"You're a girl! I can't play with you no more!"

[Quantess]

Do you remember when you had a little friend who happened to be a boy, in grade school? And, right there in the playground, he told you to get lost because he can't be friends with a girl?

We were both in Kindergarten. The boy was a neighbor, and we were pals before school started. I thought he was my my best friend, so I just followed him around the playground, I suppose. He told me to get away from him, in no uncertain terms.
But, as I remember, he was very unpleasant and spoke so "trashy" and ugly to me, that I took the loss really easily.

Of course, when this happened to me I had no words to describe it. One remembers these things in pictures and fragments. Adults have the capacity to defend themselves with words, which is something children usually lack. Children are really not able to express themselves very well.

This was in the mid 1970s.

I wonder if anything has changed since then?

[USA_1]

1. Sometimes It's the Parent's Fault

I remember when I was about 10 or 11 and playing with my cousins both of whom were girls. My mother screamed at me that only sissies play with girls and she did it right in front of my cousins. Needless to say, it is not a pleasant memory.

[Quantess]

7. Wow, that's really sad and terrible.

I'm really sorry that happened to you.

Did I know you in kindergarten?

[USA_1]

9. ... kindergarten ...

One more story from my Brooklyn childhood:

We were playing softball in the school yard when two little girls showed up and asked to play. One guy said, ''aw, you're not sapposed tah play wit' goyles" ('goyles' is how girls was pronounced in those days). One of the girls was a friend of mine, so I refused to play unless she and her friend also played. As I was probably the best player there all agree to play so long as the girls were on my team. Sure enough, the softball guardian angels were with us and we won! My little friend and her friend thanked me profusely after the game.

Was that you in the East New York, Brooklyn school yard?

[Quantess]

10. Aw Cute! No, it wasn't me.

But I wish you were my my childhood friend!

[USA_1]

11. That's SO SWEET!!

Thanks, you made my day!!

Good night + always be well.

[USA_1]

8. That Took Place in the 1960s ...

... too often it is boys who are blamed when, in fact, it is parental teaching that is at fault. In my case, it was definitely my mother who had the prejudice against girls.

Later on, I grew up and coached girls and women in softball (quite successfully, if I may be permitted the boast), lobbied for passage of Title IX, and encouraged some of my players to go into coaching both men and women. Thus, my mother's bad teaching did not influence me in any negative way.

[mzteris]

2. some kids, yes

- others, not so much. :(

True story (yeah, I'm gonna brag a little bit) -

my son was in 1st grade (2000) and "the best soccer player" in his class. There were a group of kids who'd played in Kindergarten - boys and girls, etc. Soon after the school year started in 1st grade, some of the boys said, "NO GIRLS ALLOWED ON OUR TEAM!" So my son said, "Ok - then I'm not on your team either!" and walked off with his girl friends.

The other boys played for a while and then came over and said, "we changed our mind, they can play." And they all lived happily ever after. (Well, through the rest of first grade, anyway! lol)

He still has a lot of girl friends and so does his little brother. They don't understand what the big deal is.

edit 'cause I cain't speel good.

[Der Blaue Engel]

3. I remember the same thing

In 1971, also kindergarten. My friend Henry wouldn't talk to me at school, so I went to his house after school, where I had played all summer, and his mother told me he didn't want to come out and play. I went back to school on Monday and tried again to talk to Henry, and he told me to go away because he didn't play with girls. He was like a different person, a mean person. He was no longer my friend.

Funny; I never really thought of that in terms of societal mysogyny. I just learned early on that boys hated girls...until they realized they wanted something from them around jr. high. :eyes:

Is it the natural course of male development or is it taught? Is it both? Interesting post.

[Katherine Brengle]

14. It's not normal development, it's enforced social development.

[amerikat]

4. You're not 5 anymore

I bet he misses you. You should look him up and ask him directly why he said that to you. I didn't know anything about girls when I was that age. Now I'm older and girls are way cool. I expect that the girls will save the world..........the warrior men will surely destroy it. peace.

