You Can Give a Boy a Doll, but You Can't Make Him Play With It

http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/12/you-can-give-a-boy-a-doll-but-you-cant-make-him-play-with-it/265977/

by rf45 • 14 years ago

33 72 14 years ago

gordaco2• 14 years ago

I honestly appreciate the efforts of Swedish people to promote equality, but they're a little misguided. Boys and girls just are different, and it's not only a matter of culture; in fact, I've always thought that cultural differences between men and women arose almost exclusively from biological differences that result in different behaviours (of course, each culture evolves those role differences in varied ways). Sociology sure has better insight to that than me.

The thing is, there are a lot of gender-neutral toys and games. Just not every one is. It's OK to me: the point of equality is not to remove differences, but to avoid mistreat and discrimination because of them.

dagw• 14 years ago

This isn't representative of the "Swedish people". The political party they mention is tiny fringe party that's never gotten even close to 1% of the vote. The pre-schools they mention are a tiny handful of privately run institution. Calling it state-sponsored is highly misleading since basically all pre-schools are technically state-sponsored since they get some financial compensation based on the number of children under their care. Tanja Bergkvist isn't just some average Swedish mother they found, but an active gender issues writer campaigning on these issues. Basically nothing they write about is normal in Sweden and I don't know why they tried to pass it off as such

gordaco2• 14 years ago

Of course it's a minority, sorry about the misunderstanding. I meant "some Swedish people", not "the Swedish people".

epaga3• 14 years ago

I heartily agree with this article - it's a bit of sanity that is much needed with all the push lately for extreme gender neutrality. The Swedish principles are currently being discussed here in Germany as well and are proving popular (though it most likely won't be as extreme for a while).

The flip side to all of this of course is the silly "LEGO Girl" product where they apparently forget that girls can (and do) build just as well as boys and instead market little Lego kitchens and household appliances instead of cool bricks.

But swinging from one sexist extreme to the other is not the way to go.

gadders2• 14 years ago

I think the Lego Girl products are unfairly maligned. They're not Technics or MindStorms, but from what I can tell they have similar amounts of building as similar Lego sets for that age group.

And my 7 year old daughter, who loves pink but also has a punch bag, loves them.

epaga3• 14 years ago

Looking at a usual Lego Girl package it reminds me far more of Playmobil sets than Lego.

For example, there is no 25-step manual like there is for the cool spaceships, police stations, or castles that my 7-year old son gets to work through...

My 5-year old daughter loves pink as well and might love Lego Girl, but I prefer getting her "normal legos" to help her come up with her own creations, even if she then does make little wedding ceremonies and what have you. :)

emmapersky5• 14 years ago

This article misses two absolutely critical points to the gender neutral debate.

1. Removing (or reducing) fixed gender stereotypes allows individuals to express themselves withut fear that they are different, or that some how their behavior is wrong. Weather girls prefer Barbies and boys prefer GI Joes is not relevant here. There are a significant number of kids who don't conform to gender stereotypes, and this is expressed through out someones life. The harder we make it for them as a kid to express preferences the more repressed they will be. The fact that some (but not all) of us break through this (women in technology...) is evidence of this problem.

2. That gender stereotypes are detrimental to the world, and the less we subconsciously enforce them, the easier it is for us to create a world where gender is not a factor in equality any more. We attach huge value to the gendered attribute of things, and we do it subconsciously because of the immense amount of gender biased media we have been exposed to over the years. The shock that (some) people express when they hear that a man they have met is a nurse, or that the woman they have just met is a truck driver causes fear of self identification.

You don't have to make a boy play with a doll, but you absolutely should make dolls available to him, without biasing the media he sees so that he thinks only girls play with dolls. Only then can he make a decision on what toy to play with without the influence of millennia of patriarchy.

