Cordelia Fine reviews the scientific literature, and discovers that the evidence that girls innately prefer pink toys just isn’t there.
Existing science simply doesn’t support the view that gender-neutral toys or books are, at best, a pointless railing against nature or, at worse, politically correct meddling with children’s "true" natures. Social experience isn’t something that interferes with the emergence of a child’s "real," underlying design. It is an integral part of the construction, step by step, of the developmental pathway—destination uncertain.
Moreover, developmental psychologists have found that children are very aware of the importance placed on the social category of gender and highly motivated to discover what is "for boys" and what is "for girls." Socialization isn’t just imposed by others; a child actively self-socializes. Once a child realizes (at about 2 to 3 years of age) on which side of the great gender divide he or she belongs, the well-known dynamics of norms, in-group preference, and out-group prejudice kick-in.
I don’t know why so many people discount the importance of socialization. It’s a very intense experience, and almost all of us went through it — most children will freak out if you try to get them to wear inappropriately gendered clothing choices. Put a 5 year old boy in a pink dress and send him off to school, and he might initially have no problem with it…until the other 5 year olds of both sexes in the Gender Police start mocking, teasing, and tormenting him. We learn fast what will help us fit into the group.
Try to figure out what is disturbing about this image. Do you think it’s because it violates genetic norms?
(Well, he might think so.)
It’s the glove.
That color scheme is just too jarring. the purple eye shadow just doesn’t go with the outfit. And I would not put teal with so much pink.
And that mustache is completely wrong for that outfit
Scott Lively approves of this photo.
This brings to mind an old article about how the colors got assigned in the first place:
“When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?”
*Boggle*
That image is not mine! I found it in a Google image search for “gaystapo” (apparently the homo conspiracy that forced Brendan Eich out) on, in fact, what looks to be a virulently anti-gay paleo-Catholic blog which failed to realise that both the picture and the words were eminently quotable by its targets.
A lot of people don’t realise, since we only had black-and-white film back then, but Mussolini actually dressed in clothes sewn together from rainbow flags. It’s well documented that the very first thing he did on attaining power was to imprison all the anti-gay protestors. He also wore really very fetching cutoffs by preference. Yeah, Mussolini was a weird dude.
Anyway, Gay Hitler is way more iconic than Rainbow Mussolini. And Homo Hirohito, pfeh! He browses with w3m.
Also, my 7yo daughter just so happens to LOVE pink … so we get to fight over who’s going to get any hot pink item I just happen to get. She always wins.
Your link seems to be busted, qwints.
1) Why is he wearing only one glove???
a) Was Michael Jackson impersonating him?
What’s offensive (to the eye), is the color scheme.
0) Did this thread FAIL a priori, by Godwin’s Law?
Fixed link
The combination of brown with all this pink. And wearing just one glove feels wrong.
Godwin’s Law only states that as a discussion progresses, the probability that someone will make a comparison to Hitler/the Nazis approaches 1.
But that’s a photo of Mr Hitler from 1939 and (as any fule kno) the pink OberMinneHertzenDerHochländerKommando, Wehrmacht uniform wasn’t in use until late ’34 or early ’44
late ’44 I mean
I’m always wondering how far back the 1980’s must be for people to have completey forgotten them.
A time when there were clothes for children (red, everybody wore red, quite fashionable).
Toys for children (do you remember LEGO back then?)
And only one kind of Bobby Car.
Probably a violation of human rights.
Hitler is dressed for a stage performance in a large auditorium. He should tone it down for daytime wear.
From the 15th Century on to present, many Polish army uniforms had pink as an accent color. This is a Polish Legion cavalry uniform of World War I. The Polish Legion was part of the German army.
Do people seriously argue this? People don’t seriously argue this, right?
Pink is a color. Who the hell would argue that there is an innate biological propensity toward pink? That’s the most random nonsensical bullshit I’ve ever heard.
No one believes that. And please don’t provide me evidence that someone does. Just let me have this delusion.
Pink being a “girl color” is far too recent a phenomenon to be anything but a socialization phenomenon, isn’t it? It was solely for boys in the past, it only began to be fashionable for girls in the 1940s, according to the Smithsonian Magazine.
