Do you think you treat boys and girls the same?

I don’t need to – I have evidence enough around me to know that men and women get treated differently.

My boyfriend took advantage of this and had a female username while playing online poker. Ha.

Wait, this got edited. No I do not .

I don’t think anyone does.

@pdworkin ? Don’t think any one does what?

Treats boys and girls the same.

I make a very conscious effort to treat them equally, but since I’m making that conscious effort, I’m probably overcompensating somewhere and really treating them more different than intended.

In general? Yes. I would give the same assistance, advice, whatever, to a guy that I would to a female.
The delivery may will be different. With guys, even if I barely know them, I feel more comfortable and able to joke around. I’m uncomfortable around girls.
Also, because I’m attracted to girls and not to boys.

@Sarcasm I’m talking about literal boys and girls…children, not adults. I should have specified.

I know that I don’t treat anyone “the same” as anyone else. I don’t treat all boys equally or all girls equally.

@CyanoticWasp Well, I meant do you have differing expectations for success between boys and girls? Or differing assumptions about abilities?

It’s hard for me to say since I’ve only raised sons. I’d like to think I would treat girls the same but I know I would have more worries about their sexual safety and possibly their physical attractiveness. I’d like to think that I would enable them to see the same possibilites for their lives and think I would do this, but there would be subtle ways in which my treatment would differ, I imagine.

@janbb you said, “I would have more worries about their sexual safety” For real!

@Val123, it depends on how I know them as individuals, or whether I knew them at all. I guess that I wouldn’t approach a group of unknown girls, for example (and not taking into account what they might already be doing, or how they might be dressed) and assume that they’d like to play a game of football or baseball.

Conversely, I wouldn’t expect a group of unknown boys to want to play “house” or with female dolls (GI Joe and some other “action figures” have sure changed that in my lifetime, though).

And if I had teams of girls or boys playing soccer—both of which I have coached—then I still try to make allowances for individual ability and interest. I’ve coached some girls on soccer teams who could play with most of the boys in terms of strength, speed, agility and ability—and desire—but I admit that most of the girls I coached weren’t on an athletic par with boys of their age. Part of that may be that I was doing that 15 years ago, when girls were still fairly new to the sport.

Of course not. Boys are boys. Girls are girls. There is a difference, so it should be treated that way.

@JustAnother can you describe those differences and how they apply?

@holden Sure. I have a daughter, just turned four. If she were a boy, he wouldn’t wear dresses or have a doll house, for example. I would never refer to a boy as sweetheart or darling. When I was dating, I’d never buy a strange man at the end of the bar a drink. Even genetically, girls are XX, boys XY. There are differences, so should be treated differently. That’s why there’s a Mens Room and a Ladies Room.

But you’re a girl, Val… and girls sorta hafta become harder or firmer when dealing with males, because, by nature, they lack the natural authority over the male.
So it has to be “produced”, you might say.

But, Hey… having said that, I tutor… and I know that most of the time I work differently with females than I do with males.
I’m usually a bit softer with the girls.
I’m a bit of a softie underneath it allLOL!

I tried to treat them equally and failed. I tried to treat them fairly and sometimes succeeded. I love my sons and daughter and I still hug them. I wish it were possible for me to be geographically closer.

@JustAnother – I love your direct style when it comes to the very basics between boys and girlsLOL! ;)
We need Plenty’o that magnification in the dreaded post-feminist-mess world!!
Thank you.

shoot me now.

Bang!!
...

MEDIC!!

Note I didn’t wait for you to suffer longLOL!

@holden – you’re an adult, I assume.
Then YOU tell us the diffs between boys and girls… or have you aged and forgotten??LOL ;)

@denidowi OK, yes there are differences. But the kinds of things @JustAnother described are strictly social expectations, not necessity. I should have been more detailed in my Q and asked, “Do you have higher expectations from boys in certain areas than you do girls?” Such as….do we expect girls to sit quietly, but just look the other way when boys get a little rowdy? And is that fair?
Also, do you assume the boys will be better in math, and the girls will be better in reading? And is that fair?

Well, i like keeping girls as girls, and boyz-2-men [LOL], but then, I have found it much more fun and workable to believe in the ‘old mode’ of things, Val.
I’ve already battled the HallsofPower in academe over the modern tripe they call “social theory”.
My vie is that BOTH – Biology and social upbringing carry powerful weight in defining male-female roles and in the development of the sexes right across the board.

My rend to maintain the ‘old mode’, however, does not mean that there are not good discoveries or methods produced over the past 30 years… I acknowledge and use them too, but, generally. I do tend to work the good old ‘Basics’ – both boys and girls.
I think using the words, “assume” and “expect” are not quite in context.
It is my discovery, and if it wasn’t real, we would not be constantly discussing this… but I was saying that more often the boys are better mathematically, of course, and more girls are better at reading: yes.
But my Best student in maths, by far, is a girlLOL!! Yet I, more recently, taught more male students in maths, and my work is remedial… Mostly – not always. The girl is certainly not remedial: she had marks of 99, 98, and 96% in the last half of last year.
She loves our tutoring sessions.

To address your latter specification per se, I probably do expect that more guys will be more performance oriented, as I usually amLOL!
But it’s Nice with the girls… and I work from that male-female workability/reciprocation basis with them.
But both are “people” and you can certainly push too hard with both, but you do have to be careful about over-pushing the guys, cause inwardly, they’ll just ‘buck up’.
By nature, more of them are dominant… so you have to be careful not to over-ride their hormonal drive.
Teaching is a real art… so to play safe, both male and female, you often have to keep coming back to ‘the Basics’, and never lose sight of where you are leading.

