Feminism/Sexism and Gaming/Geek/Popular culture Catch All

I was almost caught up on this thread when my daughter told me she set up a spot for us to play Play Doh. Took me a minute before I smiled at the symmetry.

Just thought I'd share.

Stengah wrote:

Most of that came from the marketing, where it was dads and sons playing with Legos instead of moms and sons, moms and daughters, or dads and daughters.

Well that's just stupid (from a business perspective especially).

This makes me ponder an interesting tangent - we don't watch TV with commercials. None. Nada. The daughter is still too young for TV (well, outside of an occasional emergency Elmo distraction), but I don't intend to provide her with a way to watch TV with commercials either. It's all Netflix or Amazon streaming, with a few things I record from OTA (but with the commercials stripped out automatically by my DVR software).

I know advertising to children is a huge problem, and not just from a sexism perspective - it's terrible for e.g. obesity as well.

It occurs to me that we've now got tools to evade advertising, at least with TV, so perhaps any negative effects from it will be mitigated. And print is dead except for old people, so no real worries about magazines. Maybe the problem just shifts to the web - but then, there's adblock and friends...

Oh wow, look, people disagreeing with her without calling her a whore that deserves to have various crimes committed to her! Why, it's the kind of mature, reasonable discussion that should've happened in the first place.

If most lego really is gender neutral then it should literally cost them nothing to amend their advertising to make such neutrality explicit.

I would imagine that most commonly in the absence of other cues people (esp. kids) will read toys as gendered based on the default that's applicable for that class of toys. Lego is a building toy and I'd put good money on kids reading building toys as boys toys.

It's easy for us as, somewhat, reflective adults to choose not to read toys and packaging as gendered where it's not explicit because we're conscious of these issues. But we're not 3 or 4 year olds who are actively trying to absorb, learn and systematise how the world works. Last time I checked small kids are not renowned for their nuance and grey scale thinking

DanB wrote:

I would imagine that most commonly in the absence of other cues people (esp. kids) will read toys as gendered based on the default that's applicable for that class of toys. Lego is a building toy and I'd put good money on kids reading building toys as boys toys.

It's easy for us as, somewhat, reflective adults to choose not to read toys and packaging as gendered where it's not explicit because we're conscious of these issues. But we're not 3 or 4 year olds who are actively trying to absorb, learn and systematise how the world works. Last time I checked small kids are not renowned for their nuance and grey scale thinking

The opposite dynamic is at play, too. Kids aren't born knowing that boys build and girls play house. A lot of this comes from adults understanding and (unwittingly, even unconsciously) communicating the coding in what they choose to buy kids and in their reactions to different kids wanting to play with different toys. (E.g., a "typical dad" reaction to a boy wanting to play with dolls.)

You're right that, as adults, we have the self-awareness to change our behavior. (Mostly.) And after kids are socialized a little, the ideas acquire their own inertia, as kids' assumptions grow more ingrained and as they get ideas from other kids. (If I bought my 9-year-old nephew an American Girl doll, he...wouldn't appreciate it. My 8-yo daughter insisted on it.) But a lot of what gets the ball rolling is parents' own gender biases, IMO.

It's complicated. There are lots of ways messages get reinforced.

pgroce wrote:

You're right that, as adults, we have the self-awareness to change our behavior. (Mostly.) And after kids are socialized a little, the ideas acquire their own inertia, as kids' assumptions grow more ingrained and as they get ideas from other kids. (If I bought my 9-year-old nephew an American Girl doll, he...wouldn't appreciate it. My 8-yo daughter insisted on it.) But a lot of what gets the ball rolling is parents' own gender biases, IMO.

No one polices gender roles quite as fervently as a 5 year old

DanB wrote:

I would imagine that most commonly in the absence of other cues people (esp. kids) will read toys as gendered based on the default that's applicable for that class of toys. Lego is a building toy and I'd put good money on kids reading building toys as boys toys.

If kids learn that building toys are boys' toys, it's because parents and caregivers are feeding these messages to kids, and because kids are feeding these messages to their peers.

Ultimately, adults control the messaging, and it's a copout to shrug your shoulders and say "kids will be kids!" This is like a virus, though; parents can only directly control their own messaging, while the peer pressure and influence of other adults is insidious and difficult to fight (short of packing it up and becoming a hermit).

It seems to me that the best option is to be cooler and more interesting to your kids than their peers, so you can tell them that their peers are full of sh*t and they'll believe you. I'm unclear on how to implement this plan, though...

gore wrote:
DanB wrote:

I would imagine that most commonly in the absence of other cues people (esp. kids) will read toys as gendered based on the default that's applicable for that class of toys. Lego is a building toy and I'd put good money on kids reading building toys as boys toys.