When I was a young girl I naturally recoiled from anything pink from birth, according to my parents. But that may have been because my (adopted) mother didn’t like it, hard to say if I was born to revile it or conditioned from my 4th day breathing air to dislike it.
The only disturbing thing about that picture is that black and white things should always stay black and white. Well, and the subject himself, of course!
I was quite proud of Science reveals evolutionary origins of gender stereotypes. Everything up to the last two paragraphs is actual bad ev psych from a throwaway newspaper.
Say what you want, it’s a lovely shade of pink and, it matches his eyes!
The colour of the glove and the shade of the eyeshadow, which both clash horribly with the uniform. And, well, the subject – images of Hitler are always disturbing.
@20 – Wait, he has pink eye (conjunctivitis)???
I’m reminded of that old episode of The Simpsons where Homer goes to an insane asylum because he wore a shirt turned pink in the wash to work. (Aided by Bart filling out the psychologist’s questionnaire.) Coincidentally enough for this thread, he meets Michael Jackson there. Sort of.
doublereed (#17)
*cough* Ben Radford *cough*
Oops, too late.
Beat me to it, A. Noyd. That fight he lost with the 3-year-old was classic.
Hitler was evil.
That much pink is evil.
What is disturbing about that image, is that one watches it with a feeling of dread, trying to spot the real mark of true evil, Kitty-chan
Well, yeah, no kidding. This norm is less than a century old. We have records from when it wasn’t a norm, clearly demonstrating the social construction of the norm. This isn’t even proving the obvious, this is disproving a claim that has no possible proposed mechanism of action that accounts for the evidence in question: if the preference was essential, why would it change so quickly? Not enough generations for natural selection to shift the mode of gendered toy color preference…
It’s the eye shadow, mostly, and the fingernail polish that upset me.
I was disturbed by the fact that there is only lipstick on his top lip. Who leaves just the bottom lip unpainted?
Yes, well, their lack of preference for the cooking pan still needs to be accounted for!
Seriously, what do we make of the fact that the dumbest, most ridiculous study in the history of psychological research was ever published, much less taken seriously by anyone?
@Rev BDC, #4:
That’s what I found disturbing about this image. I can’t separate it from the constant attempts to paint queer folk as Nazis.
It makes him look like a commie pinko fag.*
Something he hates and railed against.
*please pardon the use of the “f” word.
Sigh, blockquote fail. I was replying to Crip Dyke’s post 31.
@31 – it is literally from an attempt to paint queer folk as Nazis, as I noted in @6. But I thought GAY HITLER was just fantastic and could benefit from repurposing. Reduce, reuse, recycle!
Well obviously, those male vervet monkeys’ fathers didn’t play enough football with them!
If anyone is actually SURPRISED by this finding… I have no words. It’s only a century old association.
Thirty or forty years ago, pink (now what we’d call pale pink) was a color for infant girls. What we’d now think of standard pink was “hot pink” or “shocking pink” with the connotations those names suggest. I haven’t quite figured out the history of the current use of pink, but I think it is less than twenty years old and probably spread from Barbie accessories. Current pinkness isn’t anything like as old as pink as the baby girl color.
Franz Liebkind: ‘Baby! Baby!… Why does he say this “baby”? The Führer has never said “baby”‘
Und his eye shadow was always green
with glitter.
But women like pink because of evolution. Like with lions, women did most of the hunting, and developed a visual preference for the color associated with the most nutritious parts – the brains and internal organs.
Men learned to like blues and blacks from all the berry picking.
My 3.5 year old son loves pink. Really, really loves it. The pink-infested girl sections in the toy stores are Valhalla for him. He’s slightly confused that the packaging for the toys features photos of girls only – it gives him the message that this isn’t the kind of toy he should be playing with.
Anyway, last Sinterklaas (Christmas for most of you) he got a toy pink microphone and a pink vacuum cleaner. The ads for a comparable toy vacuum cleaner, the one we didn’t buy, said ‘now you can really be like mommy!’ I’m happy to say that this met with considerable public frowning where I live.
