As a mother of a Generation Alpha girl-child, I’m still not sure we’re sending our daughters the right message about gender identity.
In the 20th century (aka Boomer Era), gender dogma logic went something like this:
If you are a girl, then you must like pink and play with Barbie.
Just a bit sexist.
Today, in the post-millennium woke era, the prevailing gender dogma has evolved to become something like the following:
If you like pink and play with Barbie, then you are a girl.
(See here for more, image from the Mermaids gender programme for kids in British schools.)
At first blush, the new gender logic is much more inclusive, in that it includes feminine boys, trans and gender-dysmorphic children. Progress.
However, on closer examination, the new logical framework draws the same dubious conclusion as the first:
The underlying subtext between both the new and the old gender dogmas imply that if you don’t like pink and play with Barbie then you are not a real girl.
“Real” women are not synonymous with Barbie, pink, or any other random attribute. It’s time we stopped teaching our kids these old-fashioned stereotypes altogether.
Let’s move on from the “If you [insert stereotype here], then you are a [insert gender pronoun here]” logic. The future is (or should be anyway) a lot more colourful than that.
(Cover photo credit, to the one and only @trophywifebarbie Instagram account.)