An update on my last post about the boy in Buncombe County, NC who was told not to bring his My Little Pony lunch bag to school because it was a “trigger for bullying:”
The Huffington Post reports that the school district now says, “We support Grayson bringing the bookbag to school.” Yes, after more than 70,000 likes on the Support Grayson Facebook page, it’s perhaps not surprising that the school district is backpedaling so fast it’s about to take flight like a winged pony itself.
But, as the motto at Grayson’s school, Candler Elementary, states, it’s a good world “where everyone learns.” And maybe the school can learn to grow into the “school promise” plugged on its website that the school is a family that respects and cares about each other even when no one is watching.
Because that’s a pretty beautiful goal. In fact, it sounds like something from a My Little Pony episode . . . .
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Photo by Sean Williams
Here’s another recent article about all this you might like: My Son Loves My Little Pony: At 7 He Already Knows That’s Not OK. The author’s son hesitated to wear his Rainbow Dash sweatshirt to school because “it will make the other kids uncomfortable.” I love that he knows any “problem” isn’t situated within him, and I feel sad at how early he knows that it’s our job to keep society comfortable. Author Sean Williams also points out that the six tenets of My Little Pony – kindness, generosity, honesty, laughter, loyalty, and magic – are both hard to object to and also not traits pushed as masculine (with the exception, I might argue, of loyalty).
Pink Is for Boys 
These idiot school officals could of saved alot a time and heartache if they would of just let the boy use/bring whatever backpack he likes…..I have a Hello Kitty backpack/bag…
and im male………..dont be so closed minded people
Well, I’m glad this learning opportunity for them did not go away unused. But people are close minded as a rule. Slow to embrace any possibility of change, and the rules around gender seem to be the most strongly resistant to any modification. No matter how hard even men, at least a lot of men try to support girls who wish to do things that are traditionally male in concept-play football, race cars, wear what they like, those same ideas are not given freely back to men by a large majority of women. They go out of the way to support and even promote and continue the patriarchal and misogynistic view of the very people they have long struggled against. And so you are like a salmon struggling upstream just driven to do your thing and the journey is long, hard and full of peril, yet you continue to do so for it’s in your very being to do just that. At the end of it all, if you don’t get eaten by a male or female bear you may just be able to finally just succeed in how and what you were meant to do.
It is schools, and religious leaders, and bullies of all kinds that will eventually bring about real change. 70,000 likes against them is no small number to bring awareness to a lot more. Next time there may be 700,000. I hope so for all our sakes. Blogs like these help a lot. Keep up your work.
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I am glad to have found your blog. I have been following these stories on my blog as well. I also happen to be a Brony myself, an older Brony to be sure, but hey my inner child loves it! Seriously, thanks for helping to make the world a little better for those who don’t conform to silly gender role expectations.