Highlighting gender differences might be harmful even when well intentioned
I have a 14-year-old sister who lives in Texas with her mom, but comes to stay with my dad and I in Miami when she has breaks from school. As her, my dad, and I went on different outings together over the summer, sheexpressed frustration with something that both he and I did in regards to her: We’d always let her be the first to go in and out of the elevator, and we’d hold doors open for her. She didn’t see why she should be singled out this way.
One day, when I was babysitting her, I took her with me to my boxing class. That day we had a substitute coach — an Olympic boxer who happened to be a woman. I commented to my sisterthat it was kind of cool for her to go with me on that day in particular, so she could see an incredibly strong woman teaching a class, consisting entirely of male students, how to engage in a combat sport. My little sister wasn’t too pleased with this remark. In her telling, “Why did the gender of anyone there matter at all?”