Kids face off against sexism

Brut America

"(They) said I could not play with dolls — and then I cried."  These kids — as young as 5 years old — are speaking up about being shamed for not conforming to gender norms.

Transcript

00:00Well, they think I'm a girl.

00:03I would always be the last one that they wanted.

00:26I played soccer every day.

00:28I was the only girl that played.

00:29Once we started playing, no one would pass to me, even if I was in a good position.

00:35They would ignore me too.

00:51The culture around here kind of makes you, it wants you to wear skirts all the time and

00:57not be proud of who you are.

00:59Yeah, I was shamed a ridiculous amount just for being a feminist and believing in equality.

01:04They made me put a gray hoodie over my dress at the school dance.

01:08It was very modest and it was great, but they made me put a jacket over it because the sleeves

01:13were like this.

01:14It did not cover all of my shoulder.

01:17One time, some two men who were in a boys' bathroom, I was washing my hands to go out

01:27and these two men came up and were like, hey, this is a boys' bathroom.

01:33Well, that was the first time people ever thought that I was a girl.

01:38It makes me want to not cut my hair even more.

01:58When we were running with someone, there was another girl who wanted to play with them

02:05at the race and the boys said, no, no, you don't have the right, you just have the right

02:13to look.

02:14I will not be shamed for my body or anything like that, but when other people hear me talking,

02:19they get uncomfortable about it because they were raised that they shouldn't talk about

02:25periods or safe sex or anything like that.

02:30So it's just ridiculous and it's a way to make girls uncomfortable about who they are

02:35and what they look like.

02:36I invited a boy to my house and my two sisters said no to him playing with the doll, but

02:48he wanted to play.

02:50One day, the boys didn't want me to play football, so he pushed us back, back, back

03:02and then we came back.

03:06And that's it.

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