I'd like to think that most HN readers are enlightened and are intellectually sensitive enough to not see gender biases by default, or at least work hard to over come them. And that this is a symtom of the uneducated, but I know that is not that case with everyone. I have seen it a thousand times in technology, and the only way we can ever change this is by starting young and eradicating gender bias where ever we see it.

pfortuny2• 14 years ago

Yeah, and it will be you who dictates what "gender bias" means or whom?

neumann_alfred• 14 years ago

No, more like arguing for something. Then you can agree, or argue against it. Neat, huh?

If you're unable to argue against something, but resent it anyway, you may project your wish to dictate your conclusion even though you don't have the arguments for it. But people rarely do that ^^

subsystem2• 14 years ago

It's perfectly normal, or should be, to present ones opinion in a discussion without having to endure rhetorical questions. I'm pretty feed up with all the nitpicking here, this isn't a literary forum, if you have an opinion express it.

mattmanser2• 14 years ago

What is wrong with gender stereotypes?

You must accept that our bodies are different. And we have different hormones. It is clear that there is an actual difference between the sexes.

Why do you have such a hard time accepting this? Gender stereotypes are perfectly normal because we are different.

What I do know is that male suicide rates are climbing. I'm not sure fuzzy gender roles have anything to do with it, but we can all make wild claims without a single scientific article to back it up.

m_eiman• 14 years ago

What is wrong with gender stereotypes?

The problem with any stereotype is that it limits choice ("I'm a boy so I -must- play with guns instead of dolls"), which leads to inefficient use of the potential of the next generation. To miss out on a math genius just because she happened to be a girl and was taught that she's too stupid to handle advanced math is detrimental to the advancement of the human race.

Boys and girls -are- physically different, but physical differences are enormous even within each gender (or race, if we're going to get into that kind of stereotype) and pretty much the only thing that's physically hardwired to be possible for only girls or boys are their respective functions in reproduction (almost, tech is making advances…).

So limit an individual's choices based on gender is as dumb as limiting them based on race. And yes, by only ever showing "boys using boys' toys" and "girls using girls' toys" we are in effect limiting the available choices for kids; we're a social species after all.

saraid2166• 14 years ago

And with one fell blow, you ignore the entire existence of transgenders. Good job!

http://itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/...

emmapersky5• 14 years ago

What is wrong with stereotypes is that they are stereotypes. They are fine as theoretical constructs in an educated debate, but they reek havoc on those who are still developing their sense of identity.

Gender stereotypes are the reason kids get called fag or dyke at school, irrespective of their sexual orientation. This is real, and these kids are suffering terribly because of it. The number of student suicides because of homophobic bullying is on the rise, and it is something we can fight against.

I'm not saying there are no differences (although there are virtually no professions that need be gender specific - men and women can be equally proficient at almost everything), but that we should foster an environment where we minimize those differences because the outcomes of not doing that quite literally destroys lives.

All the evidence you need can be found by checking out the "It Gets Better" campaign started by Dan Savage.

lmm• 14 years ago

The thing is that even true stereotypes can be harmful. If 90% of group A like thing 1 and dislike thing 2, and you form a stereotype on this basis (a true, accurate stereotype) - you offer As 1s when they come round, you market your job that involves a lot of 2s to Bs rather than to As - then you can exclude and harm the 10% of As who like thing 2 and dislike thing 1. It's not being false that makes a stereotype bad.

gurkendoktor• 14 years ago

> The harder we make it for them as a kid to express preferences the more repressed they will be

I am obviously a parenting newbie, but what I don't understand is, why can't we just teach children to ignore/combat the repression? Is that something that only works at age >1x? Wouldn't that be a much longer-lasting solution?

If humans were single-gendered, we would certainly find other ways to feel threatened about our identity. I just don't see how removing all stereotypes from everything is a battle that we can win.

(I have been "gender-weird" when I was young, otherwise I wouldn't even dare to post this :))

emmapersky5• 14 years ago

Teaching kids to ignore / combat that is just one part of what we need to do. Sadly not all parents are as forward thinking as this, and are quite happy to subconsciously nudge their children into gendered roles.

If we combat this at the systemic level we stand a much better chance of bringing up successive generations in a less biased way, and maybe one day society will look back and think of our time as barbaric in the field of gender equality.

