No More Boys and Girls: Can Kids Go Gender Free? review – reasons to start treating children equally

Critics called it shocking and harmful, but BBC2's gentle documentary shows us the major impact of unconscious sexism at school

No More Boys and Girls: Can Kids Go Gender Free? (BBC2) caused a minor controversy before it aired, labelled "shocking" and "bold" by some reports, and even "potentially very harmful" by Grassroots Conservatives' reliably facile Mary Douglas. This is not surprising. Such is the frenzy and hysteria about trans lives right now - particularly from otherwise sensible and compassionate people who have a blind spot when it comes to empathising with transgender people - that "gender-free" invokes a ridiculous bogeyman image of, say, experimental Scandinavian neutrality where saying "boy" or "girl" is forbidden, or pre-puberty hormone-blockers being forced upon girls who are tomboys. It is transparently a disproportionate and irrational fear, yet it's little wonder that a show that promises to discuss gender with a classroom full of seven-year-olds has stoked these paranoid flames.

The title, though, is far more fiery than anything contained in the programme, which isn't even vaguely about questioning gender identity. This two-part documentary, the brainchild of presenter and Mi(C)decins Sans Frontiires doctor Javid Abdelmoneim, is actually a rather gentle social experiment that asks: what would happen to a classroom of seven-year-olds if they weren't treated differently as boys and girls? This translates to such things as painting the pink and blue coat cupboards a universal orange and no longer segregating children according to gender, or introducing the kids to people who have jobs they might not expect, such asa female mechanic or a male dancer, or reading them stories in which the princess is also the hero of the story, and does not need rescuing by a prince. Potentially very harmful, indeed.