What I Should Have Said - feminist values? *UPDATE*

[junorhane]

During staff training week at camp, the woodshop staff at Timberlake (the boy's camp) met with the woodshop staff at Indian Brook (the girl's camp) to discuss potential co-ed activities throughout the summer. Once there the Indian Brook staff explained to us the difference in their approach to power tools. At Timberlake, you see, we don't use

Comments

[anonymous]

I disagree completely with the first paragraph of your hypothetical response. You say that acknowledging the existence of the stereotype perpetuates it. On the contrary, pretending that stereotypes don't exist will *not* make them go away. Stereotypes are passed on from 1000 different sources, and by refusing to acknowledge their existence you might manage to reduce that to 999 different sources. Either way, children will be exposed to the stereotype, probably subconsciously, which will allow it do do much more damage.

The only way to fight stereotypes is to shine light on them, make them blatant and obvious, point them out early on and say, "look at these absurd things that some people believe!" and show how wrong they are.

Anyway, I agree with the rest of your argument. The last point, I would take even further and say that to the boys, who do these things the hard manual way only to find out that the girls get to take shortcuts... and to the girls, who use the power tools and then find out that the guys had to do the same tasks the hard way... *that* indeed perpetuates the stereotype that the girls wouldn't have been able to do the hard manual labor the boys were required to do.

-- Josh

[junorhane]

I don't mean to say that they should ignore the stereotype, and it's fine for them shine a light on it and point out how ridiculous it is.

I just think that the method they've chosen to combat it actually works against them, which I think you put your finger on in a new way with that last good point.