Well, not that girls in one municipality in Nova Scotia will get a chance to fish during their day camps this summer:
HALIFAX – Nine-year-old Lydia Houck was looking forward to a day of fishing, hiking and golfing when she browsed through a list of summer day camps offered near her Nova Scotia home.
But the only option that fit her interests was just for boys.
In contrast, the only all-girl camp, dubbed Glamorous Girls, offers jewelry-making and a trip to the spa for manicures and pedicures for girls aged five to 12.
Lydia says she’d rather be fishing.
“It was really frustrating that they were being discriminatory and they were saying that boys should look forward to doing this and that girls shouldn’t do this,” Lydia, who will be entering Grade 4 in the fall, said in an interview from her home in Windsor.
“My brother and I go fishing a lot and I enjoy going outside a lot, and this camp seemed to fit that description and it was pretty much the only day camp that did.”
The Municipality of the District of West Hants offers three other day camps that are co-ed – a trip to an amusement park, a day at the waterslides and a pirate-themed excursion into Halifax – but Lydia said none of them sounded as fun as the camp for boys.
The municipality says the idea for next Monday’s spa day came from similar all-girl day camps elsewhere in Nova Scotia, with at least one Halifax-area community staging its own spa event for young girls this summer.
West Hants recreation director Kathy Kehoe denied the camp lineup is discriminatory and said there are no plans to reverse the decision before the event for boys takes place on Tuesday.
Oh, no! It’s not at all discriminatory for a municipality to officially enforce gender conformity. Girls just naturally love spas, and boys just naturally are inclined to fish. It’s just The Way Things Are.
One thing that’s not clear from the article is what kind of fishing the boys will be doing. Is it the important-to-the-local-economy kind of fishing, such as lobstering, or is it the just-for-fun kind of fishing, such as flyfishing? Because not knowing that makes it really hard to evaluate just how heinous the gender discrimination is. Is it a case of the district giving boys a chance to learn valuable skills for making a living and at the same time reinforcing the idea that women don’t belong in the fishing business, while girls are taught that their worth is tied up in their looks? Or is it a case of the district enforcing gender divisions in recreational activities?
Not knowing what kind of fishing is involved in the day camp also makes it difficult to really evaluate statements like this:
Jacqueline Warwick, the co-ordinator of gender and women’s studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, said there is nothing innovative about splitting boys and girls into activities that are traditionally masculine and feminine.
She said she was “astonished” that a municipal government would be behind such blatant gender stereotyping, adding that the idea of a spa day for young girls is part of a larger cultural phenomenon that ensures girls and boys fit into specific gender roles.
“I do think that there is a widespread movement to restore these very repressive, old-fashioned gender roles,” said Warwick.
“This emphasis on frivolity . . . can be understood as a way of occupying girls’ and women’s time. They spend all their time and money on these activities. It’s a way of containing women and girls into these safe stereotypes where they’re not going to disrupt society.”
If the fishing camp is teaching job skills, then I agree 100%. But if it’s sportfishing, I take issue with the idea that sportfishing is somehow not a frivolous activity. Men spend all kinds of time and money on stuff like fishing rods, fishing trips, stereo equipment, hobbies, TVs, computers, games, models, comics, golf, movies, cars, motorcycles, etc., etc., etc. Yet somehow, it’s only the stuff that’s associated with women that gets coded as frivolous and a waste of money and time.
Via IBTP.
This is why I’m so interested in Spiral Scouts for my kids, even though it seems to take an act of Goddess to get one started here in Austin. There’s no gender-separated activity, but rather boys and girls learn to work together on a team toward common goals. Just like, you know, in real life. I was always more the fishing, grubby kneed, bookworm myself as a kid.
Spiral Scouts looks like it’s still atheist-hostile.
Why on earth do they even have sex-segregated day camps at that age? I could see it causing fewer problems if, say, the 14-18 crowd was separated, but what on earth is the rationale for doing it to the 8-12 kids?
Myself, I only went to mixed-gender camps, both day and sleepaway. Of course, this was in the 1970s when “Free to Be You and Me” was a useful teaching tool and not horrible propaganda produced by dirty fucking hippies like Marlo Thomas.
My day camp was co-ed, but we broke into same-gender groups. Kat and I were in the same group, and our counselor let us into her makeup bag (we didn’t have a whole lot to do in day camp, since we just sort of hung out in our town’s small park). It was the 70s, and she had frosted green eyeshadow in a tube, which we all used like lip gloss.
Picture a bunch of 7- and 8- year-old girls with green lips.
We did team up with a boys’ group to build a go-kart for the go-kart races at the end of the session, and our counselor provided a Mercedes hood ornament her boyfriend had stolen off a car somewhere.
I’m sure she wouldn’t be able to work as a camp counselor today. But that was one of the great things about the 70s.
It is just too strange seeing this story getting picked up by my favourite (American, feminist) blogs, considering I read the article in my local newspaper a few days ago (seriously, we never get press coverage in the U.S, except for the time Martha Stewart was going to attend the giant pumpkin regatta but her Visa wasn’t granted)!
To answer your question, I am sure these boys are going out trout fishing, for fun, possibly/probably in some of the lakes in the county that are stocked (It’s hard to get into the lobster business these days unless you have $250,000-$500,000 for a license and $200,000 for a boat). So, completely frivolous sportfishing.
Also, I am weirded out by the thought of 5-year-olds getting professional pedicures.
Even if they are going sportfishing, sportfishing does teach you observation, patience and perservence whereas daytripping to a spa teaches you consumerism and narcissism.
One builds character the other does not.
Oh, no! It’s not at all discriminatory for a municipality to officially enforce gender conformity.
I love the way that politicians have this strange habit of saying “right” when they actually mean “left” or “not discriminatory” when they really mean “completely discriminatory”. Weird how that works.
i wouldn’t be surprised if lydia is a much better fisherman (fisherwoman? fisherperson) than a lot of the boys.
*headdesk* I had to check the date on that article to make sure it hadn’t appeared as a result of a rip in the time/space continuum.
Yep, 2007. Good fucking God.