[roguecoder]

The only thing that is actually true of is underwear, and even there my girlfriend steals my boxers. Many products are targeted at women or men, but most often their consumption by one gender or another is more self-fulfilling marketing prophecy than real differences.

Limiting your audience to half the population seems stupid to me. Especially when it doesn't seem all that hard to crossover; mostly it involves not making those self-fulfilling marketing prophecies.

[coderdude]

If many products are targeted at men or women then it certainly isn't true that the line is drawn at underwear. Catering to a specific subset of all people is not stupid even if it halves your potential audience. If that were so then the countless brands wouldn't set out to appeal to the tastes of each gender. If the numbers showed that most people like unisex things then that's what they'd all be pushing.

You seem to regard the distinct tastes between the genders as some kind of marketing brain washing. Masculinity and femininity weren't concocted in the board room.

[slurgfest]

It's not symmetric; you are less likely to steal your girlfriend's bras. And if you do, it probably means something different from when your girlfriend steals your boxers.

Men and women do differ even from an early age, but you are of course right that these differences do not necessarily track with cultural stereotypes. (And when they do it may be because those stereotypes are being conformed to in a strongly biologically underdetermined way)