Our son also asked me to paint his room pink, but I’m going to draw the line there because we had it painted already (lame excuse, I know but he will have a different favorite color in a few months time I think). I’ve settled for a compromise – still looking for some transparent pink paper foil to cover the lights in his room with, so he will get the next best experience.
Also, he dressed up as Snow White at his daycare’s carnival party. I’m proud of him, the way he is defying gender roles like he does, even if he is still delightfully clueless about them. The innocence will probably be lost when he goes to primary school, though.
#4. There was color photography back then. Kodak was getting into it before WWII. Just look up “color photography of Hitler” for lots of photos.
@doublereed #17
I realize you’re not being serious, but unfortunately this is exactly the attitude that gives rise to such inane ideas; ignoring reality is preferable when it’s in stark contrast with the comfortable narrative you’ve woven.
Thank you, frankb. I was gearing up to rant.
The truth is revealed: Hitler wanted the Germans to “Think Pink!”
@14 Giliell
Maybe certain toys have got a hell of a lot more pink since the 1980’s but I think it was still pretty bad then. Growing up “as a boy” in the 80’s myself I sure knew what toys I was and wasn’t allowed to play with. But I sure was I in heaven whenever I could get my hands on my sister’s barbie camper van. “No mom and dad it isn’t a girl’s toy. It’s like a truck.”
#44, Josh. Just a few minutes ago was the first time I had seen color photos of good ol’ Adolf. But I remember seeing color photos of German soldiers years ago. Strange that I don’t remember ever seeing color photos of Allied soldiers. Maybe color equipment was more common in Germany.
This happened a couple of weeks ago: http://www.salon.com/2014/03/17/north_carolina_school_bans_boys_my_little_pony_lunch_bag_rather_than_confront_its_bullying_problem/
This boy is getting a lot of support on facebook from grown men and I just love that.
what?
I bet you can’t name even two (2) people that “discount the importance of socialization” (in general). And I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you can think of even one.
so, so many.
You might be surprised or might not be at the amount of people who are supportive of my wife and I “letting” our 6 year old transgender daughter express her gender as we see fit who then have this completely baffled look with when she then wants to battle as ninja’s with them and babble on about Skylanders endlessly. It blows their minds.
But who wants to talk about VERVETS??!!!!
Now you are stooping to mere trolling….
In the past, Chas, I would have tried to stop you from embarrassing yourself.
Carry on.
Correction to my comment @50 which should have read: “daughter express her gender as she sees fit”
Myers, who cares? Throughout history different societies have chosen to associate different colours with males and females. Currently pink is associated with girls and blue with boys.
Who gives a shit?
Actually, quite a few folks who should know better….
Who then give people other people shit who don’t conform.
Oh btw, Myers, it’s “Wear RED on Equal Pay Day” tomorrow.
http://www.pay-equity.org/day.html
I expect you to make a post about how those poor women earn less than men without taking into consideration the fact that men work longer and harder than they do.
Or that other privileged males give other privileged males bigger wages than they deserve due to a penis rather than job performance….
No, men don’t get PAID more than women for the same work, they EARN more because they work more. If women want to earn as much as men they need to work as much as they do.
That’s true equality.
At three years old my daughter’s favourite colour was black. It was so much her favourite that she kept insisting that we paint her room in our new house black. We bought a black towel to assist with the bath extraction when she went through a period of fighting that. Then she got to preschool. A month later her favourite colour had become pink.
Every time it gets discussed I say:
“I don’t care what your favourite colour is honey, it can be whatever you want it to be. That’s not my decision to make. But I want you to know that it doesn’t have to be pink.”
Her response:
“Yes Dad I know.”
[six year old eye roll]
“How many times are you going to tell me?”
“As many as it takes honey. As many as it takes.”
And in one of those coincidences so loved by the woomiesters, as I was typing this she was looking at our ipad. She wanted to see “the fastest thing people have ever made”. She was watching a video of the New Horizons probe lifting off and began to chant: “I saw pink flames! I saw pink flames!” Ah well, at least she thinks rockets and mag-lev bullet trains are cool.
Fuckwit, I notice a LACK OF CITATION. Either put up or shut the fuck up like blowhard losers should when challenged on facts…
After all, the harder one works, the higher one’s pay.
