to move up and down
Macho culture turns boys off gym, study finds
The macho culture inside high school locker rooms is turning a growing number of boys off physical education, according to international researchers who are gathering in Ottawa this week to explore issues around body image and challenge popular notions of what it means to be a man.
“There’s no common public discourse in which schools in particular are actually acknowledging that boys struggle with what their body looks like,” said Michael Kehler, who teaches in the Faculty of Education at the University of Western Ontario in London, and is one of the organizers of the three-day symposium, billed as the first ever to tackle the issue.
Mr. Kehler said boys who are deemed by others as too fat, too thin, not as physically capable and who don’t compensate by engaging in other masculine activities - namely booze, bikes and fast cars -are labelled as feminine or their sexuality is questioned. (Photo: Marie-France Coallier/Postmedia News Service)
Does hiding baby’s sex engender freedom or cross the line?
It is nothing if not an unorthodox approach to child rearing: A Toronto couple says it is trying to raise a genderless child, refusing to reveal baby Storm’s sex to encourage a more neutral approach to the infant.
Hiding the four-month-old’s sex from the outside world is a “tribute to freedom and choice” that they hope will let Storm grow up unfettered by the values of others, Kathy Witterick and David Stocker have been quoted as saying.
Experts, however, question whether the odd experiment will work or be good for the baby, and note that gender identity is a complex, mysterious force that has at least as much to do with biological factors present at birth as the person’s social interactions. (Photo illustration: James McMurtrie/Getty Images/Thinkstock)
Barbara Kay: A child’s biology is not a matter of choice
