Random Anecdotes

:open_book: Your daughter is not a tomboy!

My daughter is a tomboy. Well, not in the looks: she’s slim and has a cute face, she’s friendly and open. But she plays like a boy: she’s more interested in trains than in dolls, she’s sporty, active. She’s tough, strong and proud of it. And has the best 6-pack I’ve ever seen.

However, when I say these things, it angers my mom. “Your daughter is not a tomboy” she says, as if I’m somehow offending her. “But she is, undeniably”. “No, she’s not”.

My parents came to visit us last year with a couple of friends of theirs. My daughter was drawing. The lady went to her and told “what a nice drawing, what is it?”. My daughter replied, proudly, “this is a queen, I drew it, do you like it?” all smiling and happy.

My mother gave me a look which meant “see? she’s feminine as she can be, drawing queens and all”. I already knew what was going to happen, so I gave a look that meant “just wait”.

Then my daughter continued: “and this is her blood exiting her head because her head is broken and she’s dying”. The lady didn’t know what to answer, my mother was horrified, I was laughing. I love my daughter.

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As a child tomboy myself, I applaud that.

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As someone who finds gender stereotypes annoying because he mostly grew up without them, so do I!

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But several studies are proving that they exist. For example girls tend to play with dolls while boys are loving cars, even if the children have the option and aren’t influenced by other people (already).

grafik

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I don’t want to go off topic (just kidding, of course I do!) but there’s a fine line between preference and stereotypes.

I always say “stereotypes exist for a reason”, and the reason is that it’s mostly biological, females prefer dolls and males prefer mechanic toys. But that doesn’t mean that boys don’t like dolls or girls don’t like cars at all. They just tend to prefer the other toys.

The problem arises when the parents try to force the stereotypes out of fear of a child becoming gay because he/she plays with the “wrong” toys.

And let’s be honest: toys for boys are better :sunglasses:. They are cool, they do lots of stuff. Dolls are… dolls. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-05-16

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Now I want a Mechablox!

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So this might be the first and only time I talk about this since I except to not be shouted down or anything for having an opinion and experiences that may seem unusual to some.

I grew up in a household where both parents were working. Both worked independently in their own offices and my mother even had people working for her in later years. They alternated in looking after me and my brother and they alternated in cooking for us.

On my mothers side her parents were also totally equal. They owned a printing factory and were both the boss in the family led company. None more important than the other, my grandmother even worked a bit more sometimes(she was very into the book keeping thing). On my fathers side it was aunt and my uncle who worked at the same company with my aunt even beeing in a leading position.

When I was very little my mum let me play with her dolls for a bit after I eventually lost interest because I was more into the stuff I saw in my cartoons.

When we played as kids we let the girls play with us. When we played Ghostbusters it would have occured to none of us to tell the girls to play Janine like characters. They got to be Ghostbusters, too!

Also in my more nerdy circle of friends there was a stronger gender mix because people united under common interests there. In other more generic cyles that lived a lot more like the male/female stereotypes because they had nothing in common the jocks and the shopping queens were never just friends(to use some really extreme example). So everyone there stayed in their own corners and when there was a girl in one of those men groups it was only because she was the girlfriend of someone.

So where I was it was more natural to have everybody share the same interests no matter what the gender was.

It was really much later until I learned all the gender stereotyping. Women are not into technical stuff, or football or loud music etc etc. women can´t be funny or be into nerdy things. I´m still baffled when I hear nonsense like that. Also the kind of jobs and the unequal pay thing still seems like the most unnatural thing to me but it is really a big thing still.

I´m really thankful I came from such a progressive household which seems to go even some generations back where they were even ahead of their time.

Many of my best female friends were on the tomboyish side. Did that make them look masculine or less womanly. Absolutly not! I also find funny women more interesting than those who never smile because they are afraid of getting wrinkles.

My parents also used to be friends with a gay couple who had the strongest relationship. One of them was a doctor. Nice people.

My brother had a friend in kindergarten who had a white mother and a black father (he was a reggea singer from Ghana, terrific guy! Fun and nice!)

I also grew up without religion for the longest time, I have never ever missed that. When I found out about these things I started questioning stuff very early on. I was a lot more into space and the planets at a very early age.