The statistics are all over the internet, it takes takes a quick google. Men work more hours than women. That is why they earn more. It’ very,very simple.
THEN WHY THE FUCK AREN’T YOU PRESENTING THEM HERE, LIAR AND BULLSHITTER…..
Because women are also expected to be the primary caretakers. And in the US, many are hesitant to create equity there..
But please, continue with you Christina Hoff Sommers/MRA talking points.
But if you do so, take it to ThunderDome.
What is wrong? Hitler was aware of how dressing would impact his presence.
So he’d never wear a glove like that on a uniform that brightly colored.
The same thing goes for the make up. It has been applied by a rank amateur instead of by a specialist who for example would know where to apply the rouge to accent facial features instead of just splashing it on like that.
Here’s one graph. The pattern is very clear.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_lo9vu3BZcfA/S2AS80MGA8I/AAAAAAAAADk/lQxdkESnglc/s400/hours.jpg
Link to Thunderdome for the link impaired idjits….
No, that is the time on the job, not the hours worked. I’m an old baldbhead male. Your type is a water-cooler denizen, not a desk denizen….
WTF are you on about?
Your lack of cogency about the fact males don’t work as efficiently as females, who complete the same work in 40 hours it takes many males, with their socialization breaks, 50-60 hours to compete….MRA LOSER…
That’s complete bollocks. If that was true companies would prefer to employ women and save money. Instead most prefer to employ men because they know they work harder.
You’re full of crap.
Oh, good grief, bumsandwich. Men work more paid hours per week, because so much of the work women do is discounted.
Where is that graph from? Who believes people in their sixties work more hours than younger people, on average? Who calls men and women “boys” and “girls”? And where is that graph from?
What’s discounted? WTF are you talking about?
My favorite soccer team, Cerezo Osaka, has a pretty loud pink kit. That occasionally gets me some incredulous questions about my smartphone case.
@ivyshoots
It’s just one of many graphs you can quickly find. Men work more hours than women. There’s no doubt over that.
whelp, “all over the internet” is probably about the best citation we can expect for that “graph”.
Please answer my questions, bum. There’s nothing about that graph which looks legit. It’s from an unidentified blogspot. That’s the best you can offer?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=hours+worked+per+week+by+gender
@Bumsandwich(#76):
Discounted in this context means that the same work with the same results is valued less if done by a woman. Which tends to boil down to they get paid less.
Nerd, back off. The way you shoot this guy down is not by yelling at him that his opinion is wrong, but by digging up the evidence that shows he is wrong.
When you compare wages per hour, compensating for all the other differences (like education, seniority, etc.) women still get paid less than men.
That link takes you to Forbes, by the way, which tends not to be a friend to the working class, so any bias in the site is going to tend to favor bumsandwich’s dumbass position, yet still they can’t find any sign of equality.
All right, that settles it: I just put that fucking condescendingly stupid lmgtfy into the filter list. Don’t waste everyone’s time, and don’t use it anymore.
bumsandwich, throwing up a garbage link that animates a google search is goddamned stupid, and not a source.
MOST of the wage gap disappears when adjustments for working hours are made. What remains is unlikely to be the result of womens’ work being “devalued” somehow but simply due to women not working as hard as men.
Women don’t get PAID, less they EARN less.
^^ whoops, comma in wrong position.
Show those hours aren’t child care socially expected….
unevidenced assertion, dismissed without evidence…
The reasons for women working less hours than men is irrelevant. GIVEN that women work less, it’s only to be expected that they EARN less.
This is not complicated stuff.
@bumsandwich(#86):
So let me get this straight. You just get referred to an article that specifically states that they get PAID less and then have the gall to claim that they don’t but that if you multiply their working hours with what they get paid they earn less?
The conclusion happens to be right since getting paid less means earning less. Don’t get any points on that due to the type of inference you are using having a wrong premise to start from invalidates the rest of your argument.
#85, bumsandwich:
Did you even bother to look at the link I provided, which shows the opposite of what you claim? The very first paragraph:
It describes a study of temp workers in which they could match skills, and found…
The only variable was sex. Women got paid less because they were women.
And to claim that women work less, and basically deserve less than men…what kind of bigoted MRA asshole are you?
