What to watch
No More Boys and Girls: Can Our Kids Go Gender Free? BBC TWO, 9.00PM
Concluding this eye-opening twoparter on the subtle insidiousness of gender stereotyping, Dr Javid Abdelmoneim takes his battle to encourage gender-neutral attitudes among a class of Isle of Wight seven-year-olds out of the schoolroom and into their homes. There he meets at least as much resistance as he got from the children last week, from parents who are less than enthusiastic about his plans to make their girls less pink princess and their boys less warrior and sporty. No surprise there, because if one thing emerges from this film it is that gender attitudes are so embedded in consciousness they are almost as good as hard-wired.
Still, even the most resistant parents have to admit that Abdelmoneim makes a good case for at least trying to change. His terrific T-shirt slogan example, which takes us from “Forever beautiful” to “Made to be underpaid” in just four steps, reveals exactly how unconscious social cues can lead, long term, to attitudes that encourage the kind of pay inequality that the BBC itself has been so severely criticised for of late. The question is, can the next generation do any better? Gerard O’donovan razorfish, scary wolf eels, flashlight fish, and the all but invisible frogfish. It’s weird, but fun.