I was inspired to write this after watching Mrs Woog's (Woogsworld) hilarious vlog today.
Greens Senator Larissa Waters would have been infuriated with me this afternoon. In fact she may have even smacked me in the face with the pointy end of a Barbie doll and anyone who’s ever experienced a Barbie bit piercing the sole of your foot on the way to midnight ablutions knows how much that would hurt.
It’s the last three days of school for the year and to prove to my students I’m not a wizened, spiteful harridan all the time, I thought we’d play some games in the classroom.
I had the desks lined up and the kids were taking turns blowing a crumpled piece of paper with a straw to see who could get it to the end first.
We called it “The 4B Paper Blowing Olympics!”
See… I can be quite whimsical when I choose.
I must say I regretted any fanciful notions I could be a fun teacher when the cheering started up. I began nervously staring at the phone waiting for the Deputy to call and ask if she needed to turn on the lockdown siren because surely someone must be being murdered down my end of the school with the hysterical racket she could hear from her office.
But my politically incorrect gaff occurred when I handed out the straws; pink for the girls and blue for the boys.
According to Ms Waters I was gender stereotyping; I’m promoting domestic violence and the gender pay gap with my thoughtless labelling.
Little Darius was quite affronted by my heinous actions and insisted I give him a pink straw… which I did.
This No Gender December thing upsets me in the same way putting prisoners in pink uniforms to shame them upsets me. What the hell is wrong with pink?
If giving girls pink clothing and toys places them in a particular pigeonhole, then shouldn’t the same thing happen to boys who are dressed in pink?
By the time I had my fourth son I was so sick of dressing babies in blue and yellow I began buying pink clothes for all of the boys. They had Cabbage Patch Dolls too, girl ones.
My predilection for pink didn’t affect their career aspirations at all. Two of my boys are tradies and two are lawyers so despite whatever the fanatical screamers are saying I did to my sons’ gender identity clearly doesn’t seem to have influenced them one way or the other.
Personally, I think Ms Waters is merely another pinkist.
I mean why don’t we just ban the colour altogether if we’re going to hand the reins over to the fudgewits of the world who want to scream about every little thing in life.
Perhaps Ms Waters would like the colour pink to be replaced with green?
Olive (formerly known as Pink)
Lime Cadillac
"Olive lemonade"
"My Avocado Bits" (No photo available soz).
"Greeny finger" (on second thoughts probably not).
It’s the last three days of school for the year and to prove to my students I’m not a wizened, spiteful harridan all the time, I thought we’d play some games in the classroom.
I had the desks lined up and the kids were taking turns blowing a crumpled piece of paper with a straw to see who could get it to the end first.
We called it “The 4B Paper Blowing Olympics!”
See… I can be quite whimsical when I choose.
I must say I regretted any fanciful notions I could be a fun teacher when the cheering started up. I began nervously staring at the phone waiting for the Deputy to call and ask if she needed to turn on the lockdown siren because surely someone must be being murdered down my end of the school with the hysterical racket she could hear from her office.
But my politically incorrect gaff occurred when I handed out the straws; pink for the girls and blue for the boys.
According to Ms Waters I was gender stereotyping; I’m promoting domestic violence and the gender pay gap with my thoughtless labelling.
Little Darius was quite affronted by my heinous actions and insisted I give him a pink straw… which I did.
This No Gender December thing upsets me in the same way putting prisoners in pink uniforms to shame them upsets me. What the hell is wrong with pink?
If giving girls pink clothing and toys places them in a particular pigeonhole, then shouldn’t the same thing happen to boys who are dressed in pink?
By the time I had my fourth son I was so sick of dressing babies in blue and yellow I began buying pink clothes for all of the boys. They had Cabbage Patch Dolls too, girl ones.
I have a photo somewhere of little Jonah running around in a jaunty pink and yellow Lycra swim shirt. Padraic had a pink Hawaiian shirt which complimented the long, golden curls I couldn’t bring myself to cut off. They were Power Ranger crazy back in the day and one of the boys must have been the pink one, on reflection.
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| Hagar |
My predilection for pink didn’t affect their career aspirations at all. Two of my boys are tradies and two are lawyers so despite whatever the fanatical screamers are saying I did to my sons’ gender identity clearly doesn’t seem to have influenced them one way or the other.
Personally, I think Ms Waters is merely another pinkist.
I mean why don’t we just ban the colour altogether if we’re going to hand the reins over to the fudgewits of the world who want to scream about every little thing in life.
Perhaps Ms Waters would like the colour pink to be replaced with green?
Olive (formerly known as Pink)
Lime Cadillac
"An Asparagus Diamond" or "An Asparagus Elephant".
Or even "Asparagus Eye".
"Artichoke Floyd"
"Olive lemonade"
"The Forest Green Panther"
"My Avocado Bits" (No photo available soz).
"Greeny finger" (on second thoughts probably not).
What do you think? Buy gender neutral toys only or not?