Only if society doesn’t expect women to do housework, child care, etc, that the privileged males aren’t expect to share 50-50, and don’t like the male chauvinist pigs they probably are….
Almost all, if not all, first world countries have strict laws against PAYING women less than men for the same job. If women are EARNING less than men they must therefore be working differently than them somehow.
Check fucking mate.
… and CEO’s work 100 times more hours then factory workers and therefore earn 100 times more.
What? Wages and hours worked are not linked to each other? Shock!
#89, Nerd of Redhead
Read my comment at #83. Now. is NOT A HELPFUL COMMENT.
Feelings before facts, feelings before facts, feelings before facts…
94 bumsandwich
“All countries have laws against murder, therefore murders don’t happen.”
You are one of the more stupid MRA’s we’ve had in a long time.
Time to bring out the cock…
8=D ~
[Edited for accuracy. –pzm]
Ah. Since women aren’t out there suing their employers over wage discrepancies, it must be their fault. Makes perfect sense. If there’s one thing people love doing, it’s suing their employers.
bumsandwich: Again, from that Forbes article (did I tell you I’m generally no fan of Forbes? I’m not.)
You’re the one ignoring the facts for your “feelings”…although I’d prefer the term ignorant bigotry.
Yawn, after bumsandwiches ‘contribution’ at 100, the question is: which one of the previously banned trolls is he?
Bye bumsandwich, we won’t miss you.
Since that’s your level of discourse…
Goodbye, asshole.
@Jodyp(#101):
Could also be that people don’t talk about what they earn, at least people did not where I work(ed). So unless there is a study (like the ones referred to in the Forbes article) you don’t find out how much more/less you earn then the average.
Who Cares #105:
Yes, exactly. I was trying to figure out how to work that in. Lots of women don’t even realize they’re getting ripped off because it’s taboo to discuss it in our culture.
Last guy to scribble ASCII penises was “shitboy”; before that it was “Benn Dover”. It’s one of those obvious clues that you’re dealing with an utter idiot.
@Bumsandwich,
If the pay gap only exists because men work more hours than women, then we would expect to see the pay gap disappear if we were to compare the amount of money men earn per hour to the amount of money women earn per hour. Yet if we look at hourly wages, we see that women make 84% of what men make.
Of course, even if the wage gap was explained by women working fewer hours, telling women that this is their fault for not working more is a completely asinine solution. Did you ever consider telling employers to make sure that they are just as willing to offer full-time jobs to women as they are to men? Have you considered telling men that they should do more housework and childcare (and other tasks traditionally assigned to women) so that their wives can work longer hours? Or do you just like blaming women while doing absolutely nothing to address the problem?
Patriarchal Action Movie 2
I’m simply astonished that there is actually anybody that still clings to the idea that income has much of a relationship with how much or how hard you work. I’m fairly aged, have worked in a variety of industries around a lot of the western world and never, ever, saw anything that could make you think that.
The way the intertoobz keep illustrating that the bulk of humanity is less intelligent than a cabbage and possessed of less empathy than a fire arm suppressor really, really annoys me.
I feel the need to share this.
I won a bet with myself about the subject of this thread.
Faye Gooding?
Comment #100 just looks like an excitedly drooling face.
Why do guys like the latest subject of the Red Letters of Doom pop up in threads like this? Is there some evil version of Commissioner Gordon who activates the Dumbass Signal to summon them for an attack?
And speaking of gender and pink, here’s a couple of guys who had no problem with pink.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpPjRwanVSk
What disturbs me is he doesn’t wear an earring like this one:
http://www.bijouteriekado.nl/webshop/5-oorbellen/detail/94/fopspeen-oorbellen.html
In pink of course.
Oh god, the pinksplosion.
It’s not just toys, it’s clothes too. I had a hell of a time finding rain boots for DarkToddler that weren’t sparkly fucking pink with a heel. (I ended up buying a pair of boys boots in drab green.)
Seriously, she’s a year and a half. What kind of sick fucks think it’s desirable for a toddler to look feminine?
This sent me into a small fit of giggles.
Isn’t it obvious, Alexandra? If you don’t get them indoctrinated as young as possible you might end up with a generation of women that don’t know their True Place in the Proper Order of Things.
