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Emma Watson's UN speech

On a completely unrelated note relative to my last post, doesn't anyone else think toy stores are a bit sexist? Toys for girls always get 1-2 aisles that are colored pink, whereas toys for boys always take up the rest of the store and have multiple color schemes. It's like girls have only a tiny section of the store to browse from while their male counterparts get to explore much vaster terrain.

Oh, and they should make more action figures for girls. Less Barbie and more Lara Croft.

Hey Jabrosky I agree there is a big bias in toys (by the way boy's toys are NEVER pink - try green, black, orange - but not pastels, they are coloured constrained just like girl's toys) and it made me wonder about dolls for boys to help them be more nurturing when they are older - I was wondering how well are we preparing boys to be parents when they play at fighting and competitive games their whole child hood? But I think there are some big predispositions that kids already have. I have two boys (one adopted so a very different gene pool) and from a VERY young age they loved balls, wheeled vehicles and any type of stick/wand/sword/staff that they can wave around their head. Both little hunters if I ever saw them. I've tried to give them dolls and they dump them almost instantly and go for the cars. It could well be images they have seen from a young age of men driving vehicles, wielding sticks etc but I do think there is a chicken-egg dynamic here. I've asked parents with girls and its almost the opposite - they really aren't that interested in things that move with big noises, they want something to care for and nurture, brush its hair and dress it up. I'm sure there are some boys who love dolls and some girls who love action figures and I also think that there are relatively gender neutral pursuits, but it seems that the majority drift to the stereotypes.

Also I think your comment on privilege vs an individual's condition is important. There are groups of people within society that are more privileged than others and this is something we should be aware of. I take from Emma Watson's speech that there is some way to go with equality and men and women should understand, respect and support each other as our society transitions. But the impact of emotional and mental health is enormous and as a society we are still learning what this is and valuing it over other things. How many of us as teenagers are instructed in emotional and mental health? How many of us understand that part of ourselves as adults? Yet it has huge consequences for our happiness and the choices we make, our success in employment and relationships. Really we're just left to our family life and genetics - if these are generally good then we're ok, if they're not then we're in for a struggle in our adult life and there's only a nascent social awareness (try the self help section of bookstores) and limited policy from government to help us. Its only a recent development here in Australia that psychological counselling is brought under the Medicare system, and its only I think in one state (Victoria) that they were trialling the teaching of mental health/basic psychology in school.
 

Mindfire

Istar
Sorry to reply to an old post but GOOD LORD THE START OF THAT VIDEO IS TERRIFYING. Seriously. It comes right the heck out of nowhere and I was more than a bit unnerved by it. Talk about uncanny valley.

Ha. The video has now been edited. Interesting.
 

Nihal

Vala
BronzeOracle, I'd be careful with children's comparison and "natural" behaviour. My house has always been a nearly all-female house. My parents had four girls.

We played with dolls, yes, a lot. But we played with balls (a lot!), vehicles, and included in the crap we did as children was climbing trees and a stone wall to access some high windows–then move hanging from them a la Assassins Creed–, roll down the sofa to the floor, play hide-and-seek or tag, fight, secretly set stuff on fire... You get the idea. My mother used to say that when we got silent we'd be up to something.
 
BronzeOracle, I'd be careful with children's comparison and "natural" behaviour. My house has always been a nearly all-female house. My parents had four girls.

Thanks Nihal for this perspective. Out of interest did you girls ever play wars/guns/ninjas or watch this stuff on tv?
 

Nihal

Vala
Thanks Nihal for this perspective. Out of interest did you girls ever play wars/guns/ninjas or watch this stuff on tv?

I don't recall playing these with my sisters, but I did with my friends (all-girls group). Though, curiously... We were faeries that went on magical battles and saved damsels in distress. The most prominent mainstream females were Mulan and Anastasia, and they didn't appear until half my childhood passed. To battle we had to be faeries. I understand why little girls go crazy with Elsa nowadays.

Now that I stop to think my (and my sisters) favourite cartoons in our early childhood included She-Ha and Dungeon & Dragons. Guess what they have in common. :)


Later (with my friends again) a certain YA/Fantasy comic came out, and it was bliss. It featured an all-female cast and it was diverse! We could finally fit one in each role:

762716MP0478~Witch-Posters%5B1%5D.jpg
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
We played with dolls, yes, a lot. But we played with balls (a lot!), vehicles, and included in the crap we did as children was climbing trees and a stone wall to access some high windows—then move hanging from them a la Assassins Creed—, roll down the sofa to the floor, play hide-and-seek or tag, fight, secretly set stuff on fire... You get the idea. My mother used to say that when we got silent we'd be up to something.

Sounds to me like you were a fun group of kids for your parents to have around.
 
Now that I stop to think my (and my sisters) favourite cartoons in our early childhood included She-Ha and Dungeon & Dragons. Guess what they have in common. :)

Ah Dungeons & Dragons that brings back memories! I remember there were two female characters in the group so you had some diversity. Too often there is a group of four with three guys of different traits (hero, oaf and nerd) and then there's the girl whose gender is her trait. I found 'Avatar the Last Airbender' a breath of fresh air in gender and racial diversity, even though it lacked senior female characters which seems to be very common in fantasy. Actually that's spurred a question I'll post in the Novels & Stories forum.
 

Jabrosky

Banned
I'm going to necro this because I want to publicly recant a phase of negativity towards transgender people I went through a few years back.

In the beginning I never thought too much about transgender politics, or even understood what transgenderism even was. But once I found myself butting heads with "Social Justice Warriors" on tumblr and other Internet communities, I noticed a lot of them had this strange tendency to fetishize transgenderism, often claiming to be trans themselves and yelling "Die, cis scum!" Mind you, my conflicts with the SJW crew were never about LGBT issues themselves, but SJW culture in general left a bad taste in my mouth for anything associated with it. My grudge got so bad that I declared transgenderism a "mental disorder" on TV Tropes. The thread was deleted and I got permanently banned from the website.

I feel terrible about it now. After that event, I learned some of the people I cared about were transgender or didn't identify with either gender psychologically, and they could be just as critical of SJW extremes as I was. I also learned that, outside of tumblr and the Internet, transgender people really do have it rougher in mainstream society. And once I heard about Leelah Alcorn, it wrenched my heart that I ever shared the same pervasive prejudice that forced her to suicide.

Mind you, I'm still not heavily invested in trans issues, being a cis-gendered heterosexual male myself. And I don't know if I'll ever write a transgender protagonist since I can't really relate to the psychological experience of gender dysphoria. Nonetheless, I've come to believe transgender people deserve the same rights and respect as anyone else and wish I had never thought differently.

Unfortunately, after e-mailing the TV Tropes staff about this change in my attitude twice several months back, they still haven't responded or lifted my ban. But maybe that's a small loss for me.
 
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