I don't think this is fight we can totally win now, or even in 20 years, but that doesn't mean we should give up. If we help just a single child become comfortable with their own identity, without fear of crossing gender stereotype lines I think we might get there.

breakyerself5• 14 years ago

I would prefer to fight the battle on both of those fronts. Certainly the loving support of an understanding family will go a long way towards strengthening a child's ability to be themselves in a culture that will ridicule them for it, but what of those children who have neither a supportive family nor an inclusive culture. Don't we owe it to them to support advancement towards inclusiveness?

user24• 14 years ago

> why can't we just teach children to...

This is something I used to ask until very recently; why can't I just teach my kids not to care about brands, not to be racist, not to be sexist, etc etc.

This would work, if my kids only learned from me. As long as there are sexists, racists, brand-bunnies, violent kids, etc around, my kids will learn from them too.

pbhjpbhj4• 14 years ago

>* the only way we can ever change this is by starting young and eradicating gender bias where ever we see it* //

What's the motivation to change the world from reflecting the different sexes to one in which we pretend there are no differences between the sexes?

It's clearly a massive undertaking - instead of allowing children to follow they're natural leaning it's necessary to micromanage all their interactions. What's the benefit in that?

Ultimately you'd need to castrate all the men so no-one can have a gendered experience of sex. Remove women's wombs and force all children to be gestated ex utero so they don't have a gendered experience with a parent that will alter their behaviour. Even after these extreme measures you'd still have obvious physical and biological differences between men and women; such difference leading naturally to differences in behaviour and interaction.

My personally feeling is we need to accept that males and females differ biologically. Remove prejudice and unfounded preference as much as we're able from societal systems. Then get on and celebrate the differences and exploit the complementarities of our gendered existence.

>without biasing the media he sees so that he thinks only girls play with dolls //

I'm fortunate enough to be caring for two boys; it's mainly been girls that have provided rebukes based on gender. Not sure where 2 and 3 year old girls are getting it from but the most often gender-biased comments I've heard targeted at the boys has been "pink is only for girls" and "that's not for you it's for a girl". Strangely in my limited experience (though I work with young children every day) I've yet to hear any boys do the same sort of thing.

My rather long-winded second point being that it's not just commercial media you'd have to avoid to avoid any messages indicating [or exploiting/prejudicing] gender differences it's also other people.

jrogers652• 14 years ago

>it's mainly been girls that have provided rebukes based on gender. Not sure where 2 and 3 year old girls are getting it from but the most often gender-biased comments I've heard targeted at the boys has been "pink is only for girls" and "that's not for you it's for a girl". Strangely in my limited experience (though I work with young children every day) I've yet to hear any boys do the same sort of thing.

This does not surprise me in the least. Females tend to be more socially orientated than males - so any cultural memes are expressed through them more strongly.

irahul11• 14 years ago

> Removing (or reducing) fixed gender stereotypes allows individuals to express themselves withut fear that they are different, or that some how their behavior is wrong.

Removing "free playtime" because it leads to gender stereotypes(as quoted in the article) is simple, plain wrong. Children can very well be taught that being different is Ok, and schools can actually try to combat bullying rather than sweeping it under the rug. "You don't go out on the road, you aren't going to be in a road accident" is hardly a solution for road accidents.

> The harder we make it for them as a kid to express preferences the more repressed they will be.

If a boy A likes playing with trucks, taking his trucks away so that another boy B doesn't feel guilty for playing with dolls is simple, plain wrong. It's difficult and it will take a lot of time and understanding for the society to adapt, but that is no excuse for not educating both A and B that people are different, and there is nothing wrong with being different.

> You don't have to make a boy play with a doll, but you absolutely should make dolls available to him, without biasing the media he sees so that he thinks only girls play with dolls. Only then can he make a decision on what toy to play with without the influence of millennia of patriarchy.