The scary thing is that you know that someone actually believes such bullshit, and some of them may work in the appropriate industries in the hope of doing just that.
Alexandra
I totally agree on pink heeled rainboots for a munchkin is weird.
But why can’t I get some in “womens” size 9?
Actually size 10 because I want to fit some nice warm socks in there.
and
*hugs*
How’s things?
The fuck?
Have they met toddlers? Like, spent 15 minutes with wakeful toddler playing outside? Why the hell would anyone give an periodically hyperactive little monkey something as impractical as heeled footwear?
I mean, sure, I probably tried on my mom’s heels, and I know one of my brother’s did, but no one gave me them to running around outside in the snow or mud.
Not at all related to pink, but, David Gerard @#6:
Citation? Because:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22856586
Inquiring minds, etc.
tim:
A lot of people believe that bullshit. They might not say it out loud, but there are plenty of people (that I personally know!) that believe that rigid gender roles are are good thing. Consumers aren’t completely blameless in this– parents willingly and excitedly deck their girls out in pink.
(Do they not remember being kids themselves? I grew up in the 80s, and I’ll be damned if I remember ever wearing pink. I don’t remember any of my three sisters in any amount of pink, either.)
chigau:
Boom.
*squeezes*
Things is things. I’m gonna wander on over to T’dome if you want to chat.
Alexandra
I’m already there.
Jacob:
To be clear, they weren’t like a high heel, but whereas the boys boots are flat, the girls boots were not. (I’m looking for an example right now). Still pretty silly for stomping in puddles.
But this is a problem with girls clothes in general. Entirely too much of it is completely impractical for any sort of play. Either parents are treating the clothes as disposable or they are somehow convincing little girls not to run and jump and act wild.
David Gerard, I realise I might be taking you too literally.
Hopefully. My gaycomedydar has been on the fritz. WWII pun intended. ;-)
@tim rowledge #110
You shouldn’t be surprised. This is an idea for and from wealthy, well-connected, and–let’s be honest here–white people. It’s really easy to justify your personal contribution to income disparity when you truly believe that you work harder, or that your work has an intrinsic–but difficult-to-quantify–higher value.
Alexandra (née Audley)@123>
Remember a couple years back, there was a couple up in Canada (I think?) who refused to reveal the gender of their infant, and were raising it in a pretty much gender-neutral manner.
The internet lit up with idiocy. I even heard people on public transit talking about it, claiming they were: stupid, crazy, abusive, and/or manipulative.
Physically beating a kid is fine, ’cause that’s “instilling discipline”, but let a kid wear what clothes they want and play with what toys they want, and that’s reason to take away custody.
humans are really disappointing…
I know this wasn’t your point with the photo at all, but this is really messed up.
It reminds me of the far-right Christian fundamentalist extremists that condemn homosexuality and perpetuate the myth that the Nazis were driven by a “homosexual agenda”. There actually are people who consider Nazism an outgrowth of homosexuality and rail against today’s supposed “gay agenda” on the grounds that same sex marriage and other equal rights will, of course, lead to another Nazi regime or something… somehow.
If you know anything about how Nazis treated homosexuals, how they gave them a distinct symbol when they put them in concentration camps (a pink triangle), how they slaughtered so many of them and how they put so much emphasis on motherhood and spawning new soldiers for the Reich… every time some fundamentalist loon talks about “the homosexual Nazi agenda” or something, I get really angry because of how these bastards are trying to turn victims into perpetrators. In fact, there are many other groups that the Nazis hunted and put in concentration camps that you rarely here about and some of them, too, people attempt to turn into the perpetrators, like Socialists, Communists, Social Democrats…
Speaking of motherhood, when I first heard of the Quiverful movement and their constant talk about spawning soliders for the army of their god, guess what other ideology I was reminded of…
The glove should have been white leather with rhinestones.
I have three boys currently in a princess-movie phase (right down to requiring pink sparkly princess toothbrushes for one of them). All interspersed with ninja turtles. It’s awesome.
lochaber
I remember that, and I believe they were from Canada but somewhere else in the world, teaching English abroad. Either way, a big fuss about their child, who looked like a normal, happy child. Because people couldn’t identify it as this or that, and so had to *gasp* think outside the box. Sad.
