01-25-2014, 07:03 PM
(01-21-2014, 05:35 PM)shoju Wrote: On the whole Brave, girl stereotyping, this is why I feel it is an issue, that as a father I take seriously.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/17...17704.html
Re: Huffpo article. Why are images of young girls looking more and more like the greys? Almond shaped heads, narrow-to-vanishing chins, gigantic eyes that threaten to wrap around the sides of their heads. Mulder and Scully should be investigating this shit.
Even if toys are hitting girls with more "THESE ARE FOR YOU. BOY TOYS ARE DIFFERENT." than ever, it's still not the case that girls' toys in the '80s were much better. HuffPo's sampling is not really representative of the state of girl toys as a whole. The artwork decaying into eye-burning pink aliens is a minor change compared to everything else that goes into getting "girl presents." Female friends have told me all about how being a girl meant getting craptastic toys compared to your brothers. Your brothers got action figures or model kits or electronic toys or chemistry sets or video games. You got plastic food and a kitchen set, a toy vacuum cleaner, and a plastic tea set because you're being trained to be an in-home servant. Oh sure, maybe you got Troll dolls or MLP, but that's not fun either. They're not articulated; they're inaction figures.
The trouble is parents who don't know their own kids and their interests, and parents that don't realize teaching children "This is for girls, and this is for boys" is an inherently toxic message that perpetuates gender roles that say "Boys should not do these things, and girls should not do these things." It makes boys and girls avoid certain things, and as they grow up, that even turns into gender-centric taboos. So if you're a parent and you look at your kid and think, "What should I get her for her birthday? Well, what do GIRLS like?" you've failed. But it's not because you're teaching her to like the idea of looking like gaudy pink alien; it's because that message has already rooted. Marketing creepy pretty pink aliens to girls influences the interest of some, sure, but I think that idea takes hold most strongly in individuals who are already being taught a sense of "You are a girl, so you must like GIRL THINGS." in the home, because young girls who aren't taught that can see through the marketing b.s. at a very young age. My friends knew what kinds of toys they would find fun and which were just girly shovelware.
To me, Shoju, the fact that your kids can see through the marketing says a lot about the gender roles you're not teaching them. If you wanna test your boys' resilience to cultural gender stereotypes, find out what they think the importance of protecting one's own masculinity. There are few things as toxic to boys, I think, than the idea that someone impugning your masculinity is something to fight about. Even the idea that you are less macho for enjoying certain things serves no purpose. I know this thread is mostly a sausagefest, so I'm sure all of us have buttedheads with the idea of protecting our own personal sense of masculinity at some point. I mean, FIT even invoked this sense of masculine self-worth earlier to goad Hammerskjold by describing his underdeveloped nethers. We're all affected.
Quote: And while I do agree that there are far bigger issues in the way we treat women globally, This is an issue that I care deeply about, as it has direct effects, and impacts within my home. My four walls.
So, while others fight the good fight to end sex slave trades, and the like, I can lend 10 minutes of my voice a day, speaking out, about how we treat our little girls, as it relates to my own.
Do you actually encounter people who think that this issue should be ignored because some other issue is more prominent? That's a bizarre false dichotomy considering these are problems happening simultaneously, and both can be tackled at once.
DeeBye Wrote:I would absolutely pay money for a Bucket of Random Lego Pieces.
http://shop.lego.com/en-US/LEGO-Creative-Bucket-10662
They have lots of different buckets available with differing numbers of bricks.
-Lem