This image is from a display entitled ‘Boy or Girl?’ at the Science Museum, London, as part of the ‘Who Am I?’ exhibit in the Wellcome Trust wing. We have written to the Science Museum at info@sciencemuseum.ac.uk to express our concerns about what this exhibit teaches children; you can find a template letter here, please feel free to use it to write your own complaint.

Meanwhile we respectfully suggest to them our alternative exhibit:

Boy or Girl?

An exhibit to help children expand their ideas of what girls and boys can be, resist the sex-role stereotypes sold to them everywhere they look, feel proud of their individuality and confident in daring to be different, to be happy in their bodies and to develop their critical thinking skills around the messages they are bombarded with from their culture, including current identity politics that teaches children that ‘identity’ is reality and biological sex an illusion.

Spot the Gender Stereotype

An interactive game involving images of toy packaging, books ‘for boys’ and ‘for girls,’ advertising of clothes and media images etc.

How do we think these kind of messages impact on us and our idea of what it means to be a girl or a boy? Do they influence us at all? Are boys and girls really like this?

Photo Display

A display of images of women and men being themselves without ‘identifying’ as the opposite sex in order to do so.

Is it OK for a woman to do a tough and dangerous job and not wear any make-up? Is it OK for a man to wear a gorgeous red frock and pearls? Does that mean she’s not a ‘real’ woman and he’s not a ‘real’ man?

Toys Through The Ages

A historical view of toys and the recent marketing of sex-role stereotypes to children

Read more about the history of toy marketing to girls and boys…

What message was Lego sending to girls and boys in the Seventies? What message are they sending now? Which message do you think is the best one and why?

The Mosaic Brain.

Some people still think that we have ‘male’ or ‘female’ brains but scientists generally agree now that that’s a load of bunk. Play the fun interactive Personality-o-meter game!

Read more about the human brain…

Do your interests, hobbies or preferences have any relation to your physical body? Do they make you ‘male’ or ‘female’? Does your biology make any aspect of your personality ‘wrong’? Do any aspects of your personality make your body ‘wrong’?

A Cartoon

What do you think of this? What message does it send?

Sex and Gender

Almost 100% of us are biologically either Male or Female. Less than 1% of us are biologically intersex, a result of rare genetic disorders. Here is some factual information explaining the difference between the biological reality of sex and the societal concept of gender.

Find out more!

What do you think it is that makes you a boy or a girl? Is it your sex or is it your gender? Can you give a definition of the distinction between boys and girls based on biological sex which holds almost 100% true? Can you give a definition of the distinction between boys and girls based on gender which holds almost 100% true?

The Transgender Umbrella

Some people believe that gender is the real distinction between boys and girls and that it’s possible to have the “wrong” gender for your sex. Are all people who challenge society’s gender roles “transgender”?

Do you think your interests, the clothes you wear, your style etc make you transgender just because society thinks you’re ‘different to most girls/boys…’? Do you think that the boys and girls who don’t look and act like the gender stereotypes in the books and toys we see must really be the opposite sex? What do you think about giving ourselves “gender” labels to describe our personalities?

Messages to little children about gender identity

In this book Thomas becomes Tilly and changes his bow-tie into a hair-bow. Do you think this challenges the gender stereotypes we have seen in children’s books and toys, or reinforces them? What do you think this book is saying to little children?

Messages to teenagers about gender identity

What do you think about these statements? When it comes to sex, do sexed bodies matter? Is male and female biology irrelevant? If a male who identifies as a woman wants to have sex with a lesbian, would that be ‘gay sex’ too? Or would a lesbian be transphobic for saying no to someone with a penis?

A cartoon to make us laugh

Factual presentation: social contagion

How social contagion works in influencing us subconsciously to adopt ideas about ourselves which we would otherwise not have entertained. The particular role of the internet and social media and its impact on young people, especially teenage girls.

Find out more…

Have you ever felt you might be transgender because you feel you’re different to everybody else? Are you a regular user of social media? What are the messages you are getting on social media platforms? Do you know who you’re talking to online? Do you trust that they have your best interests at heart?

Factual presentation: the harms of sex-change treatments

We have no idea of the effects of puberty blockers on the developing adolescent brain. Following blockers with cross-sex hormones will most likely leave you infertile. You will be a medical patient for life. Synthetic cross-sex hormones are used off-label and carry extreme risks to health, particularly in the case of testosterone for girls. Some of the effects are irreversible even if you stop taking the hormones. We have no idea of long-term health effects; the clinical research trials have not been carried out. Breast binders alone carry severe risks to health.

Find out about the effects of testosterone here…

Do you think ‘being your true self’ needs to involve body modifications which may cause you physical harm? What do you think about painful practices in other cultures such as breast-ironing? Is there a way to be yourself which does not involve hurting yourself?

Alternative messages for teenage girls

Alternative messages are out there, you just have to search for them amongst all the other messages you get from your culture, the media and across all social media platforms that unless you happily fit into our hyper-sexualised culture’s version of a girl you are a bit odd, which means you’re probably really a boy.

What do you think of PeachYogurt? Do you see women like her in the popular media, eg on t.v? If not, why do you think not?

Did you know..? Fun facts

Click on the links below the boxes to find out more!

More…

More…

More…

More…

More…

More…

So what makes you a boy or a girl? Is there anything a boy can be that a girl can’t, or that a girl can be that a boy can’t? Do you think those things are related to your brain or to your body? Are you a boy or a girl because you just are, or is it something you can choose?

Share this: Twitter

Facebook

