Categorically Wrong

From Menletter July 2011

By Tim Baehr

In the Egalia preschool in Sweden, there are no "boys" or "girls." Children are called "friend." The people who run the preschool have even adopted, from gay and feminist literature, a new, made-up, gender-neutral pronoun to replace "he" and "she." The kids' books on the bookshelves are predominantly about alternative families - homosexual, single-parented, or with adopted children. Fairytales that promote gender stereotypes, even the classics, are notably absent. Other preschools in Sweden have hired "gender pedagogues," who advise staffs against language or behavior that promotes gender stereotypes.

Even in Sweden, where social engineering in gender equality has gone on for decades, including notable increases in paternity leave, some are doubting the value of this latest experiment. Some parents and social scientists are alarmed and fear that kids graduating from such preschools won't be prepared for life in the wider world beyond the preschools.

Why should anyone outside Sweden be interested in all this? After all, Sweden is a tiny country, with a population (9 million) about half that of the New York City metro area. Its tax rates and government-paid social services are both among the highest in the world. It could be argued that the Swedish model simply wouldn't work in larger countries with more diverse populations.

And yet. Abstract ideas don't have to observe national boundaries, and at least some aspects of the Swedish experiments may spread across its borders. This has happened already with paternity leave, which is being promoted now in Germany, using Sweden as its model.

One of the rationales for doing away with gender roles is that there is a social hierarchy in which males are valued more highly, though no one in the articles I've reviewed defines what that means. There are doubters: one Swedish blogger said, "I wonder who decides that [what boys do] has higher value. Why is there a higher value in playing with cars?" (The full Associated Press article appeared in many papers; here it is as reported in the Portland, Maine Press Herald: http://www.pressherald.com/news/nationworld/a-swedish-case-of-gender-madness__2011-06-27.html.)

The director of Egalia is quoted (in the article linked to above) as saying that biological differences "don't mean boys and girls have different interests and abilities. This is about democracy. About human equality." So biological differences may exist, but their behavioral and social consequences don't count.

I see two kinds of categorizing going on at Egalia: 1. All boys are somehow privileged by their gender; and 2. Since all gender differences are artifacts of society, there should be no differences between the genders. We need to lump all boys and girls together and call them "friends."

It seems to me that gender neutrality carries with it the danger of becoming gender neutering - especially of supposedly privileged boys - as some of the boys' more boisterous activities face disapproval.

How about this radical idea: Let's meet each man, woman, boy, and girl as an individual and value the wide diversity we find. The boy who plays with dolls is not a sissy, he's just a boy who plays with dolls. The girl who runs and jumps and swings from trees is not a tomboy or butch, she's just a girl with some athletic abilities. The boy who can't keep still is (usually) not a squirming pile of pathology, he just needs more space to run around. The girl who sits quietly with her dolls and has tea parties for them is not a repressed representative of a downtrodden gender, she's just a girl who likes dolls.

Yes, let's make all possibilities available to men and women and boys and girls. We need women who can lead - as women. We need men who can nurture - as men. But when social engineers try to force the issue, they come uncomfortably close to social totalitarianism. Maybe that's what has some Swedes suspicious. If the Eglalia model gets exported to the U.S., I hope the suspicion comes along with it.