@122 – now that I think about it, it’s possible the bit about him wearing clothes made from rainbow flags and favouring cutoffs was also less than Wikipedia-quality accuracy.
Monitor Note:
Alert sent.
<jodyp
What happened to Lilly Ledbetter anyway?…
+++
BTW, if employers actually paid for productivity then the hourly wages for people who work more than 8 hours a day should get lowered significantly, because there’s ample evidence that your performance takes a big dump after 8 hours.
Not that ample evidence has been presented that women get paid less even when looking at hourly wages.
Not that research has been done that shows that people will fit the job-description to the qualification of the man but not the woman (if he has experience bit lacks education, well, experinece is super important. If he has education but lacks experience, it’s the other way round…)
+++
Alice
Maybe it was different in different countries, but the 80s in Germany way not totally gender-neutral, but much more so than today. I had a big box of toy cars and most boys had a doll.
Everybody, please spot the girl
+++
I’m always fascinated and aborred by what makes something “for girls” or “for boys”.
It is usually not the toy/motiv/thing itself but the coding.
Shirt in blue-gold-silver=boys shirt
Shirt in green-pink-purple-silver=girls shirt. The green shirt was, btw, from the boys aisle.
Treassure map = boys
Treassure map on a pink shirt = girls
Yes, I actually consciously use pink to give my daughters a greater choice of designs and “girly” designs that give them a greater choice of colour. Because male is the default and female the exception. I doubt that butterfly and flower designs on navy blue do make a shirt for boys. As long as there’s any “girl” marker on it it’s enough.
+++
Alexandra
Don’t mention shoes. It’s a fucking nightmare. Heels and sandals with small straps, whites and delicated materials. Everything made so the girls are having a hard time running, climbing, being active. Cute ruffled skirts and dresses. bad for climbing, bad for wearing in the sandbox, because there are parts sand shouldn’t get into…
@Giliell,
I discovered at some point in my teenage years that because jeans for women only rarely have stretchy material in them, sometimes (depending on weather and what’s currently in the laundry) the best thing to climb trees in is a (loose, unrestrictive) skirt. Although you do have to wear shorts or something underneath it, which slightly defeats the point.
Don’t get me started on trying to find jeans that I like as an adult. I finally got up the courage to start shopping in the mens section and haven’t looked back.
Little late to the party, but…
bumsandwich @ 55:
(bolded for deep cluelessness)
This is the mark of a well-informed individual.
Really.
It’s one thing to barge into a thread with puerile jokes and failworthy trolling attempts, but to do so while publicly demonstrating this level of general-world ignorance, that takes talent. Or something we can call talent, anyway.
@129:
Not to mention that the homosexuals who were freed from the concentration camps in Germany were then incarcerated again for sodomy.
If you prod them enough, you’ll get them to admit that the higher value of their work comes from being white and having a penis, thus closing the circle.
I wear a pink shirt with a black leather jacket, and I am stylin’.
I’m also single, but I dunno if there’s a positive correlation there.
@frankb #42
Heck, there was (not great) color photography in the late 1800s. And here are some nice shots of WWI:
http://www.worldwaronecolorphotos.com
Huh. Yeah, the link someone gave.. Despite being an ancient post, there is nothing in the replies, not even the recent ones, that would help anyone that stumbled over it. So, I.. well, was possibly a bit long winded, but I think I am correct in my final description of evo-psych when I say that its the alchemy of evolution, and that, unsatisfied with finding trivial things in the genes, like what makes someone’s eyes blue, they are instead rambling on about how someone might, one day, thanks to their efforts, find the “philosopher stone” of genetics, which can tell us why someone would, say, prefer blueberries over strawberries. I.e, total gibberish, until/unless they stop making things up, ignoring things that contradict their stories (or bother to even look for them), and actually try writing something that is based on fact, instead of conjectures.
Oh, and the real problem with the picture is the same one the “red coats” have. People where trying to assassinate this guy, why would wearing something that could stand out on an overcast night, possibly even with the lights turned of, be at all sensible in a war? lol