Parents Must Counter Stories' Gender Biases

In order to raise feminists in today's world, parents should change the anatomy of the characters in sexist children's books, Harvard Visiting Professor Darryl J. Bem yesterday told 15 students over dinner.

In his talk at the Freshman Union, Bem said he changed men into women and women into men in his childrens' books in order to make them aware of sexual stereotypes.

"Teach children not to look through the lenses of society, but to see the lenses which society looks through," he said.

The Cornell Psychology professor said that society places too much emphasis on gender differences and creates artifical distinctions between the sexes.

"Gender is insinuated in areas where gender is irrelevant," Bem said. "Children are taught to think of the whole world in terms of the dimension of gender."

Bem, who is currently teaching advanced social psychology at Harvard, said children are taught to apply different standards to both sexes. For example, children are not taught that girls are weak and boys are strong, but that strength is a trait that is only applicable to boys, he said.

"Family members stress to young boys how big and strong they are, while they don't even think to apply the same terms to girls," Bem said.

"This teaches girls that the strong-weak dimension is not relevant to them. Girls learn that it is the dimension of pretty-ugly that is important to them, while strong-weak is relevant only for boys," Bem said.

As a way of fighting sexism, Bem suggested setting counter-examples for children in the home by having both parents equally share household responsibilities.

Bem also recommended explaining to children that cultural messages in the media reflect only the values of the people who wrote the material and do not reflect reality. He did not advocate censoring or condemning sexist material but said that the bias should be explained as one person's interpretation.