Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 75 posts

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

#11

Post by neumann_alfred »

pfortuny wrote: post #5
emmapersky wrote: post #4

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 e…

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

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 ^^

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

#12

Post by subsystem »

pfortuny wrote: post #5
emmapersky wrote: post #4

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 e…

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

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.

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

#13

Post by [deleted] »

emmapersky wrote: post #4

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 e…

[deleted]

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

#14

Post by epaga »

gadders wrote: post #10
epaga wrote: post #3

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) bui…

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.

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. :)

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

#15

Post by mattmanser »

emmapersky wrote: post #4

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 e…

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.

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

#16

Post by gadders »

epaga wrote: post #14
gadders wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 mak…

77 pages for the Vet's Office :-) - http://cache.lego.com/bigdownloads/buildinginstructions/6006...

My daughter has a mix, though. So we will build the Lego Friends Riding Stables,and then build a car and trailer to drive the horses around.

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

#17

Post by gurkendoktor »

emmapersky wrote: post #4

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 e…

> 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 :))

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

#18

Post by pfortuny »

subsystem wrote: post #12
pfortuny wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Yes, it is. I agree with everything you say.

My opinion is: there is and there will never be a way to clearly distinguish between 'gender neutral' and 'gender biased' actions when those actions are not clearly violent or degrading or insulting. So please do not use a word which has no meaning as though it had one and a clear-cut one.

I gather I had made myself clear in my last post: there is no such thing as 'gender bias' in 90% of what the OP claims.

Trying to force language on others (like 'gender biased behavior') is worse than what you call 'nitpicking'.

Edit: You may be confusing 'nitpicking' with 'irony'.

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

#19

Post by dagw »

gordaco wrote: post #2

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). So…

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

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

#20

Post by breakyerself »

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.

Post reply on HN