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To prove my nonmainstream bonafides, I stared at this for some time, willing myself not to Google, before I figured out what TMNT was.

I am soooo tempted to leave this post alone because it took on a life of it's own, but this response twigged one of my pet topics....

I very strongly believe that children should be given the opportunity to find role models etc from both genders, toys that are gender neutral and experiences that can break stereotypes HOWEVER I get really mad about the whole "my girl can't play with anything that is pink etc" because, in my opinion at least what you are saying is that to be strong, smart and capable you need to not be a traditional girl, you need to be more like a boy - that sends a powerful message to little girls that their is something inherently wrong with them. That their natural inclination (in many) to play with dolls and pink stuff is wrong and that they can't be both - feminine and successful.

I spent my first 30 years trying to be a tomboy and proudly displaying my lack of fashion interest as some kind of superiority when really all I was doing was missing out on some good old girly fun. Much like many men (not all) indulge in baseball, hunting or whatever.

I happily buy my daughter her fairy princess stuff, it matches her dinosaur bag and robot lunch box nicely.

My DD2's princess doll likes to drive the 18 wheeler. And yes, she is interested in dolls and babies. But she also likes robots, boats, and medieval siege weapons. We do our best to support her free ranging interests. (she does want a motorcycle and I am hoping that one kind of goes away though).

Bostonian, would you like to rephrase that? It doesn't come across well at all.


Mahagogo, I agree, and I think that perspective really sums up how we think these days. Just look at Emily Graslie with her bright manicure and dangly earrings dissecting an anteater.

I agree with Tallulah here.

(Bostonian, do you see why it's rude?)

Mahagogo: I agree with you that overreacting to gender issues creates its own set of problems, and balance is best.

I agree with aquinas, however, when she disputes that an affinity for pink or playing with dolls represents a natural disposition. I come down firmly on the "social construct" side of that one.

Case in point: My DD10's favorite color was, off and on for her first four years, pink. It would appear that that was entirely our fault... DD was slow to grow in any hair, so we covered her in pink so people would stop talking about her as a boy. We should have been tipped off when she started picking her own clothes, and at 3mos she kept grabbing at the one purple outfit she owned... at the time, we interpreted this as "DD's favorite color is purple." Later, around 18mos, it was the yellow beach outfit she was constantly asking for. We thought she was just expressing her love of the beach.

As the years rolled by, DD was constantly adjusting her "favorite colors" list, with pink in there somewhere (but never the top after 4), until last year she confessed, as if it was some deep, dark secret, that her favorite color was light blue. But we assign that color to baby boys.

As for playing with dolls, it's my position that the only difference between baby dolls and action figures are the common narratives around them. Fundamentally, the play is the same, regardless of the dolls used or the genders of the players. And there's nothing outside of the child's own imagination and social conditioning to prevent them from playing with a baby doll as a super hero saving the world from the evil teddy bear, or the GI Joe as a nurturing caregiver to baby Boba Fett.

I deleted it, but I do think that if companies are targeting males and females with very different products, it's because the sexes are interested in different things. If there were lots of money to be made dressing up boys as princes, the market would meet that demand. So why do more girls care more about being glamorous and beautiful? My answer is the sociobiological one.

So I'm going to infer that your answer to my question was "no."

Here's the thing. Most people aren't immune to culturally stereotyped messages telling them how they should behave. So when authority figures say things like, "Boys are better at math" and "Girls are supposed to look pretty," people internalize those messages and accept them without question or without thinking about why they believe them.

I will ask you to consider that perhaps you have internalized some of those messages.

Human society has been extremely biased in its gender expectations throughout our history and in a nearly universal way. As a result, it's not possible to "prove" that boys are better at [insert subject or job] and that girls are better at [insert subject or job], because any data is too tainted, and in a variety of ways.

As an example of tainted thinking, people used to believe that women couldn't be doctors, and they were even barred from entering the field in many places. If you had asked men 100+ years ago, they would have answered that women simply weren't capable. Yet no one would say that today, and medical school classes in the US are half men and half women. Somehow, I don't think that women's brains have evolved to handle being a physician in the last hundred years or so. But women have begun to stand up for their rights in that time.

IMO, the problem is at least partially rooted in competition. When one group wants to keep as much of some resource (including jobs) to itself as possible, its members will act in a way to meet that goal. Discriminating against people and the use of gender roles is one way to do that.

Except that jobs aren't really a resource. They are what create the resource.

Letters patent, however, are a resource, which is more of the issue with medicine.

No need to split hairs. The point is that when one group wants to keep all of something to itself (including jobs), its members will find a way to do so. If you let the women or anyone else in, you make things harder for the people who presently dominate. This creates a conflict of interest among the gatekeepers, which is one explanation for discrimination (at least in part).