Occasional Notes: The Most Genderful Time of the Year
Among Christmas’s many other attributes, I think you could probably make the case that it is the most intense in its gender divisions. Only Valentine’s Day suggests itself more strongly, but Christmas is when we really do the hard work of imprinting gender on our kids. Consider:
Girls’ Toys for Boys. Overheard in Toys R Us: “I wish they made Polly Pockets for boys. That way it would be okay for [boy’s name] to play with them.”
I wish I could tell [boy’s name]… it is okay. Really.
Boys’ Toys for Girls. Here’s our gift-giving philosophy for Alice. She’s only one, so for now she’s getting Play-Doh, which — mercifully — can’t be hooked up to the Internet. (Not like we haven’t tried the girly toys. She loves stuffed animals but so far seems indifferent to dolls.)
Gender Comedy from the Comics Curmudgeon. Or, sorta anyway.
Barney Frank Is Still Awesome, despite it all. (Video embed not working. See here.)
Of Course. “A woman, of course, is destined by God to be a good wife and mother and serve her shepherd, not be an Air Force pilot and serve her country.”
Congratulations to Me! My article Law, Legislation, and Local Minima: Solving a Problem in Hayek’s Theory of Common Law Judging, with Historical Examples is now online. It will shortly be published on paper — how quaint — in the Review of Austrian Economics. Otherwise, it’s $34. Gender tie-in? It’s about marriage and coverture in the nineteenth century. From an Austrian law and economics perspective.
And Finally a restroom that confuses even professional sex columnist Dan Savage.
The restroom sign is perfectly clear, the free restroom at The Gender has been closed for painting, presumably patrons will have to pay for entry to other restrooms in the establishment.Report
In response to that Dispatches from the Culture Wars post, that ‘sheep’ and ‘shepherd’ stuff just sounds like lifestyle S&M to me. I’ve known a few people who lived like that. It was just the terminology was a bit different. So if it makes them happy, it doesn’t bother me. Now, it might be hard in the military because, after all, your commander is your commander- not your husband. So it could interfere with the chain of command.Report
The Air Force Academy has had numerous problems recently with militant evangelical Christians (pun intended) over the last decade or so.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/03/airforce.religion/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4091956.stm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/12/AR2005051201740.htmlReport
I was in a Toys”R”Us over the weekend with my two friends, the first of which was shopping for his nephew, while the other shopped for his niece.
Guns are marketed to boys (Nerf, toy replicas, Star Wars blasters, etc.) as are cars (minus the barbie related ones).
Toy kitchen sets, tea sets, and easy bake ovens for the girls (as well as princess related things and general craft sets).
The aisles for girls toys are actually pink. As if the parents couldn’t make up their own minds about what toys to get their children, or how to try and control the kid’s gender destinies, the toy store did them the favor of color coating the choices.
Not having children, or any nieces/nephews of my own, I hadn’t faced this before. Just graduated from my liberal bastion of a university, I found it hysterical.
Of course, maybe gender guidance serves many important societal functions.
What are the pros to my friend making sure to buy his 2 year old niece pink outfits with leopard print leggings?Report
Honestly? If she grows up to be a lesbian, you can tell everyone you know that it wasn’t your fault.Report
I once saw a baby product–it was something to do with eating, like a tray or seat or something–that had boy and girl versions. The packages had labels with babies pictured on them using the product, but they were otherwise partially clear, so you could see the product clearly. There was absolutely no difference between the boy and girl versions, not even in coloring (the products were white, IIRC). The only difference between them was that one had the baby in the picture dressed in blue, and the other had the baby dressed in pink. I picked up the packages and looked reeeeeal closely. The baby was the same baby. They had altered the clothing color digitally. I guess it was just a trick to get the stores to stock twice as much product.Report
It seems like when I was a child there was an emphasis on gender neutral toys. But we lived in the woods and it was just my sister and I, so we sort of played with the stuffed animals and dolls as well as pretending we were ninja/soldier/commandos. Also I remember taking both dance classes and karate classes.Report
They used to have polly pockets for boys–I remember having some Star Trek ones when I was little–sure, it probably wasn’t called “polly pocket”, but it was the same damn thing. Some of the coolest non-lego toys I can remember.Report
The most genius thing someone in the Don Draper generation at Hasbro did was predicting that if you called dolls “action figures”, you can sell twice as many dolls (if not many times more)Report
My GI Joes were not dolls!
(Really! Reaalllly!)Report
They might have started out as dolls, but going to war changes you.Report
I get all sorts of upset when my in-laws say that one of my twin sons is “all boy.” I often ask, “What percentage of the other boy is actually not boy?” They then say, “You know what I mean!” And I say, “No. I don’t. Please explain.” There’s a reason why I spend less and less time around them.
What’s hilarious is that the one they call “all boy” is the one who, at Sunday School, sits in a rocking chair and feeds a little baby doll.
And my wife gets mad at me for calling his teddy bear his “doll baby.”
The one boy wanted to be Tinkerbell for Halloween. It’s cool with me, but I didn’t want the neighborhood to mark him for life. So we went for Handy Manny (because it’s okay for a blond haired blue eyed kid to want to be Hispanic).
Oh yeah – the “all boy” kid? His god-father is a gay man who helped found a local ACT UP chapter.
People are so stupid.Report
My in-laws used that same expression. Always grated on me.
But then, being a rather loathsome people, such a thing was entirely appropriate to their character.Report
Maybe I misunderstand what Halloween is, but my first thought was that neither of those things is scary.Report
To some folks, a little boy dressed up as Tinkerbell is one of the scariest things around.Report
My sister got my one-year-old daughter a set of big legos that are “girl colors” like pink, purple, and light blue. I’m fine with this I guess. But does this mean that red, blue, green, and yellow are “boy colors” then?Report
This is how societies collapse.
For boys, play is a sublimation of (and, sometimes, preparation for) war.
For girls, play is practice for repressing the violent natures of boys.
When we try to interfere with the natural order of things, we’ll end up with a group of boys who won’t know how to make war against the boys who aren’t repressed by women.
This is how every single civilization has collapsed.Report
But Jaybird, that’s what ICBMs are for.Report
Funny, I thought the Aztec civilization collapsed because the Spanish killed them off. Who knew it was all due to Legos being the wrong color?Report
Spanish boys had better toys.Report
Not to mention the original inhabitants of Romania. But then I guess the Romans had better toys too.Report
We’re still playing with them!Report