Lydia Houck, a nine-year-old girl in Windsor, Nova Scotia, was told (link is here) last week that she wouldn’t be allowed to attend a municipality-sponsored one-day fishing, hiking and golfing event for 5-to-12 year olds. Why? Because it was exclusively for boys, and the town wasn’t willing to make an exception. Instead, she was told that she could attend the municipality-sponsored one-day event for 5-to-12 year old girls: the Glamorous Girls Camp, where she could get a manicure, pedicure or other spa treatment.
When the Houck family complained, the municipal warden told them that the Windsor program was modeled after similar sex-segregated programs throughout Nova Scotia, and that they would simply have to accept the fact that Lydia’s brother could attend the fishing/hiking/golf camp, but that Lydia could not.
So many objections to this program and the way it was handled by the town of Windsor come to mind, but I think Lydia’s mother summed it up nicely: “It’s really quite sad at this age to be stereotyped like that,” Ms. Houck said. “We’re teaching them there’s boy things and girl things. In 2007, it’s kind of hard to believe.”
-Sudha Setty
the time has long since come for the discusion of human rights to leave behind the gender (and any other) division. Either we are all human or we are not. Since we all are, there should be no differing in our rights. The selective application or granting of our rights is too often based on religous or economic reasons. In our efforts to reach true equality, those peoples that subscibe to its (equality) virtue shoud prohibit comercial or political suport from flowing to those that do not. One can live on which ever side of the fence one CHOOSES. But you MUST choose and live with those of like choice. This may involve hard choices, especially to the economic priviledge some see as a right and or need that supercedes all. Trying to buy or bully support has never worked. It is tiime to lead, no matter how much it hurts!
My first act of feminist protest was when I was in third grade. As a craft project to make Christmas gifts for our mothers, the boys were given woodworking tools with which to carve wooden trivets (under the supervision of somebody’s Dad, of course), while the girls were shepherded into a sewing class and taught to sew potholders.
I refused to sew the potholders. I insisted on my right to carve a trivet instead. It was a deliberately political gesture, because actually I liked sewing and wasn’t personally interested in woodworking. But I was a little feminist and was infuriated by the gender stereotyping and restrictions.
That was three and half decades ago. What’s changed?
some things have moved foward, a little. Ask the afro-american lesbian with 2 chidren that I hired after she graduated from college. She was a welder/blacksmith (sculptor too) and the best talent around. Better than me and I was considered pretty good back in the day.(and yes, equal pay for equal work as with myself and all that worked in my shop) I never asked, she just told me her story after we worked together for a while. And I also made good money sewing, leather mostly. I fell in love with sewing at an early age when I asked my grandmother to teach me how. Of course, that was a while ago and things may have regressed. I do hope you have held on to that spirit, Socks. One need not be blatent, just consistant.( Hmmm I hope my spelling has improved a little too!)