Orion went out with his dad today, as he does most Saturdays. Apparently during their day out they went to get a new car seat. When they opened the box, they found it was pink. They’d ordered a silver one, so went back to exchange it. No problem with that, right?

Except this evening, Orion has been striding around declaring that pink is “rubbish-dubbish” and it’s “a girl’s colour” and that they “gave daddy the wrong one, they gave him a girl’s car seat” and on and on and flippin’ ON about how horrible pink is and how it’s only for girls.

I cannot even begin to express my rage.

Three and a half years of carefully trying to raise an intelligent, non-sexist young man, and one afternoon with his father undoes so much of my hard work.

I have spent the evening pointing out that George (a cuddly toy of his, from the 80′s show Rainbow) is a boy and he is pink, so pink can’t possibly only be a girl’s colour. And how Orion has his pink skull-and-crossbones pyjamas and he’s a boy, so it must be a boy’s colour too.

GodDAMN it. It’s just a colour! Why is it so important to his father to turn him against a damn colour? Is he doing it deliberately to annoy me? Is he perhaps insecure in his own masculinity, and so forced to turn my son against an innocent colour of the light spectrum to make himself feel better?

Orion is three and a half. He doesn’t even know yet that his biological sex is supposed to determine his behaviour and attire and every damn thing about his personality. I’d rather raise him to do the things he wants to, rather than the things that are prescribed to him by sexist societal conditioning.

I’m going to do my best to undo the damage and approach his father about this in a non-confrontational and polite manner. But at the moment, I’m bloody seething.