Search Results: dress up games

My girlfriend started a social work course recently. She told me that the teacher showed an image with the upper body cropped out of a child wearing a dress, tights and in their Mother's heels. She asked who/what was in those tights, and people said "it's a girl". The teacher replied "no, it could be a boy".

Then she complained about adverts with muscular, masculine men encouraging boys to be masculine, because apparently that makes them violent.

I've seen a lot of articles on couples who encourage their male children to wear dresses and headbands, to play with baby dolls (one mentioned that the boy pretended to breastfeed the dolls), because they believe that this will prevent them from being violent.

My girlfriend has worked in nurseries and has seen the women there dress boys up in dresses, put their hair into bobbles, paint their nails. Then make fun of them.

Many schools have banned the types of play that boys enjoy - rough and tumble play, dodgeball, tug of war etc. Some have even banned games like tag because apperently being "on" hurts a child's self-esteem, it's as if they want to eliminate any form of competition - which is what young boys thrive on.

What do you guys think of this?

I think it's fucked up. Masculinity isn't the cause of violence for a start, I've done all that shit, played guns, wrestling, played GTA, COD etc. Never worn dresses or painted my nails - never assaulted or murdered anybody. It just makes me sad that they're taking all that boys enjoy away and pathologising natural male behaviour. They claim to be giving the boys the choice to wear dresses and act more like girls yet it's very clear that it's forced - if it was about choice they wouldn't encourage one choice and do their best to take away the other.

So what do you guys think?