Okay, I admit I just lost the plot a bit and went full autobiographical, but isn´t this the random anecdotes thread? :upside_down_face:

:open_book:

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These aren’t stereotypes, but prejudice and injustice. That’s a difference IMHO (and here I would want to differ and be picky :slight_smile: ).

But it is the firm believe that these stereotypes are facts that give way to the prejudice and injustice.
As long as there are people who feel they have to piegeonhole individuals in a way one categorizes whole groups all of these injustices will persist. It starts with the attitude.

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No, no, this is how you start the joke:
Three Italians walk into a bar… :wink:

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Okay, I’m ready to post my favourite one now. I love telling people this story. It’s difficult to get it right verbally, so it’s nice I get to write it down.

:open_book: The cat and the aunt

In my last job there was a Portuguese girl called Cristina who adored her cat. In fact she once asked me to photoshop a fake prescription for some cat meds, but that’s another story.

One day Cristina returned to the office after a long holiday. She’d told me beforehand that her mother-in-law would be looking after the cat while they were away. She was concerned because she didn’t get on with her mother-in-law and felt she wasn’t particularly cat-savvy.

Unfortunately, her fears were realised. She told me through tears how the careless woman left the window open, and the cat fell out and died (they lived in a tall block of flats). By the end of the day everyone had found out what happened and felt really sad for her.

A few days later another colleague, Annabel, came back to the office. Her holiday had overlapped with Cristina’s, so she was as yet unaware of the sad news. In her busy return catching up with everything she’d managed to catch the drift of what had happened. I say drift, because instead of the cat, she was under the impression Cristina’s aunt had died.

Bear in mind when you imagine this next part that Cristina is a very animated, emotional person, fresh off the grief of losing a beloved pet.

So Annabel runs into Cristina in the hallway and places a sympathetic hand on her arm.

“I’m so sorry, Cristina,” she says. “Are you okay?”

“Not really, Annabel,” she replies, sobbing.

“Were you two close?” (referring to her aunt)

Cristina frowns slightly. “Yes… I suppose we were. She was my little friend.”

Annabel thinks this is a bit odd but nods sympathetically.

“So what happened? Was she ill?”

“No.” She sniffs. “We got back from holiday and we couldn’t find her anywhere! We looked all around the house, calling her name, but she was gone!”

“Oh.” This is a bit weird, thinks Annabel.

“Then eventually we realised someone left the window open!” Cristina lets out a moan.

At this point Annabel thinks, oh my God, the aunt fell out the window.

“That’s… that’s terrible!”

“I know Annabel, I know. I was too nervous to look but then a neighbour came round and said there was a dead cat in the road.”

At this point, Annabel thinks, Jesus. Her aunt fell out the window, landed on a cat, and killed it.

Cristina shakes her head and dabs her eyes. “We’re going to bury her in the garden.”

Just as poor confused Annabel is trying to make sense of these profound events, Cristina mumbles something about vet bills.

It’s then that the fog starts to clear and Annabel realises her mistake. Suddenly she’s hit by the hilarity of the situation and starts to lose composure. She rushes off, making her excuses.

Cristina was never any wiser, but when Annabel told the rest of us we couldn’t stop laughing.

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That is comedy gold!

I request for permission to recycle this situation for my future novel :joy:

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Poor Cristina, why didn´t anyone tell her? :open_mouth:

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Not if I do it first! :wink:

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:open_book: Appology after 25 years

So the other day my father picked up my aunt to take her into town. My aunt and my uncle live next to a teacher from primary school that was very strigent back in the day. There was never any contact whatsover, until last week.

He told me he bumped into her and they started talking and she said, she realises she was very rough back in the day and is sorry, and would do many things differently today if she had the chance.

That really made me smile.

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That’s really nice. It probably helped her to get it off her chest, too.

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I guess so, since she did on her own accord. I would never have expected that.

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Hehe… we were twelve! :stuck_out_tongue:

Are there common jokes starting that way? We have a lot like “A Frenchman, a German and an Italian (or a Neapolitan)”, but I’m so bad at remembering them…

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I can’t remember any either, but I’ve seen them appear on Reddit (r/Jokes) before.