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Names and gender stereotyping

When I went to kindergarten most of my friends were girls, in fact all of my friends were girls except for one boy and his name was Chelsea. Looking back to that time I don’t think I quite understood that Chelsea wasn’t a girl. After all, he had a “girl’s” name and to my simple mind that meant he had to be a girl, right? Perhaps if I was in kindergarten today I would have assumed that half the girl’s in the class with names like Riley, Logan, Hunter and so on were in fact boys.

We progressed into elementary school together and at some point I thankfully learned more about the differences between girls and boys and that it wasn’t just based on a name. Looking back though, I did also observe just how confusing having a name of the “wrong” gender can be, for the teachers at least.

This experience I think led to my fascination with names. Today I notice the trend, which seems to get stronger and stronger, of parents giving their daughters so-called “strong” names, which most typically means “boys” names. Are there really no ‘strong” classical girl’s names that can be used?

While I don’t believe that names define gender and wish that parents should be able to name their child free from traditional gender assoications that put names on one side of a list or another and actually choose a name just because they like it or not, I ...

Boys wearing skirts for field hockey

Up until one week ago, I paid little attention to the High School sport of Girl’s Field Hockey. But browsing around the web I came across a discussion regarding a boy who had recently moved from the UK where he played field hockey in school to the US. He wanted to continue playing but discovered that as far as HS sports are concerned in the US, field hockey is exclusively for the girls. Under Title IX he could make a case for playing on the girl’s team since there was no equivalent option available to him, the same argument that girl’s have used in the past to play sports not available to them on boys teams. Fair enough perhaps, ...

Up until one week ago, I paid little attention to the High School sport of Girl’s Field Hockey. But browsing around the web I came across a discussion regarding a boy who had recently moved from the ...