If kids learn that building toys are boys' toys, it's because parents and caregivers are feeding these messages to kids, and because kids are feeding these messages to their peers.

I would have to disagree with this. Have you walked in a toy store this Holiday Season? If your kids have been with you are seen any store that sells Legos, they will see themselves... all the City stuff is in the red and black boys isle and all the Friends line are in the pink and purple girls isle.

It is 100 percent segregated. I am not sure how past the age of 2, you can convince your son or daughter that the other isle is where they are supposed to shop. Even if you were trying as parent.

Cheeto1016 wrote:
gore wrote:
DanB wrote:

I would imagine that most commonly in the absence of other cues people (esp. kids) will read toys as gendered based on the default that's applicable for that class of toys. Lego is a building toy and I'd put good money on kids reading building toys as boys toys.

If kids learn that building toys are boys' toys, it's because parents and caregivers are feeding these messages to kids, and because kids are feeding these messages to their peers.

I would have to disagree with this. Have you walked in a toy store this Holiday Season? If your kids have been with you are seen any store that sells Legos, they will see themselves... all the City stuff is in the red and black boys isle and all the Friends line are in the pink and purple girls isle.

It is 100 percent segregated. I am not sure how past the age of 2, you can convince your son or daughter that the other isle is where they are supposed to shop. Even if you were trying as parent.

Increasingly, I've been seeing Legos in my local stores grouped with other products of the same branding (i.e. the new LOTR Legos are with the toys for the Hobbit; the Star Wars Legos are with the lightsabers and action figures), etc... while you would hope this would have the effect of having it all be neutral, when those sections are generally lumped in with action figures and toy blasters/lightsabers/whatever... it still ends up basically being the boy section and the girl section is like 2 aisles down from the Legos that aren't girl specific.

Year in geek misogyny review:
http://www.dailydot.com/society/rape...

gore wrote:
DanB wrote:

I would imagine that most commonly in the absence of other cues people (esp. kids) will read toys as gendered based on the default that's applicable for that class of toys. Lego is a building toy and I'd put good money on kids reading building toys as boys toys.

If kids learn that building toys are boys' toys, it's because parents and caregivers are feeding these messages to kids, and because kids are feeding these messages to their peers.

Ultimately, adults control the messaging, and it's a copout to shrug your shoulders and say "kids will be kids!" This like a virus, though; parents can only directly control their own messaging, while the peer pressure and influence of other adults is insidious and difficult to fight (short of packing it up and becoming a hermit).

To me, it seems like the best option is to be cooler and more interesting to your kids than their peers, so you can tell them that their peers are full of sh*t and they'll believe you. I'll let you know how that works out for me in a few years.

It's got nothing to do with "kids will be kids", it's that gendered messages are literally everywhere in our culture it's actually impossible to prevent your children from picking up gendered information whether you like it or not. To say nothing of that fact that kids are "actively" seeking this kind of information because part of what they are trying to do is learn how they are supposed to behave.

Unless you're seriously planning on keeping them in a box there is no way you can control for other kids, peer pressure, children's entertainment, billboards, relatives, teachers, adverts, magazine, toy boxes,. And good luck with "being cooler than their peers".

The best you can really do is to try and model the kind of gendered behaviour you think is good and when they are old enough to handle it then you can equip them with the knowledge to see through the stereotypes.

There is also a fair amount of this that comes from the nature of your child. With my oldest daughter, we gave her neutral toys, and did our damndest to let her decide what she wanted to play with. And then we saw her putting her toy cars to bed. And the wooden spoon. And the toy snake. And then she would pick them up, rock them and "feed" them. Once done, she would burp them, change their diapers and take them for a walk in a stroller.

We stopped fighting it with her after that.

Cheeto1016 wrote:

I would have to disagree with this. Have you walked in a toy store this Holiday Season? If your kids have been with you are seen any store that sells Legos, they will see themselves... all the City stuff is in the red and black boys isle and all the Friends line are in the pink and purple girls isle.

It is 100 percent segregated. I am not sure how past the age of 2, you can convince your son or daughter that the other isle is where they are supposed to shop. Even if you were trying as parent.

I never go to retail outlets except to acquire food, so I can't really say.

My kid is too young for any of this, so this is an honest question to which I do not know the answer: why would you take a child to a toy store?

