Children’s gender stereotypes should be reinforced, not abolished
by Belinda Brown, The Conservative Woman:
In the second of her series of posts about the Government’s new compulsory Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) programme, writer and researcher Belinda Brown examines the subversive ideology of the advisers who have influenced it.
Perhaps the least controversial aim of the Relationships and Sex Education curriculum is to ‘challenge stereotypes’. This may be far less innocuous than it seems.
That stereotypes are a problem is written into the heart of the Department for Education guidance. Schools ‘should be alive to issues such as gender stereotypes and take positive action to build a culture where there are not tolerated, and any occurrences are identified and tackled’, we are told.
Erasing gender stereotypes is then written into every single RSE resource. Children are given books such as William’s Doll to reverse gender roles, or Ten Thousand Dresses, a story about a child who we are told is a boy, but is referred to also as she and as a girl. Are you a boy or are you a girl? is a book used to teach children not to assume other children have a particular sex.
The problem is that while the ideologues believe that gender stereotypes cause sexism and homophobia, they play an essential role in helping children develop their own ‘sex identity’ and their awareness of ‘sex constancy’; the existence of male and female sexes.
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