A while ago, a friend sent me this video clip from the excellent programme The Secret Life of 5 Year Olds.
In it, a group of boys and then a group of girls are offered "home made" lemonade with salt in it. The adult who's made the lemonade...

...asks the children what they think of her lovely home made drink. The boys tell it like it is - they speak out straight away and say it's disgusting. But the girls all pretend it tastes nice so as not to upset the adult. These children are only 5, remember. So already....

...girls have been taught to prioritise other people's feelings over their own discomfort. They've already had it drilled into them that it's better to put up with something unpleasant rather than hurt an adult emotionally. What are the implications here? We might think...

... initially that this is quite cute and funny. Boys have the confidence to blurt out the truth; girls have been programmed to, instead, consider other people's feelings and weigh them against their own, and decide their own don't matter. The more I think about it...

...the more disturbing it is. This is not 'emotional intelligence', it's telling girls they have to mask their discomfort to make others feel better. Keep quiet, even if they're going through an unpleasant experience. That is really really sinister.

We need to stop *right now* with this programming and teach girls to speak up loudly and clearly if they're feeling uncomfortable in a situation. That needs to become their default setting. Otherwise we're putting them at tremendous risk of all sorts of abuse.

We're disempowering little girls in the name of politeness, and for many of them, that message will stick for years.

For those who believe that "girls are just born more caring" - even though we know newborn baby boys' and baby girls' brains are functionally identical - my argument still stands. We should therefore be trying even harder to teach girls assertiveness. Not making things worse.

And for those who believe we aren't teaching girls to be compliant, have a look at the evidence. https://twitter.com/volewriter/status/1210885162805944322?s=19

We label children from birth, before they can have any say about it. https://twitter.com/volewriter/status/1170363927491948544?s=19

And even if a parent tries to avoid these gendered messages, they can't because children are seeing them on TV, in clothes stores, on greetings cards, in their friends' homes. It's wall-to-wall. Unavoidable. Never-ending. https://twitter.com/volewriter/status/1280563795287511040?s=19