IMAGE(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yW80q4Yf-8I/UJrzTplSjKI/AAAAAAAAAII/kMzq_2UJ5ZI/s1600/dean-what-gif.gif)

Jayhawker wrote:

IMAGE(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yW80q4Yf-8I/UJrzTplSjKI/AAAAAAAAAII/kMzq_2UJ5ZI/s1600/dean-what-gif.gif)

gore wrote:

My kid is too young for any of this, so this is an honest question to which I do not know the answer: why would you take a child to a toy store?

So they can pick out a toy they want.

Stengah wrote:

gore wrote:

My kid is too young for any of this, so this is an honest question to which I do not know the answer: why would you take a child to a toy store?

So they can pick out a toy they want.

So... all of them?

Slacker1913 wrote:

So they can pick out a toy they want.

But if you're looking to avoid toys which reinforce gender stereotypes, it seems like a toy store is the last place you would want to take a small child, seeing as how it's pretty much guaranteed to have them all over the place. Also, a recipe for either disappointment and/or major expense as the kid wants everything around him or her.

What happens if you just ask the kid what kind of toys he or she wants, and you get them without the kid around?

1) Are you really going to be able to avoid all big box stores (Target, etc.) and department stores with your kid?

2) Kids like going to toy stores, you know...

In unrelated news, I was playing this game called Majesty on my iPad, when the next mission that came up was to "kill the feminist harpies." With some flavor text that boiled down to "They've kidnapped the men of the village until they agree to gender equality. Kill them all!"

Yeah, no thanks. Bye, app.

Demyx wrote:

1) Are you really going to be able to avoid all big box stores (Target, etc.) and department stores with your kid?

I don't know that I could avoid it completely, but it seems like limiting exposure is a good plan. You can avoid all the TV you want, but the second you walk into a toy store you'll get the exact same messaging all over the place. And again, this isn't just about gendered toys, it's also about sugary snacks and all manner of other sneaky crap marketers try to foist on children.

2) Kids like going to toy stores, you know...

Kids like eating paste, too

I guess a better question is whether this is worth going to the mat over. How bad is it to walk into a store chock full of gendered toys and marketing? Is that a formative experience for a child?

I think Sarkeesian is spot on with the critique on the marketing. It's just super weird to me how something as neutral as a ball or a nerf gun would induce stores to cut out half the prospective customer base. Is there really a benefit to that? Must be tapping into some kind of cultural thing.

LarryC wrote:

I think Sarkeesian is spot on with the critique on the marketing. It's just super weird to me how something as neutral as a ball or a nerf gun would induce stores to cut out half the prospective customer base. Is there really a benefit to that? Must be tapping into some kind of cultural thing.

Well shelf/storage space in store is limited. They also want to maximise the number of units sold because mass retail maximises profit principally through turnover. Most stores will have vast amounts of customer purchase data to work with so with limited shelf space it will be optimised to maximise the amount of turnover; don't carry an extra thing just in case a girl wants one, cluster items by gender and theme etc, etc. In light of that, why carry 200 extra boxes of something that your consumer data says girls likely won't buy when you could use that shelf for something you know the demographic will buy instead.

Why would you segregate your data by gender in the first place? Some girls like guns; some boys like to play house (I did). Just scoop those up together with the mainstream demand. I don't see the point in creating a barrier for everyone to buy the stuff they want to.

DanB wrote:
LarryC wrote:

I think Sarkeesian is spot on with the critique on the marketing. It's just super weird to me how something as neutral as a ball or a nerf gun would induce stores to cut out half the prospective customer base. Is there really a benefit to that? Must be tapping into some kind of cultural thing.

Well shelf/storage space in store is limited. They also want to maximise the number of units sold because mass retail maximises profit principally through turnover. Most stores will have vast amounts of customer purchase data to work with so with limited shelf space it will be optimised to maximise the amount of turnover; don't carry an extra thing just in case a girl wants one, cluster items by gender and theme etc, etc. In light of that, why carry 200 extra boxes of something that your consumer data says girls likely won't buy when you could use that shelf for something you know the demographic will buy instead.

This actually comes back to a point Seth was making a while back, asking if it's sexist for a company to market to their demographic if their demographic is already divided down gender lines like that. (I'm paraphrasing, of course).

That link earlier of the toy company that markets all of their toys to both genders because their data shows that both genders play with them kind of counters that argument though, in this situation.

LarryC wrote:

Why would you segregate your data by gender in the first place? Some girls like guns; some boys like to play house (I did). Just scoop those up together with the mainstream demand. I don't see the point in creating a barrier for everyone to buy the stuff they want to.

I can sort of see how retail gets divided as it does, because "group like with like" and having similar kinds of items "flow" into each other helps consumers locate what they're looking for. This is an area that most retailers actually pay a surprising amount of attention to and minor things do matter in surprising ways.