I noticed, since having a son, I definitely view little boys in a different light. That might have been a “I haven’t had kids yet, they’re gentle creatures” but now that I’ve had a child, and a boy nonetheless, I’m definitely more rough when it comes to little kids. But, mainly with my own child.
I probably do treat them differently in some aspects, but some things I wouldn’t treat differently but respect when it comes to my sister-in-law and how she is with her daughter. Just an example, we have an open door policy on the bathroom and even if we had a daughter, we would still have that policy…so if she goes to the potty and my son is around, he’s not allowed to be near her because it’s their rules. They feel girls need privacy or something, but I personally find it silly. I dunno.

shoots self and janbb

I do treat children differently, but that depends on the personality of the child I’m dealing with more than the gender of the child.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir – you may be able to shoot yourself, but you can’t take @janbb from me: I already shot her “Bang!” LOL
Sorry… you’ve been squarely ‘beaten to the draw’ ;) Ha Ha Ha!!

Gosh – I’ve never felt so popular before!

Well you DID ask us to go ahead!!LOL?? ... and I don’t like to leave folks hanging out in Misery ;)

LOL!!!

So I whipped out the Pop gun that carries the hanging flag that says, “Bang!”, and popped it!!

Ideally, yes. But there are exceptions. Girls might have menstrual cycle problems. Boys might be surprised about wet dreams.

When it comes to equal opportunities, a very emphatic yes.

In some other thread we were discussing the issue of differing interests of boys and girls and the reasons for them. For many natural and applied sciences we are seeing gender parity. On the other hand disparity seems to exist in certain fields such as studying foreign language (more women than men) and engineering (more men than women). In my opinion there are several reasons for this, but we can definitely exclude lack of ability. Many men are good at learning foreign languages and likewise many women are good at studying engineering. So to me the explanation for the disparities must be about something else.

Personally I think it has a lot to do with parenting and upbringing, perceived societal norms as well as our primary and secondary education systems. However, I think there’s also the factor of interest and I know not everyone might agree with this. More neurobiological research could allow us to get to the bottom of this. I think far more young women should consider to study engineering, not only natural and applied sciences which they already do. But despite all of our best efforts 50% female engineers might not be the result of this. The same for 50% men studying foreign languages.

I’ve searched the web and I found some US data for the year 1997

Bachelors in “foreign languages and literature” 71% women and 29% men
Bachelors in “engineering fields” 19% women and 81% men

It’d be interesting to get data from other countries as well. I’ve also found an article trying to find solution for the reduction of disparity for engineering. It seems to require a subscription but the abstract is available:

“Despite tremendous advances by women in the natural and applied sciences, where in selective fields women have surpassed men in the earning of doctoral degrees for more nearly 20 years, female enrollment levels in engineering continue to be a fraction of male enrollment. Gender disparities of more than 60% persist in undergraduate engineering enrollments and have recently worsened. As American female civil engineering enrollment has been flat for over 25 years, efforts must be taken to understand this stasis. This paper focuses primarily on secondary education preparation in terms of both attitudes toward and enrollment levels in preengineering courses such as calculus, chemistry, and physics. Additional consideration is given to enrollment and achievement in advanced placement courses, as reflected in national examination rates. This paper concludes that secondary school participation and achievement in physics courses is a critical differential factor as one explanatory element of female engineering enrollment levels and provides specific recommendations as to how to increase interest, enrollment, and achievement in physics, including the segregation of entry-level engineering courses based on previous experience.”

http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=JPEPE3000135000003000095000001

@janbb Popular? You’ve been killed twice! I don’t wanna be popular! (PS…I’m the one who called a medic, which is maybe why you survived to be shot another day….)

Oh… I see, @Val123…
So that’s wot you meant by MEDIClol…

Well… you saved @janbb the first time, but you are rather late on the call this one.
Are you still able to save her??
She is becoming popular, and we need to save her! ;)

@denidowi Oh ga! Whaddo I do? Whaddo I do??? Um….here @janbb! Have a cookie!! And a band-aid!

Lifts head from gurney and scarfs down cookie. Thanks @Val123 – that was a lifesaver – or was it a cookie? (I’m so confused.)

@janbb It was a lifesaver cookie! My own invention er, recipe… :) Now just straighten up and fly right. Anyone ever tell you you’re accident prone??

@Val123 I’m accident supine too, apparently!

@janbb LOL! Oh, that was good! 10,000 kudos!

@Val123 Actually, I prefer granola bars…

@janbb Lifesaver granola bars. You got it!

@Val123 That was actually a joke about the “10,000 Kudos.” I’ll stick with the cookies over kudos or granola bars.:-)

@janbb 10,000 cookies then! Bleh. That’s a lotta cookies, man. Now, eat them all!

@Val123 gobble, gobble, gobble, (burp!)

Hey @janbb – you eat that many cookies, and nobody’s ever going to have to shoot you again!
Please share sum wit me ;)

@denidowi (She’s hiding in a corner, glancing at you from time to time, with paranoia all over her face, snarling while she’s eating 10,000 cookies at one sitting. She reminds me of a feral child! I guess that what happens when you get shot twice in one thread…...:)

I promise I won’t go gunning for her ever again!

You need to remember:
I DID only follow her instructions after allLOL! ;)