[emmapersky]

This article misses two absolutely critical points to the gender neutral debate.

1. Removing (or reducing) fixed gender stereotypes allows individuals to express themselves withut fear that they are different, or that some how their behavior is wrong. Weather girls prefer Barbies and boys prefer GI Joes is not relevant here. There are a significant number of kids who don't conform to gender stereotypes, and this is expressed through out someones life. The harder we make it for them as a kid to express preferences the more repressed they will be. The fact that some (but not all) of us break through this (women in technology...) is evidence of this problem.

2. That gender stereotypes are detrimental to the world, and the less we subconsciously enforce them, the easier it is for us to create a world where gender is not a factor in equality any more. We attach huge value to the gendered attribute of things, and we do it subconsciously because of the immense amount of gender biased media we have been exposed to over the years. The shock that (some) people express when they hear that a man they have met is a nurse, or that the woman they have just met is a truck driver causes fear of self identification.

You don't have to make a boy play with a doll, but you absolutely should make dolls available to him, without biasing the media he sees so that he thinks only girls play with dolls. Only then can he make a decision on what toy to play with without the influence of millennia of patriarchy.

I'd like to think that most HN readers are enlightened and are intellectually sensitive enough to not see gender biases by default, or at least work hard to over come them. And that this is a symtom of the uneducated, but I know that is not that case with everyone. I have seen it a thousand times in technology, and the only way we can ever change this is by starting young and eradicating gender bias where ever we see it.

[pbhjpbhj]

>* the only way we can ever change this is by starting young and eradicating gender bias where ever we see it* //

What's the motivation to change the world from reflecting the different sexes to one in which we pretend there are no differences between the sexes?

It's clearly a massive undertaking - instead of allowing children to follow they're natural leaning it's necessary to micromanage all their interactions. What's the benefit in that?

Ultimately you'd need to castrate all the men so no-one can have a gendered experience of sex. Remove women's wombs and force all children to be gestated ex utero so they don't have a gendered experience with a parent that will alter their behaviour. Even after these extreme measures you'd still have obvious physical and biological differences between men and women; such difference leading naturally to differences in behaviour and interaction.

My personally feeling is we need to accept that males and females differ biologically. Remove prejudice and unfounded preference as much as we're able from societal systems. Then get on and celebrate the differences and exploit the complementarities of our gendered existence.

>without biasing the media he sees so that he thinks only girls play with dolls //

I'm fortunate enough to be caring for two boys; it's mainly been girls that have provided rebukes based on gender. Not sure where 2 and 3 year old girls are getting it from but the most often gender-biased comments I've heard targeted at the boys has been "pink is only for girls" and "that's not for you it's for a girl". Strangely in my limited experience (though I work with young children every day) I've yet to hear any boys do the same sort of thing.

My rather long-winded second point being that it's not just commercial media you'd have to avoid to avoid any messages indicating [or exploiting/prejudicing] gender differences it's also other people.

[jrogers65]

>it's mainly been girls that have provided rebukes based on gender. Not sure where 2 and 3 year old girls are getting it from but the most often gender-biased comments I've heard targeted at the boys has been "pink is only for girls" and "that's not for you it's for a girl". Strangely in my limited experience (though I work with young children every day) I've yet to hear any boys do the same sort of thing.

This does not surprise me in the least. Females tend to be more socially orientated than males - so any cultural memes are expressed through them more strongly.

[pbhjpbhj]

I hear boys often correcting others on rules of play or modes of operation of a toy though.

Aside: Your comment made me smirk inanely, thank you.

[irahul]

> Removing (or reducing) fixed gender stereotypes allows individuals to express themselves withut fear that they are different, or that some how their behavior is wrong.

Removing "free playtime" because it leads to gender stereotypes(as quoted in the article) is simple, plain wrong. Children can very well be taught that being different is Ok, and schools can actually try to combat bullying rather than sweeping it under the rug. "You don't go out on the road, you aren't going to be in a road accident" is hardly a solution for road accidents.

> The harder we make it for them as a kid to express preferences the more repressed they will be.

If a boy A likes playing with trucks, taking his trucks away so that another boy B doesn't feel guilty for playing with dolls is simple, plain wrong. It's difficult and it will take a lot of time and understanding for the society to adapt, but that is no excuse for not educating both A and B that people are different, and there is nothing wrong with being different.

> You don't have to make a boy play with a doll, but you absolutely should make dolls available to him, without biasing the media he sees so that he thinks only girls play with dolls. Only then can he make a decision on what toy to play with without the influence of millennia of patriarchy.

Say I have a boy and I buy him only trucks. What wrong am I committing? I like trucks. Am I under obligation to buy him dolls? I am not depriving him of dolls. I just won't buy one myself because I don't like dolls. If he wants one, he will ask for one.

From the quotations in the article, it's not about making dolls available to him but rather taking his trucks away and handing him dolls.

I don't care if he is playing with trucks because all the ads on tv show boys playing with trucks. You(metaphorical you) have no right to take his trucks away and force dolls on to him.

[pfortuny]

Yeah, and it will be you who dictates what "gender bias" means or whom?

[subsystem]

It's perfectly normal, or should be, to present ones opinion in a discussion without having to endure rhetorical questions. I'm pretty feed up with all the nitpicking here, this isn't a literary forum, if you have an opinion express it.

[pfortuny]

Yes, it is. I agree with everything you say.

My opinion is: there is and there will never be a way to clearly distinguish between 'gender neutral' and 'gender biased' actions when those actions are not clearly violent or degrading or insulting. So please do not use a word which has no meaning as though it had one and a clear-cut one.