(That doesn't mean it's a good outcome, it just means that it's done that way for a reason other than to simply be sexist)

It's impossible for me to fathom why marketing does this, though. What possible harm could there be in including both genders when you market everything? Would girls in nerf gun marketing make nerf guns less attractive to boys? Cause that just seems insane and wrong.

mudbunny wrote:

There is also a fair amount of this that comes from the nature of your child. With my oldest daughter, we gave her neutral toys, and did our damndest to let her decide what she wanted to play with. And then we saw her putting her toy cars to bed. And the wooden spoon. And the toy snake. And then she would pick them up, rock them and "feed" them. Once done, she would burp them, change their diapers and take them for a walk in a stroller.

We stopped fighting it with her after that.

There was an experiment among kibbutzim in the 1950s to eliminate gender differences in the name of promoting gender equality. However, by the mid-'70s...

Studies of play preferences of kibbutz children revealed that the girls most often played 'mother' (bestowing care and affection on a doll or small animal), while the most common game played by boys was imitating animals (not the domestic animals with which they were familiar, but wild and ferocious animals like snakes and wolves).

I think to a large point we have femininity synthesized with feminism, such that most of the women here (I suspect) might say, "I believe firmly in gender equality, and f*ck yes I knit."

H.P. Lovesauce:

I don't see that sort of thing as valid from personal experience in my cultural sphere. Girls model after their mothers and female role models very strongly. When their mundane everyday material needs are met by hired domestics that are clearly treated as lower social order members, they model after their professional or land-owning mothers or similar older role models, not the domestic help.

The expected imitative play in those situations is playing "office" or "professional;" dressing up in "office clothes" and "going out to do business." Boys are still expected to model themselves after animals. This is reflective of more advanced biological maturation of neural pathways in female human children - they are more likely to model higher order play faster.

Is the best way really to shield your child from anything that might be gendered?

The way I see it, feminism isn't about making all people unisex, it's about respecting both genders equally. I think the real issues are:

1. Girls' play and traditional feminine values are often valued less than boys' play and traditional masculine values. This is most evident when you note that it's far more socially acceptable for girls to play with "boys' toys" than boys to play with "girls' toys".

2. Girls and boys are sometimes forced into modes of play that don't suit them. Note -- sometimes. Some girls really and truly deep in the hearts WANT everything to be pink and princessy, and denying them that in the name of gender equality isn't really any different than telling a non-traditionally-feminine girl she can't play with the Batman toy.

3. Educational and artistic toys seem to disproportionately be filed in the boys' section, which irritates me to no end.

gore wrote:

My kid is too young for any of this, so this is an honest question to which I do not know the answer: why would you take a child to a toy store?

I'm right there with you. I avoid exposing my child to harmful environmental factors like too much sun, dangerous chemicals or craven marketing. To that end, I generally don't take my kid to toy stores/aisles/etc. that are full of images I'm uncomfortable with.

I haven't been able to avoid all of them, but I definitely don't take my kid to Toys'R'Us or whatnot and I've always done whatever I could to avoid the toy aisles at big-box retailers. She knows I'm uncomfortable with that stuff and I've explained why.

As with all things like this, I've relaxed about these things as she's gotten older and become more capable of (1) evaluating messages for herself and (2) talking about the messages around us, so heavily-gendered toys, aisles, etc. become more "teachable." (She's big into American Girl dolls and books right now. I'm big into talking about how the women in the books behave and are expected to behave; how women were treated differently in different times; etc.)

There are locally-owned toy stores in the area that are considerably less gendered in their presentation, and I like to patronize them more anyway, so we go there. Incidentally, they have an annual Lego competition, and my daughter loves looking in the window at all the kids' creations. She hasn't done one herself, but Lego is probably her fourth favorite activity, behind reading, pretending, and building houses for the cat out of boxes.

What makes American Girl dolls (the historical ones) a gendered toy?

Because they depict girls? Surely not. Ken dolls depict men and they're a girls' toy. I'm sure plenty of boys have Leia action figures to go with the rest of their Star Wars toys, Hermiones to go with Harry and Ron, etc. There really shouldn't be anything unusual about a child playing with a toy depicting a member of the other gender.

Because they have real clothes and hair? There are plenty of boys' toys with clothes and hair. The original GI Joes were like this.

Because they are wearing dresses? They're not pink glittery princess dresses, mostly just ordinary clothes women would've worn in that time period.

Because the books are all about girls and how they lived in history? Really, boys SHOULD learn about this. Give 'em some perspective.

What, exactly, makes American Girl toys... girls' toys? If anything, they should be considered unisex.