What's good for the goose will make the gander.... gay?

I'd hope we're past a lot of this stuff now, but... I guess not.


<she who wishes she had legos and an erector set instead of, no, besides, my dolls>

From my POV, the school I work out has pretty good gender overlap. It's elementary, maybe it doesn't carry through to older kids. But, there are girls playing football (though not many). There are many girls playing a squash type game with the boys (about half and half). There are some boys playing jump rope. And sometimes the boys go from jump rope to football. The only one-gender (boys) game I see is 4-square, interestingly enough.

I have a girl in class who is on a boys' hockey team.

I think we are passed alot of it. When I spoke on boys jumping rope and how that usually ended up, that was back in my day. I can't imagine how it would be different today but boy am i glad if it is. That's progress.

This is a little off subject but, it's always been my experience that while gay women and straight women can be friends and hang out simply as two women, it was not that way for gay men and straight men. They do not hang out together. Period. But now I'm seeing one young man in particular, seemingly straight in every way, with a few male friends who are gay. He says that the stigma just isn't there anymore so, times are truly a'changing, I guess. The sad part is, I find myself questioning whether this young man is indeed straight or if, in the end, it will be revealed that he's gay. As progressive as I'd like to view myself, some old stereotypes are hard to let go of.

The old sterotypes ARE hard to let hold of.

Mo said he wanted to sew so I looked for something for him to sew. Despite the fact that most exraordinarly successful clothing designers are men, sewing kits are all geard for girls.

Girls playing football = cool.

Boys wanting to play dolls = oh my god he's gay!

Speaking as a girl, a total tomboy girl, I'm glad to see doors opening for girls.

Speaking as the mother of a boy I'm a little pissed that it doesn't work both ways.

Osso, seriously, now if you expressed an interest in those "boy" toys your parents would have given them to you even if it broke the bank.

Yet a boy who wants a kitchen set must resort to pink Dora the Explorer frills.

And most of the famous chefs, like the designers, are men.

Straight men.

I just don't get it.

Welllll...the male designers certainly aren't straight. Oscar de la Renta is about it. Most of the rest, from valentino to galliano to tom ford are gay as geese. And proud of it too, honey!

Ralph Lauren?

Calvin Klein?

I was just about to add him in but your reply blocked me.

Ralph Lauren, that is. Calvin Klein? I never believed for a second that he was straight or that his marriage was genuine after meeting him many, many years ago. He wasn't even trying to hide his girlishness back then.

I didn't know about erector sets and legos in 1949 to ask my parents.
They were forward looking in that my mother made me a cowgirl outfit including holster and gun. Lotta good that did me playing alone in our apartment building, age eight.

What I'm getting at is that I always enjoyed house hunting and tried to draw my own plans for what our house should look like, including room layout, however lame - I might have been nine or ten.

I had no clue I might have wanted to be an architect - and didn't until around age 50. Lots of stuff opened to women in 1964, but it's taken a while to filter down. I think the filter for men has taken longer, despite Rosie Grier and knitting. More phobia in the way for men, culturally.

I was going to mention Rosie Grier.

To this day, I have a thing for miniature cars. I collect them and they just attract me. I figure it's because as a little girl, I was absolutely forbidden to even touch my brothers' cars, let alone allowed to play with them so now, I have my own. na-na-na.

Na na na, na na na na!!

It is more phobic for men, no doubt about it!

Like my best girlfriend "Kathy". She's an ace mechanic. She can drive a race car. She looks good in a miniskirt.

Try saying that about any boy and see where it gets you!

The Calvin Klein thing reminds me so much of my friend, a man, who was a hair stylist in the late 70s and on (he probably still is). He was married and had many kids but by the end of the day he was "gay" because everyone expected him and wanted him to be gay. His wife, also a friend, used to complain that it took hours to get the gay off of him when he came home from work each day.

Times do change and it truly is much better for girls. As a girl I am truly glad.

As the mother of a boy, the sterotypes are really disgusting though!

I don't say that as "anti-gay man". Personally I don't care who has sex with who because I know sex only one aspect of a person's life.

I just wish the gate could swing in both directions.

Thinking back, I was allowed to play with my brothers' Lincoln logs.

I've thought about the Calvin Klein thing too because he does have a child, a daughter, and I always wondered if maybe he pretended to be gay because it was expected of him. How twisted would that be, though?

Schniff, I didn't have those either...



Well, as many of us have opined before, sexuality is on a continuum.

I'm not soooo sure that interests and abilities follow sexuality. I think they follow brain functioning, among other things, which can be cross gender. My girl cousin with the 800 SAT in math and her sister, the art major, for example. Heh, one was adopted.

The joker who invented "action figures" was a genius--you can sell dolls to boys, but they can deny that they play with dolls. They're actions figures, damnit ! ! !

When i was a kid, there was no permanent press, so my grandmother introduced me to an iron and an ironing board when i was six, even though i had to stand on a footstool to reach the ironing board. She was not about to do our ironing for us, and we were not about to leave the house unless the clothing we wore was pressed. Kids being rough on clothes, we also had to learn how to ply a needle and thread--no one in the 50s thought there was anything wrong with a kid wearing patched clothes, except for school, when we had to wear pressed clothing. We were usually better dressed than the other kids in class because of my grandmother's standards.

Once, in 5th grade, i was bored. I had nothing to do that period, and the girls were hand sewing christmas decorations. Since i was handy with a needle and thread, i volunteered to do that. The teacher was horrified, and informed me in no uncertain terms that boys don't sew. Yeah, right . . . tell my grandmother that.

I would have bought a ticket to watch her tell your grandmother that.

I'd have stood in the next room to watch, myself.