The Guardian distilled into 52 words

A return to an occasional series in which the essential nature of the Guardian newspaper is boiled down to its basics.  Last one was, admittedly, briefer, but focused more on the whingy complaining side of the Guardianista.  This one, however, captures beautifully that essentially well-meaning type of thinking that makes all right-thinking human beings want to kick lumps out of them.

I thought that by restricting the types of programmes he watched on television, offering him mostly gender-neutral toys that had been designed to be educational and not allowing him to play with toy weapons of any sort, I would be able to instil in him my values of pacifism and gender equality.

You can sort of see where this is going, can’t you?  Yup.

What was dismaying to me was that he strongly preferred the "boy" toys over the gender-neutral and educational ones from the word go. Offer him his Baby Whoozit or his green plastic race car and he would go for the race car every single time.

Well, quite.