COLUMN: ​Segregation in 2015


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“Boy toy or girl toy?” the McDonald’s cashier asks innocently after I order a Happy Meal for my son.

“It doesn’t matter,” I reply.

“Are you sure? The girl toy is a My Little Pony,” she warns, eyeing my 5-year-old son worriedly.

No, it doesn’t matter. My son was 5 at the time, and actually, he still loves My Little Pony today at 7 years old. And that’s OK.

Gender segregation is learned, not inherent. In the U.S., we begin segregating and labeling people by gender even before they are born. You find out a friend is pregnant and immediately ask if she is having a boy or a girl. You shop for an apparel gift for that unborn baby, and your choices are mainly blue or pink, separated by gender, with very few “neutral color” options available.

It’s silly and unnecessary for us a culture to hold such a concern over whether a person is perceived as a particular gender based on colors and styles of clothing, and I can attest that little boys, as well as grown men, look just as good in pink as they do in blue.

Children’s toys are separated by gender as well. No one is born preferring one toy over another. Preference is learned either through the persuasion and encouragement of others — especially parents and peers — or through experience.

Learning preference through individual experience is the ideal method.

On a 96.1 WHNN-FM morning broadcast, radio personality Johnny Burke suggested that if a little boy requests a Halloween costume that is perceived to be for little girls, the parents should tell him it’s okay, but they should also inform him that “that’s a little girl’s costume and you are a little boy.”

I was outraged and disgusted.

Why is it necessary to differentiate between boy’s and girl’s clothing, let alone a Halloween costume? Is there actually a logical reason why a boy can’t wear a dress if he so desires, or why a girl isn’t considered feminine if her hair is very short?

These gender labels and perceptions need to be abolished in today’s modern world.

I encourage you to question your assumptions on this matter. In fact, I encourage you to question any long-held opinion or value in order to determine whether they were taught to you, or whether you came to hold those beliefs through personal, individual experience.

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