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Path: utzoo!laura
From: laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.kids
Subject: Re: Non-Sexist Upbringing
Message-ID: <3905@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 25-May-84 01:36:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.3905
Posted: Fri May 25 01:36:03 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 25-May-84 01:36:03 EDT
References: <264@masscomp.UUCP>, <4388@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 86

Dave,

I don't see how you can predict that not telling your children what sex
they are will achieve the effect you want. Just off hand, suppose the
effect you got was:

	``everybody else knows whether they are a boy or a girl and
	I don't because:

	a) I am stupid
	b) My parents are stupid
	c) My parents won't tell me, because:

		a) they don't know
		b) they are being mean to me
		c) they didn't notice....

Who knows what your children will think? If the idea that ``men are
superior to women'' is truly as prevalent as you say, then unless
you can isolate your children from everybody else they are bound to
pick it up -- or at the very least that it is an important question.

At that point, they will see their parents pretending that the
question doesn't exist (or shouldn't exist) rather than seeing
their parents facing a question which is (ironically enough)
extremely important to them.

Will this imply that the way to deal with situations where one
believes that one is right despite overwhelming opinion to the
contrary is to pretend that the other opinion does not exist?

I don't know. I suspect that given a large enough sample set of
``experts'' you would get some who would be entirely in favour of
your proposed scheme and some who would be vehemently opposed.
I just don't think that enough is known about how people learn
anything to make reasonable predictions at all.

I also suspect that the tendancy to view all children as black boxes
(raise them according to this magic formula and they will all turn
out into predicted marvellous people) is rather naive. Heredity will
count for something (how much, I don't know, and I don't know
how to tell, but it does give you the basic equipment with which you
explore the whole world, which is different from everybody else' in
some way, except possibly in the case of twins) and a great deal of
what will happen to your children will be a matter of chance that
you really have no choice over at all. 

Perhaps it would be a better idea to teach your children how to
overcome any conditioning that they do not want, and reasons why
they should not want to believe that men are superior to women.

I don't know how to teach ``how to resist conditioning'' except that
it involves not adopting other people's beliefs as your own until
you have thought of them and agreed that they are good independent
of *who* thinks of them -- which isn't all that practical when the
person whose beliefs are being examined either isn't around to be questioned
or doesn't appreciate the questions.

Of course this implies that Mom and Dad who are going to be around are
going to have to give reasons for what they do and can't say that something
is true: ``BECAUSE I SAID SO, THAT'S WHY!''. All of this sounds extremely
reasonable, but then I remember when my little brother used to play

	`let's drive laura up the wall' 

which he accomplished by asking the same question (usually ``why'') to
any answer you gave him for hours until I ran out of patience...

However, it seems a more general solution than just trying to avoid sexist
conditioning by counter-conditioning.

Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura

ps.
I suspect it would make explaining sex to your children a little
awkward as well.

-- 
Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura

	"Not to perpetrate cowardice against one's own acts!
	 Not to leave them in the lurch afterward! The bite
	 of conscience is indecent"	-- Nietzsche
					The Twilight of the Idols (maxim 10)