Don't say him, say friend: The re-wiring of humanity

I have a shocking revelation to make...

Boys and girls have differences.

Let's start where it counts shall we? For the promulgation of the species of humanity, a man and woman must have sex. In the right circumstance, that produces a child...which is, even before it is born, a male or female.

The sexes, with only nature considered, are different. Men, in general, lift more, run faster and jump higher. Don't believe me? Check the Olympic results for track and field.

Women have different skills such as flexibility and I think I've read somewhere that women usually have better collaborative ability than men.

By God's design or by nature, whichever you choose to believe, there ARE differences between the sexes. Period.

Part 2
That in mind, we don't live in the days of chasing down cheetahs to eat. With modern technology in a modern world, we are not bound to the skill sets of our genders, nor should we be.

Almost any job in the world nowadays can be done by a man or a woman, and that is a good thing in most people's books.

I have two sisters who work in retail management, my dad did most of the family laundry growing up while mom installed ceiling fans. Sometimes traditional gender roles don't fit and that's ok.

But here's the thing see....sex (as in gender in this case) matters. It's how a society functions. If we all walked around without different clothing styles, different personalities and different ways of being ourselves, well let's be honest, things would get confusing. We've all seen that poor soul that everyone looks at and can't tell if it's a man or a woman. No one wants a world full of that. Do they?

But there is a school in (Sweden), pre-school, that is trying to get gender ideas of what boys do and what girls do out of kids heads.

Girls don't play with dolls and boys play in a kitchen. They don't say him or her, they call everyone friend. They play house with two mommies, sometimes three.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110627/ap_on_re_eu/eu_fea_sweden_gender_neutral_tots

And all of that isn't wrong per se, but we shouldn't be teaching it as the norm.

Norms are important to a society and they form over a long time. Sometimes they need to be changed, but sometimes they work.

The norm is that boys like playing with sticks as swords and playing sports and hitting each other and getting hurt riding bikes.

Likewise girls like dolls, and house, and other games.

All kids love to play in someway or another.

I understand the idea of this gender neutrality movement, they think young girls and boys that don't fit get pigeon-holed into stereotypes they don't want. The movement is probably being led by someone who got picked on a little too much as a kid.

They mean well but they're wrong. Give the world's kids more credit than that.

My wife wasn't raised in a gender neutral world, but guess who assembles any furniture we buy? She does. Guess who does the laundry? Me.

We're full grown adults, but let's look at kids.

In seventh grade I didn't know who Wilt Chamberlin was, I didn't follow sports. I hated gross things like worms. I wanted to be a chef and I spent time in a kitchen and I caught hell for all of that at school. I still don't like gross things, I finally know about sports and I have developed a working knowledge of most of what men are "supposed" to know so that when it comes up, I don't look like an idiot.

Likewise, my older sister Karyn wasn't huge into dolls but was a big pro wrestling fan. Now, she knits, sews, cooks and has a working knowledge of traditionally woman;y things etc... but she's also the biggest Reds fan I know.

Kids will find their way to who they are supposed to be. Exposing them to the way the world works doesn't hinder that. The poor kids at Egalia pre-school will end up in a real world one day where men will laugh at them for not fitting in and women will mock the girls too.

No one should be forced to be something they aren't, but schools like Egalia and the whole gender neutrality movement are an overreaction and a bad idea.