An old memory
When I was an undergrad at USF, Tampa, the school owned a piece of land on the Hillsborough River, Fletcher Park I think it was called. Back then USF used to host what it called River Riots, wild parties with bands, kegs, bongs, dogs, students, bikers, and other local fun lovers.
At a River Riot I overheard a conversation between a little girl, maybe three years old, and her parents. The girl pointed to someone and asked “is that a boy or a girl?” Her mom’s answer has stayed with me for many years. She told the girl that it was not possible to tell without actually looking inside that person’s pants.
I don’t know why the mom said that, or why the dad went along with it. I have always believed it was part of some gender politics training, but that is just a guess. But it struck me that the mother’s answer was a big fat lie. Humans with normal vision can almost always identify the sex of other humans correctly and effortlessly. I was amazed that someone would tell such a glaring lie to a child. Children are not stupid. I imagine that little girl eventually realized her parents were not being straight with her.
Posted on July 11th, 2006 by pwyll
Filed under: General
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I’ll bet the wisdom to see just how smart small children are covaries with the all-too-rare common sense to look beyond long hair on a man or short hair on a woman in judging a person.