A gendered space

   To be quite honest, I have never heard of such thing as a gendered space, so I was a little confused about what I should be writing about this week in my blog. However, Friday afternoon when my little sister came home from school, she told me about her day at kindergarten.
   She told me about a boy, tommy, that is lots of fun to play with, but during recess she can never play with him on the playground. "Because he's a boy!" My sister explained, and boys and girls do not play together at recess.
   Although they are only a couple of five year olds, this made me realize that from a young age, people are defined by their genders. Who taught these little boys and girls that boys should only play with boys at recess and girls should only play with girls? At age 5, why should they have to be classified into categories according to gender?
   If even the kindergarten playground is genders, then what space isn't? In reality, our society as a whole is extremely gender classified, people always think that certain places are "manly" while others are "girly", but these labels are unnecessary and do not really contribute to a greater good. For me to hear my five year old sister say that she can't play with tommy during recess because he is a boy, was shocking. I had never thought of it this way, even the most innocent place, a playground, is gender classified.