Monday, March 28, 2011

Annals of socially constructed gender roles

A typical conversation between my five year old twins. Guess which is the boy and which is the girl!

I: Let's play with my dolls.

M: You never want to play anything fun!

I: Like what?

M: Like guns, robots or dinosaurs!

Yesterday M asked me why in all the stories the prince does the fighting and the princess always needs rescuing. Unsure, I consulted mommy, who has a PhD in comparative literature from Berkeley. The answer is, apparently, that in the old days princesses were weak and so the princes had to do the fighting. Nowadays (as you can see on TV in Afghanistan) princesses can take care of themselves. M was very confused by this and keeps asking me why the princesses used to be so weak: did an evil wizard do it?

11 comments:

  1. Please keep sharing these priceless comments from your childrens young, flexible minds..... :-)

    thx

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  2. Haha, that's priceless. What does your wife say to your research on IQ etc. given her education, if I might ask? My girlfriend copes pretty well when I bring up evolutionary psychology topics and the like even though she has an humanities PhD. But then again both her father and her brother are physics professors. Yay inheritance.

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  3. botti4:50 PM

    ***M was very confused by this and has in the interim asked me several times why the princesses used to be so weak; did an evil wizard do it? ***

    Heh, the writers back then weren't trying to pretend there are no meaningful gender differences.

    Speaking of old fashioned ideas, it seems physiognomy is making a comeback!

    http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201103/criminals-look-different-noncriminals

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  4. She's very smart so can overcome much of the brainwashing, probably like your girlfriend.

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  5. St_Anselm8:58 AM

    Once again Steve shows himself to be a benighted conservative douche who can't think, aka a Chinaman.

    The last 50 years have shown some gender stereotypes to be false. How many will be shown to be false in the future?

    I feel sorry for women who identify with acting like a girl. Women shouldn't be taken seriously until they stop wearing makeup and jewelry and until they cut their hair. Unfortunately most women identify with these absurd gender demarcators rather than recognizing them for the minstrel show they are. Some may even think that not acting like a girl is equivalent to lesbianism (which IS a perversion). Getting it on as equals is so much sexier gals.

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  6. St_Anselm9:03 AM

    The article is by a slant. No surprise. Stereotypes are empirically true, blah, blah, blah.

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  7. St_Anselm9:04 AM

    can overcome much of the brainwashing

    That is, get in touch with her China-ness.

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  8. St_Anselm9:05 AM

    young, flexible

    Are you a chimo?

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  9. St_Anselm10:20 AM

    Yet another example of the Satanic pseudoscience that is psychology, Ted Bundy's major.

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  10. botti7:23 PM

    The paper is by Stephen Ceci & Wendy Williams. How many criminals were you able to pick out of the line up? I got 10, although missed a couple of the rapists.

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  11. St_Anselm9:43 PM

    I'm sure I could do the same, but so what? If I smoked meth I'd look like a criminal too. If my mother had smoked meth I'd looked like a criminal. If I'd grown up on a diet of mac & cheese I'd look like a criminal. If I were Irish, English people would pick me out as a criminal.

    Like ALL research in psychology this is 100% bullshit AND harmful.

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