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The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

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Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#131

Post by toxik »

hillz wrote: post #102

> This [plot # 2] view wasn’t very useful I disagree. It shows that far more gender-neutral or boy names become significantly more popular as girl names, compared to the other way around. That's pretty interesting. This conforms to the idea that a boy with a girl's name (or other girlish attribute) is bad, whereas a girl with a boy's name (or other boyish attribute) is not as bad, or is even good.

This happens to many things. Once something becomes female dominated, men steer clear. Clothing and fashion is another example. Heck even some sports are like that!

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#132

Post by WA »

lupin_sansei wrote: post #115
WA wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, pink used to be the boys' color back a couple hundred years, because royal red = king, pink = prince, blue = princess. The pink = girl color switched only in more recent times. It's very stupid.

Those colour preferences might be innate though https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12512-women-may-be-ha...

How do you even design a study that removes "culturally adapted color preference" from the equation? I call BS.

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#133

Post by dataduck »

maldeh wrote: post #105
mlang23 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The feminist movement managed to make femininity almost a swear word. Fascinating and very sad. As a male, I was always turned off by unisex products. I wonder how much profit these big companies make with this new marketing strategy. Is it really profitable, or are they just changing their products to avoid public shitstorms, hoping that the shitstorm avoided would have been even worse?

Your musings here are legitimate, so long as you recognize your feelings as a single datapoint and don't mistake them for a general trend, or extrapolate them to the wider population. As a counterpoint, I don't know of any friends or close acquaintances who would consider feminism or femininity a dirty word. To me, it's a fairly straightforward proposition: Q: Are you pro- women having equal rights to men w.r.t. soci…

I think you've kind of proved your opponents' points here: support for equal rights and dignity for women is something supported by feminism's opponents as much as it is by feminists, so it's a poor differentiator between the two.

I think I can do better. I'm pretty sure non-feminists would disagree with both of the following. How many feminists would disagree with either?

Q: Do you believe that The Patriarchy controls society and oppresses us?

Q: Do you believe that unequal rights under the law (e.g. Affirmitive Action) are necessary to correct the injustices you perceive in society?

(1) is the question that I would expect most clearly correlates with being a feminist (by self-identification); from an information-theoretical point of view, this would be what defines feminism.

(2) is the counter to your argument directly: women have at least equal rights to men in most developed nations; feminists blame differences in outcomes that remain on The Patriarchy, whereas opponents of feminism typically explain them by actual differences between men and women, dispositionally and otherwise (For example the "gender wage gap": https://web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/UberPayGap.pdf). Actual feminists typically argue against equal rights for women (for example demanding governmental pressure to change hiring ratios: https://nwlc.org/resources/affirmative-action-and-what-it-me...).

=---=

TBH I don't really care about unisex/gendered products. I'm not going to waste my money on Gilette's patronising garbage (I mean Stealth? Mach 3? And oh my word the prices. It's a razor for Christ's sake). Nonetheless, if people want to pay more for a product to have it branded for their gender, that's their business and none of mine or anyone else's.

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#134

Post by elliekelly »

kgwgk wrote: post #126
watwut wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The feminist movement managed to make femininity almost a swear word. Being "like a girl" being insult is not something that started with feminism.

When have been women insulted for “being like a girl”? “Tomboy” could be insulting, though.

The “like a girl” ad campaign by Always was one of the first feminist campaigns (that I remember at least) to go viral: https://youtu.be/XjJQBjWYDTs

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#135

Post by elliekelly »

toxik wrote: post #131
hillz wrote: post #102

> This [plot # 2] view wasn’t very useful I disagree. It shows that far more gender-neutral or boy names become significantly more popular as girl names, compared to the other way around. That's pretty interesting. This conforms to the idea that a boy with a girl's name (or other girlish attribute) is bad, whereas a girl with a boy's name (or other boyish attribute) is not as bad, or is even good.

This happens to many things. Once something becomes female dominated, men steer clear. Clothing and fashion is another example. Heck even some sports are like that!

Like programming in the 40s & 50s?

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#136

Post by vintermann »

TomK32 wrote: post #104
DonHopkins wrote: post #83

"My name is Sue! How do you do? Now you're gonna die!" I wonder if there was any fluctuation in "Sue" after Johnny Cash's recording of Shel Silverstein "A Boy Named Sue" spent three weeks at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1969 (second only to the Stone's "Honky Tonk Woman"). He even performed it in the East Room of the White House by request of Richard Nixon on April 17, 1970! Johnny Cash - A Boy Named Sue (fro…

There's a german cover version: Ein Mädchen namens Gerd (A girl called Gerd). in 1971 Little Murders (based on the 1966 play) was released (includes a great speech by Donald Southerland) in which the father is named Carol Newquist and constantly says it's a man's name.

Maybe also inspired by a real example?

Gerd is a women's name in Norway, and I would think in other Nordic countries, since it's after a giant-goddess with the same name (the wife of Frey). So there would have been a lot of girls named Gerd around at the time.

Of famous people, I can only remember the actor Dana Ashbrook, who played Bobby Briggs in Twin Peaks.

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#138

Post by weberc2 »

arrrg wrote: post #107
weberc2 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is societal privilege even falsifiable? Can it explain anything? (Or rather, can it be made to explain anything and everything?)

Sure. Look for example at studies of resumes with “black sounding” and “white sounding” names.

I don't doubt there are definitions of privilege which are falsifiable, as those pertaining to discrimination. But those are seldom used, and when challenged, the claimants fall back to some abstract unfalsifiable definition, i.e., a motte and bailey. Given that, perhaps it would be clearer if we stuck to a term that is clearly falsifiable, such as 'discrimination'.

And as for discrimination, it's difficult to study, and a lot of these bedrock studies/theories never even found anything substantial to begin with (the implicit association test, the blind orchestra auditions study, etc) and of course all of the others that have failed to replicate. Never mind that we are fond of using data from the 30s-80s as indicative of attitudes in 2019. Maybe we can finally begin to question whether social science has a groupthink problem?

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#139

Post by madcaptenor »

mffnbs wrote: post #52
crazygringo wrote: post #41

First, this is a great and original (AFAIK) post. Kudos to the author! Second, I actually find the most interesting fact to be completely unmentioned by the author: that in the first chart (greatest absolute changes), of the 30 biggest swaps, only two were female->male, while the other 28 (over 90%!) were male->female. It's a remarkable fact -- makes me think of how it's historically been much more acceptable for wom…

> It's a remarkable fact -- makes me think of how it's historically been much more acceptable for women to adopt men's styles of clothing, but much less accepted for men to adopt's women's styles of clothing. This is still the case today. I feel like the two are entirely unrelated, actually. If anything, we’ve seen the opposite phenomenon happen in every market. Buffalo Wild Wings commercials that cater to masculinit…

> Dr Pepper marketing towards men who typically don’t drink diet soda

Don't forget Coke Zero, AKA "Diet Coke for men".

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#140

Post by madcaptenor »

TheAsprngHacker wrote: post #78

The fact that the name "Yuri" is on this list is interesting because "Yuri" is both a masculine Slavic name and a feminine Japanese name. The rapid switch could be due to the growth or decline of one of these names, where the two usages of Yuri are distinct (from different languages), as opposed to one name whose associated gender changed.

I wonder if you could tease this out by looking at state-level data.
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