Say I have a boy and I buy him only trucks. What wrong am I committing? I like trucks. Am I under obligation to buy him dolls? I am not depriving him of dolls. I just won't buy one myself because I don't like dolls. If he wants one, he will ask for one.

From the quotations in the article, it's not about making dolls available to him but rather taking his trucks away and handing him dolls.

I don't care if he is playing with trucks because all the ads on tv show boys playing with trucks. You(metaphorical you) have no right to take his trucks away and force dolls on to him.

skurmedel2• 14 years ago

Would be awesome if the article actually represents Sweden in any way. It doesn't. It takes a few fringe institutions and proposals and pass them as some kind of Swedish norm. They are not. It is true that gender equality is hotly debated and sought after here, but this article does not reflect reality.

The party Gudrun Schyman represents had 0.40% of the vote 2010; not passing the 4% bar for a mandate in the parliament. Tanja Bergkvist is a vocal anti-feminist, and not just "a mother".

jordo37• 14 years ago

The opinion piece by Christina Hoff Sommers, a well known critic of contemporary feminism, has little basis in fact and has almost nothing to do with hacking. Boys will be boys is a terrible way to argue about this important issue. I am disappointed to see it here.

JofArnold• 14 years ago

I think the author would have written a rather different article had they appreciated that not all humans experience gender in such a clear-cut and binary way.

boboblong4• 14 years ago

Most do.

breakyerself5• 14 years ago

Something seriously stinks about this article. I agree that boys should be allowed to act like boys and girls like girls, but I don't see how that's a position that needs to be defended with such a lengthy article. This feels more like some kind of propaganda. I have a really hard time believing the swedes are going batshit crazy trying to repress masculinity wherever they see it, as this article seems to describe. The advertisement of the little boy with the doll was refreshing in my opinion. It seems more likely that sweden is trying to create a more inclusive culture and that's commendable.

Gender is something that occurs on a spectrum, but most of the world is still trying to pretend there should only be two boxes to divide us all into. I'm a pretty masculine guy and my daughter loves dolls, but I'm also saving for college so she can be a scientist or engineer some day and if I had a son that liked dresses I'd beat the crap out of anyone that made him feel bad about it. The idea that the gender equality pendulum has swung too far the other way is insane to me. We're still a lot closer to 1950's America than any kind of star trek utopia where gender issues have been solved. That's just talking about the western nations. Not even counting all the parts of the world where gender equality is stuck in the mother fucking stone ages. Seriously.

boboblong4• 14 years ago

>Gender is something that occurs on a spectrum, but most of the world is still trying to pretend there should only be two boxes to divide us all into.

It might be technically true that gender occurs on a spectrum, but it's also true that the "ends" of the spectrum are heavily populated. In other words, it's a bimodal distribution.

breakyerself5• 14 years ago

That's true, but my point remains the same. There are people who fall outside of the two big statistical clusters. Those people deserve inclusion. I don't think were there yet. Whereas this article seems to imply that the fight for gender equality has gone to far. I don't agree. A few cherry picked examples from Swedish fringe groups isn't going to convince me.

irahul11• 14 years ago

> A few years ago, a feminist political party proposed a law requiring men to sit while urinating

> In 2004, the leader of the Sweden's Left Party Feminist Council, Gudrun Schyman,proposed a "man tax"—a special tariff to be levied on men to pay for all the violence and mayhem wrought by their sex.

Ever since Orwell wrote 1984, people keep confusing it for operation manual for effective governance. I sincerely hope this craziness is a couple of attentions seekers and/or hate mongers, and the majority doesn't agree with them.

> One Swedish school got rid of its toy cars because boys "gender-coded" them and ascribed the cars higher status than other toys. Another preschool removed "free playtime" from its schedule because, as a pedagogue at the school put it, when children play freely 'stereotypical gender patterns are born and cemented. In free play there is hierarchy, exclusion, and the seed to bullying.'

