Impudent Sisyphus

moniquill:

nethilia:

suddeninevitablebetrayal:

rainbowfairyprincess:

dangertits:

skiptripfall:

rainbowfairyprincess:

I am incredibly grateful to my parents for giving me both kinds of toys. I preferred the dolls, but at least I know that was my own honest choice.

My mom wouldn’t let me have toys. 

I still find most commentary on the sexist division of girl toys and boy toys to be rather lacking. Of course if is terrible that girls and boys are given toys that encourage them to enact stereotypical gender roles ways so young; this type of socialization might prime them to fill specific roles later on in life. But people are still undervaluing “girls toys,” equating them with passive frivolousness. And how sexist is that? The sentiment is that “gender neutral” toys, always verging towards “boys toys,” are constructive, educational, and worthwhile. Dolls aren’t. This is the kind of sentiment that dismisses the value of “women’s work” of care-giving later on in life.

“Boys toys” tend to be physically complex. “Girls toys” tend to be socially complex.  The complexity of the imaginary play that children often engage in with dolls is intangible and made invisible early on—because you aren’t looking.  It is so much easier for a child to say “look what I made” and get a pat on the back than to say “watch me engage.”

I played with lot of different types of toys. Sure, I liked to build things with legos. But I much preferred my dolls. And guess what? All forty or so of my beanie babies had individual personalities. They had roles, romances, they interacted with each other in complex ways. There were smaller subgroups of birds or bears. I used them to create a complete micro-society. But an adult passerby would see that pile of critters as a rather useless and excessive collection.

Understanding social complexities, the kind of play which “girls toys” encourage, is undervalued from an early age.

Let’s please stop with the “dolls are dumb” rhetoric. It isn’t helpful. It’s still sexist. The problem of gendered children’s toys won’t be fixed by allowing free access to “boys toys” for all, but by seeing the value in diverse types of play, and encouraging all children to engage in them.

Re-reblogging for commentary.

And to add that dolls ought to be marketed/designed in a way that encourages that kind of creative play, rather than the way they seem to be done now, with pre-packaged personalities and an emphasis on how “sexy” they are.

that commentary.

I have had dolls for like, ever, and it is part of the reason I am now a writer (because I can easily come up with diverse personalities) and a seamstress (because I made tons of doll clothes) and restorer (I usedto get used dolls from toy stores and wash and clean them up). This hate-on for girl’s things is annoying as shit. The problem isn’t that girls get “girl things” it’s that girl things are devalued in this society.

In addition to all of the above commentary, this is a really valuable discussion about how these roles do a disservice to everyone - the male-coded kid is getting a toy that has physical utility, the female-coded child is getting one that has social utility and both children are being actively discouraged from using the other toy. Ideally, both children should be encouraged to develop both skillsets because SKILLS ARE AWESOME.

(Source: hypnotiqone)

fuckyeahfeminists:

feminist-space:

girljanitor:

Steve Bowler tweeted a photo of an assignment that his 8-year-old daughter’s teacher said she did incorrectly. The homework assignment had a list of toys or activities, and the kids were supposed to categorize them based on whether they were for boys, girls, or both, with equal numbers in each box. The assignment takes for granted the gendering of toys, and that there is a “correct” answer to the question of which gender they are appropriate for.

Bowler’s daughter did the assignment differently. After placing 3 items in the “boys” category and 2 in the “girls” group, she made additional boxes to add more things in the “both” column.

But at the bottom, the teacher notes that the assignment wasn’t done correctly. The point of the assignment is to categorize; the implicit message — that boys and girls are different types of people who like different types of things — isn’t questioned. A child sees this list of items and doesn’t gender them in the way the lesson took for granted; the reaction wasn’t to acknowledge her innovation and perhaps question the gendering, it was simply to say she did it wrong.

Bowler, for the record, said he was proud his daughter failed the assignment and just wished she’d done even worse on it.

via sociological images

[some gender-related bullshit removed.]

EDIT: OH THANK GOD.

UPDATE: Reader Kama notes that the assignment accompanied a reading about a girl who wasn’t allowed to play basketball. The overall message of that story challenged the idea that girls can’t play basketball, requiring kids to categorize the toys and activities by gender as part of the lesson:

…this was assigned following reading a book about a girl who wanted to play basketball but was told it’s a boy’s sport.  She kept at it, got better, and earned the respect of the boys who were telling her off earlier.  According to the guy who posted the picture, the teacher was trying to discuss gender bias.  Did the teacher go about it the right way?  No, not really – especially when your end goal is showing that these biases are wrong.  That being said, this particular assignment doesn’t really fit with the idea of a hidden gender curriculum.  The teacher wasn’t trying to say that these are boy and girl toys, the teacher was trying (and failing) to point out that we are biased in our thinking about what’s for boys and what’s for girls.

mysevenkids:

See? Easy.

pretty simple stuff

ad-mirandam:

dank-potion:

fyeahcountrysongs:

prettymisstay:

thatwasasmalltown:

ihopetaylorswift:

I hope this continues making it’s way around Tumblr.

This is literally the stupidest thing I have ever seen in my life.

She’s teaching young girls the wrong thing about being a woman? How? She’s one of the only role models LEFT.

Face palm.

OH. Okay, I’m sorry. So teaching young girls that’s it’s okay to be a good girl and not a complete asshole and slut is obviously not right. Got it. Thanks for letting me know that.

Are these motherfuckers serious? Okay, nope. Time to break this down.

She’s teaching girls not to be an asshole .. are you fucking serious? Have you heard any of her songs? She’s basically telling them that it’s okay to barge in on relationships and ridicule other girls if they don’t conform to primitive ideals on what a woman is supposed to be. Her entire career thrives off of enforcing the “virgin/whore” dichotomy. That’s about as asshole-ish as you can get and it sets women back about a good 50 years.

And a slut? I’m not touching that, because if your moral barometer is measured by what women do consensually with their own bodies, that harms no one, then I have no time to break down how fundamentally wrong that is and you have a lot of sexism to work through.

Taylor Swift is not a positive role model. She’s a horrible, untalented performer, poor songwriter, but aside from that, she’s a pretentious snotrag who bases her entire worth as a human being and an entertainer on her virginity. She is not teaching young girls how to be upstanding women. If a “good girl” to you is based on the amount of clothes women wear and the amount of sex they don’t have, then yes, fine, by your misogynistic, sex-shaming, double-standard, she is and you can stay stuck in 1940 if you wish, but the rest of us normal people won’t give into your sexist bullshit.

^that

(Source: )