[Quantess]

6. Thanks for the nice thoughts!

Realistically, though, he's probably a jerk just like his dad was. Well, hopefully not! Time and age can give a lot of wisdom to the human soul.

It's funny how the stupidest ones from the opposite sex can ruin everything.

Cheers, Amerikat! :toast:

[pansypoo53219]

5. well, when i was on the playground in the 70's

in gradeschool, i was repeatedly asked, are you a boy or a girl.
this made me want long hair. but maybe it was a compliment, cause i could play like a boy. i always played better with boys.

[Quantess]

12. Here's cheers to the poster of dubious gender.

:D I still can't tell if you're a boy or a girl.
Not that it matters.

I'll just assume you're female, now that it is clear that my Original Post is in Women's Rights.

[pansypoo53219]

13. yes a girl.

why now, i am taking it as a compliment. as a kid i thought it was my hair, but now, i think because i did not act 'girl'.
HA! bet that ruined it for my dad and uncles. when 10 or so, dad tried to freak me out by giving me a lantern box. 'this is for you'. inside was a snake. COOL it's so pretty! it has a red belly! took it out to handle it. but grandma made me let it go.
i bet he expected me to scream. just warms my cockles(if i have them). especially as he is a dittohead.

[Quantess]

15. You're brave!

:hug:

[DemBones DemBones]

18. That happened to my daughter on her second day in

public school. She was in second grade, had gone to Montessori school before.

The first day of school she wore a dress and when she hung upside down on the monkey bars at recess, some girl started chanting "I see your panties! I see your panties." She was puzzled and hurt because girls wearing dresses hung upside down at Montessori school without enduring comments about their underwear. (Bullying was NOT tolerated there at all.)

So the second day she wore jeans and a shirt and her nice cowboy boots her grandfather bought her. A girl (the same one?) came up and asked her if she was a boy or a girl. She said "I'm a girl" and the other girl said "Why are you wearing boy clothes then?" Her hair was short but not very short and she didn't have boyish features. I figure the girl was jealous of her boots or something. Who knows?

On the third day she woke up and cried her heart out, didn't want to go to school because she didn't know what the hell to wear.

She hadn't told us about the previous days' events so we had to deal with it all at once, tell her she had not done anything wrong, that some kids were just plain mean, that she should wear whatever she wanted to but not hang upside down wearing a dress since it seemed other kids would be mean about it, which was silly but that was how they were. This was a K-3 school so she wasn't having to deal with kids more than a year or two older yet still she was hassled.

I wish we had taken her out of school that very day and home schooled her but I don't think it was legal in this state at the time and of course we thought she needed "social interaction." In her case, social interaction just meant learning that most people in her school were shallow and mean. :grr:


pansypoo, I always preferred playing with boys, too. Or other tomboys. Nobody ever thought I was a boy because girls had to wear dresses to school in the olden days but my teachers sometimes tried to get me to act more like a girl, i.e., play jump rope, but I preferred running around in tall grass playing "war" with the boys. Jacks were OK sometimes, but marbles was more my game. :hippie:

[Warpy]

16. I dunno, I didn't get as hurt during that latent period as most

girls did. I preferred boy things to girl things, chemistry sets to baby dolls, building houses to playing in them, etc. I was tolerated all through the school years, although I was never good at or interested in sports.

What I do remember is the transition between 11 and 14 being incredibly unpleasant, with being best friends one day and worst enemies the next as our bodies and interests changed at different rates.

By high school, our cliques had formed. I was in the uber nerd clique, the AP class clique, so far out we were in.

[Triana]

17. "I'm not going fishing with you anymore! You've got BUMPS!"

That was mine. Upon the advent of my getting 'breasts'. Sort of cute, I suppose, but there it was. "I have to REJECT you as a person because you're a GIRL" - in childspeak.