What brilliant minds. Let's stop citizens from going outside. Because, you know, when people go outside, mugging, rapes and shit happens.

saraid2166• 14 years ago

Obviously, the plural of anecdote is data. All hail.

irahul11• 14 years ago

> the plural of anecdote is data

Did I say this was the norm? And didn't I specifically mention that I hope these crazies are minority and don't enjoy popular support?

pbhjpbhj4• 14 years ago

>the plural of anecdote is data //

False data is still data isn't it. So literally despite the suggestion that anecdote is automatically false¹ a plurality of anecdotal information is still data. Indeed falsehoods still carry usable information.

This is a very popular opinion on r/AskScience and I can't really understand it. Many fields use self-reports as a central part of their data gathering.

The worth of particular data needs to be understood, for sure, but this chastising of people presenting anecdotal information needs to be reined in IMO.

- -

¹ A bloke down the pub told me his mother-in-law taught him never to listen to anecdotal data because it's all false. But don't worry, as I'm a scientist I took the same bloke to 10 pubs and he told me the same thing every time. I'm hoping to get a government grant to extend the study further ...

breakyerself5• 14 years ago

It seems like those are extreme fringe examples not endorsed by even the minority parties in government there. No doubt they have done their job though. Which was to prove to you that those damn gender equality activists have taken us too damn far. React reactionaries of the world. React.

irahul11• 14 years ago

> Which was to prove to you that those damn gender equality activists have taken us too damn far.

They haven't proved anything to me other than triggering me into hoping that these crazies are in minority, and don't enjoy the support of majority.

unkoman• 14 years ago

Sweden is a horrible place. http://www.scb.se/Pages/PressRelease____342528.aspx

tehwalrus• 14 years ago

The thing I found interesting in this article (the only substantive bit) was the empirical evidence based on hormone exposure behaviour differences.

I'd like to see the study, to check it's not some faked up nonsense, and if it's true it would perhaps alter my perception of the issue slightly.

Of course, I still think that the enormous societal pressure of gendered marketing (transmitted most effectively through peer pressure even in very small children, it seems) makes it almost impossible to actually measure anything in these systems ethically. I just think that if there is an underlying biological signal there as well (which I didn't really believe before) then insisting on absolute neutrality everywhere (as in the Swedes' school setup) seems like it won't work.

Quite why the article included all the wacky ideas of the crazy lefties who aren't in charge, like a "man tax," I don't know; makes the article seem less balanced for sure.

curiousdannii• 14 years ago

It's good to be reminded that the toys you like to play with really have nothing to do with masculinity or femininity.

But to other people it's the first sign that gender realignment surgery might be required.

What gives? What really is the correct response to toys?

jrogers652• 14 years ago

But the kinds of toys you play with do have a lot to do with masculinity and femininity. The central point in all of this is that sex and gender are separate (though they do have a strong correlation).

It's not gender realignment surgery but Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS). Your definitions of sex and gender appear to be very confused.

Sex is what sexual organs you possess. Gender is your identity/personality/psychology.

Nursie• 14 years ago

If my childhood is anything to go by, the boy will try to look under the doll's clothes, then try to pull its head off, swap its limbs around or otherwise deform it, then get bored and find something else to do.

I have no idea if girls do the same and wouldn't wish to make a value judgement...

fudged71• 14 years ago

I think it's interesting how all toy decisions are judged as messing up children's perceptions of the world in terms of gender, yet the one toy flying off the shelf has no gender association to it, and is perhaps doing more damage to childhood development.

The idea of substituting toys with iPad games is going to have consequences on our children. There are kids going into kindergarden classes these days who don't have the dexterity in their hands to hold crayons, simply because their parents don't let them play with their hands enough; holding things, and manipulating objects.

There are a lot of technologies these days for children that are so focussed on the cognitive development of kids that they ignore the physical development. Your kid doesn't need to be in MENSA by age 4. Teach your kids the tactile skills they need!

ekm2• 14 years ago

So ,how exactly do swedes treat people who were born gay.Do they also seek to reverse it?

skurmedel2• 14 years ago

We let them form same-sex partnerships and adopt children.

You Can Give a Boy a Doll, but You Can't Make Him Play With It

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