Choosing your battles

I have a relative, let's call this relative Mr/Mrs Racist, who is quite relaxed about saying things at social functions that aren't normally contemplated in our milieu, much less spoken aloud.
You may have guessed that this relative's bent is making fairly racist comments. But his/her musings aren't limited to race. Mostly anything s/he finds different or unknown is fair game (hairy legged feminist lesbos, for example).
Clearly I have a major beef - Porterhouse steak sized - with this kind of view. However, I also believe in his/her right to say it. I am of the firm belief that enlightenment comes from a robust exchange of ideas and experience.
But I also believe I have a moral obligation to challenge a view which I believe is destructive and dangerous and not supported by fact.
I have made gentle comments to this effect. Such as pointing out the use of certain phrases is considered offensive by the people to whom those terms refer. But my comments appear to have fallen on deaf ears (it seems at 33 I'm not in possession of enough life experience to make any kind of political or philosophical judgement for myself - those things are probably best left for my husband to decide for me).
So my quandary today is what to do? Make a bigger fuss and risk complete alienation and familial discord without changing anyone's mind, or keep chipping away slowly but surely on my one-woman campaign of enlightening this relative, or at least offering another point of view to consider?
I am thinking of making a donation (as a Christmas present) to a charity organisation for the group of people about whom this relative was recently spouting, in a bid to gently, but firmly reaffirm my dislike of the views expressed.
I'll post on what happens (if anything!).

Paying for the privilege of being female

Today's news cycle contains a story about how most people (read: men) won't have enough superannuation in retirement to keep them in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.
The academic report also found that women have roughly half of what men have in superannuation at their time of their retirement (this part isn't news by the way, I can only assume because men have been found not to have as much super as they thought, this latest study is considered news).
I can't help but relate to this story because for the past four years, I have been the primary carer of our two kids, and haven't made any super contributions in that time. Why? Because I am self employed and I need to spend the money I make on our immediate needs. I accept fully that this is my decision. I have decided to forgo working full time, being stuck in traffic, being an absent parent - physically and emotionally, for a lifestyle which means our family earns less, but which I feel happier with for the time being.
It really sticks in my craw, though, when I read stories like this in which we're on the one hand expected to do our duty (thanks Peter fucktard Costello) to the country by having kids (which entails at least some time out of the work force, if only for the period of the labour), and yet we're also expected to pay our way in retirement.
Oh, and by the way, when you are lazing on your fat arses having those nation-saving kids, ladies, how could you possibly be expected to be paid for that time so that you maintain your financial status while you're lying back and thinking of Australia?
And if you are working anyway, don't even think about getting equal pay for equal work. I don't understand why more of a fuss isn't made of these insidious inequalities in our society. There was a Productivity Commission into paid maternity leave which found that there ought to be a paid parental leave scheme but then the GFC happened and now women's human rights don't seem to matter anymore. Again. When will the legislators in this stupid country realise this is not a gender issue, it's an issue for the whole of society and everyone benefits from the security and stability of a woman's livelihood whether or not she bears children?

Baby Chocolate's a doll

I was really surprised after my relatively short and bearable labour with my second child to deliver a baby girl.
I don't know why I was surprised, really. I guess having had a boy already, she was an unknown quantity. When the midwife proclaimed, "it's a girl" I didn't know what to expect.
Obviously when babies are immobile blobs, sex doesn't really make that much difference in their lives.
But when they start to get mobile, and specifically, play with toys, it has become more of an issue for me, at least.
To begin with Baby Chocolate* played with her brother's infant toys which are all gender neutral. Now she's reached an age where she has soft toys she favours.
We've had a couple of little baby dollies around the house among the soft toys (one of which was a hilarious joke gift for my husband when he expressed a desire to have children) and Baby Chocolate has taken to one dolly especially, cuddling her at night. But am I doing the right thing giving her the doll at all? Or am I, by worrying about it at all, a neurotic middle-class feminist who takes her amateur psychology hobby far too seriously?
Baby Chocolate's brother was mildly interested in the doll when I was pregnant and I was preparing him for a new baby in the house, but soon began looking on any doll with the pinched-lipped disdain he reserves for Dora the Explorer and the colour pink.
Baby Chocolate is in every other respect more of a what you might consider a stereotypical "boy" than her brother. She climbs like a mountain goat, loves cars and Lego, and lacks the caution and reserve characteristic of her brother.
Is her attraction to the doll predetermined, following the hypothesis that female humans are more nurturing? Or have I subconsciously foisted it on her because that's the way I was programmed?
Should I encourage or discourage this behaviour? Should it matter at all?
I confess to putting hair clips in her wispy baby locks, so I wonder if it's not just a contradiction** to even worry about a doll?
It's one to add to my list of quandaries.

* Not her real name.
** I reserve the right to behave in a contradictory manner whenever I like.