Accompanying teaching materials often seem about to make an excellent point, only to miss it spectacularly. You nod along to descriptions of restrictive gender norms, hoping for the right conclusion: that nobody need conform if they do not want to, and that there is nothing wrong with boys playing with dolls or girls playing with trucks. You long to hear that girls (or boys) are people with female (or male) bodies who behave however they damn well please; instead you hear that girls (or boys) are people who behave in feminine (or masculine) ways. You hear, in other words, that the way people
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