual army, tasked with speaking out against all evil.”

especially if that “evil” is “unnatural desires of the flesh” or “unnatural ideas about the world.”

Long story short:  Children are damn vulnerable, and teaching pro-faith pro-shame anti-thought ideology to children is tantamount to abuse.  It’s dangerous, and perpetuates a cycle of anti-progress in the world.

If I could find a set that complemented the Behr paints we bought before our daughter was born, I’d be much more happy to buy crayons.  As it is, since I know it’s going to end up all over a wall the second I look away, there are hardly any I purchase – neither trucks nor princesses.