Making Feminist Boys?
These photos are part of an ongoing visual ethnography of boys' play and social interactions that I have begun with my own children, two boys aged four and two. I am interested in what they play with and how they play and I am wondering to what extent their early experiences of toys and the influence of society's discourse on gender informs their masculinity in early childhood. I have already heard the boys being told that "boys don't play with prams" and that a pink toothbrush is inferior because it is a girl's toothbrush. Although committed to raising the boys to equally value males and females, society's perspectives on gender infiltrate their experiences and inevitably impact upon their developing masculinity. At home the boys play with "girls' toys" (although not too pink), "boys' toys" (although no weapons or militaristic toys) and gender neutral toys and this also impacts upon their masculinity. Interestingly, the boys sometimes play with "girls' toys" in particularly "boyish" ways. For example they cook toy cars in their toy microwave and pretend to eat them and they race their dollies in their toy buggies. Their masculine dispositions are developing in conflicting circumstances where their parents attempt to negate discourses of gender inequality through choice of toys and activities. However, the boys encounter divisive perspectives of masculinity and femininity on a daily basis through social interactions, media images, books and toys, which help to essentialise male and female characteristics and present behaviours and dispositions as natural. While gender neutrality cannot be achieved in a gender divided society, gender equality can perhaps at least be prefigured by their social world through valuing the feminine and attempting to invalidate any discourse that presents the female or the feminine as inferior.