Gender Neutral Kindergarten in Sweden

[dreadgeek]

JustJo:

I'm going to dovetail off of what you have said because I think that Nature gets a vote in almost any plans that Homo sapiens can conceive of. SOME gender expressions are taught but some are just there. They are just there because we have an evolutionary history--whether we like it or not, whether we believe it or not--and that history informs what we are. For all but the last 75 years or so, men have needed the greater upper-body strength. When all humans were hunter-gatherers, it was men who went out and hunted the big stuff, everyone hunted the small stuff, and women did most of the gathering. That kind of thing is written in our genes because, in fact, it *matters* if you have good upper body strength if you are using a spear or a bow and arrow. The boundaries of the *possible* human societies were constrained because women give birth to relatively large babies that have to be squeezed out of a relatively small space and then are fairly helpless as far as providing for themselves for the first 5 years and are not truly ready to start contributing until their teens.

Does that mean that *all* gender roles are genetic? No. The fact that, in Western societies, women decorate themselves more lavishly, on average, than men is a rather interesting anomaly since it's not what we would necessarily expect. However, pretending that all gender roles are culturally conditioned is to make Homo sapiens both more and less than an animal at the same time. More because it means that unlike every *other* animal on this planet, we have no evolutionary history that made us. Less because it means that while we can try to understand, say, dogs by holding onto the idea that, in essence, a dog is a wolf-puppy that will always remain a puppy (as wolves would mark that behavior, not as we would) with a wolf-brain we cannot try to understand human beings as a social ape that is now living in an environment our brains were not designed for and which we are waiting for them to play catch up.

Cheers
Aj

Originally Posted by JustJo

Without exception, every male bodied person ran to the slide, braced themselves, lifted their arms and held the slide up off the children.

Without exception, every female bodied person ran underneath the mens' arms, and started grabbing children, pulling them away from the slide, setting them down just past the mens' legs and saying "Run!"

By the time the children were all safe, and the slide started to roll back into an upright position, there was a fair amount of laughter....when we all realized that every woman had planted her ass against the crotch of the man behind her to brace herself in a crouch....the only way to reach the kids.

I'm an independent, tough woman who has always supported herself...and I always felt like gender roles were taught. But ever since that day....I've wondered.