{"id":36915,"date":"2018-11-18T01:00:36","date_gmt":"2018-11-18T06:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36915"},"modified":"2020-11-18T20:42:06","modified_gmt":"2020-11-19T01:42:06","slug":"qotd-sexist-toys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/11\/18\/qotd-sexist-toys\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: &#8220;Sexist&#8221; toys"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>As a female journalist who writes mostly about traditionally \u201cmale areas\u201d such as economics and business, I should perhaps be expected to endorse a \u201cblank slate\u201d theory of male and female gender roles, where the preference for certain kinds of activities is driven by sexist socialization and discrimination, not innate ability. The problem is that this doesn\u2019t necessarily match up with the evidence. Human children show gender-driven preferences for toys, as can be attested by those faultlessly progressive parents who have seen their boys turn their hands into a gun while their daughters make a doll out of an ear of corn. These preferences show up even in children too young to have gotten much socialization; they turn up <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC2583786\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">even in rhesus monkeys<\/a>, as males show a marked preference for wheeled toys over soft plush animals. I certainly believe that human society has a lot of sexist hangovers from its past. I draw the line at believing that this hangover is influencing rhesus monkey infants.<\/p>\n<p>Megan McArdle, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/view\/articles\/2017-01-06\/some-blue-collar-workers-probably-shouldn-t-do-pink-jobs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">&#8220;Some Blue-Collar Workers Probably Shouldn&#8217;t Do Pink Jobs&#8221;, <em>Bloomberg View<\/em><\/a>, 2017-01-06.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a female journalist who writes mostly about traditionally \u201cmale areas\u201d such as economics and business, I should perhaps be expected to endorse a \u201cblank slate\u201d theory of male and female gender roles, where the preference for certain kinds of activities is driven by sexist socialization and discrimination, not innate ability. The problem is that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,53,41],"tags":[374,254,139,303,1401],"class_list":["post-36915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-children","tag-gender","tag-psychology","tag-sexism","tag-toys"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9Bp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36915"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61617,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36915\/revisions\/61617"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}