I gather I had made myself clear in my last post: there is no such thing as 'gender bias' in 90% of what the OP claims.

Trying to force language on others (like 'gender biased behavior') is worse than what you call 'nitpicking'.

Edit: You may be confusing 'nitpicking' with 'irony'.

[neumann_alfred]

No, more like arguing for something. Then you can agree, or argue against it. Neat, huh?

If you're unable to argue against something, but resent it anyway, you may project your wish to dictate your conclusion even though you don't have the arguments for it. But people rarely do that ^^

[gurkendoktor]

> The harder we make it for them as a kid to express preferences the more repressed they will be

I am obviously a parenting newbie, but what I don't understand is, why can't we just teach children to ignore/combat the repression? Is that something that only works at age >1x? Wouldn't that be a much longer-lasting solution?

If humans were single-gendered, we would certainly find other ways to feel threatened about our identity. I just don't see how removing all stereotypes from everything is a battle that we can win.

(I have been "gender-weird" when I was young, otherwise I wouldn't even dare to post this :))

[user24]

> why can't we just teach children to...

This is something I used to ask until very recently; why can't I just teach my kids not to care about brands, not to be racist, not to be sexist, etc etc.

This would work, if my kids only learned from me. As long as there are sexists, racists, brand-bunnies, violent kids, etc around, my kids will learn from them too.

[saraid216]

The key is to teach children to question tribalism, and to do it calmly and rationally. If you do that, and they trust your capacity to judge fairly, they'll come back to you for extra perspectives whenever they aren't sure about anything.

Parenting is deceptively simple. Everything comes down to building enough mutual trust that an adult relationship is possible fifteen, twenty years down the line. Everything else is either there to make that possible, or built off that fundamental.

[emmapersky]

Teaching kids to ignore / combat that is just one part of what we need to do. Sadly not all parents are as forward thinking as this, and are quite happy to subconsciously nudge their children into gendered roles.

If we combat this at the systemic level we stand a much better chance of bringing up successive generations in a less biased way, and maybe one day society will look back and think of our time as barbaric in the field of gender equality.

I don't think this is fight we can totally win now, or even in 20 years, but that doesn't mean we should give up. If we help just a single child become comfortable with their own identity, without fear of crossing gender stereotype lines I think we might get there.

[breakyerself]

I would prefer to fight the battle on both of those fronts. Certainly the loving support of an understanding family will go a long way towards strengthening a child's ability to be themselves in a culture that will ridicule them for it, but what of those children who have neither a supportive family nor an inclusive culture. Don't we owe it to them to support advancement towards inclusiveness?

[mattmanser]

What is wrong with gender stereotypes?

You must accept that our bodies are different. And we have different hormones. It is clear that there is an actual difference between the sexes.

Why do you have such a hard time accepting this? Gender stereotypes are perfectly normal because we are different.

What I do know is that male suicide rates are climbing. I'm not sure fuzzy gender roles have anything to do with it, but we can all make wild claims without a single scientific article to back it up.

[m_eiman]

What is wrong with gender stereotypes?

The problem with any stereotype is that it limits choice ("I'm a boy so I -must- play with guns instead of dolls"), which leads to inefficient use of the potential of the next generation. To miss out on a math genius just because she happened to be a girl and was taught that she's too stupid to handle advanced math is detrimental to the advancement of the human race.

Boys and girls -are- physically different, but physical differences are enormous even within each gender (or race, if we're going to get into that kind of stereotype) and pretty much the only thing that's physically hardwired to be possible for only girls or boys are their respective functions in reproduction (almost, tech is making advances…).

So limit an individual's choices based on gender is as dumb as limiting them based on race. And yes, by only ever showing "boys using boys' toys" and "girls using girls' toys" we are in effect limiting the available choices for kids; we're a social species after all.

[belorn]

The "girls can't do math" stereotype is not just wrong, its false in the sense that we should just stop saying it. Its more akin to a bad told myth, brining harm where ever its being retold.

The #1 preferred profession from a woman in Sweden is economist, based on yearly polls. If one look at university education, women dominate the class room in every areas of match except one subject (abstract math), and then men only reach above 50% in abstract math after the 3rd year.

So the stereotype is not true. Its not true as in, women are as able to handle math as men, but it also not true because women actually work with math more commonly than men in real life. Its not true in any aspect what so ever, so please, please stop spreading the myth. Its only doing harm. If you need to describe a stereotype, take one that's not this one.

[boboblong]

>If one look at university education, women dominate the class room in every areas of math except one subject (abstract math)

In other words, women are better than men at complex arithmetic, but men are better than women at mathematics.

[belorn]

If abstract math is the only "pure" mathematics is open to debate :).

On other hand, in 1st, 2th, and 3th year, there are still more women in abstract math classes than men. I do not think any "who is better at what" can be said, beyond the stereotype "women are bad at math" can be explicitly be stated as false.

[B-Con]

> On other hand, in 1st, 2th, and 3th year, there are still more women in abstract math classes than men.

This is almost definitely false. While the male/female gender ratio is reasonably close to even for math majors (I think it's 60/40 m/f?), it is nowhere close to even for many heavy math-based disciplines. Engineering and computer science degrees are very male-dominate and the students routinely spill over into math classes.

FWIW, I majored in math at a university that was 10th highest in the student female to male ratio. I counted some of the classes for fun, and I remember counting a slight male majority most of the time. One semester I believe I counted a 57% male population over my math classes.

> I do not think any "who is better at what" can be said, beyond the stereotype "women are bad at math" can be explicitly be stated as false.

This certainly seems to be true. High school females are starting to outperform males in math, while males continue to dominate math graduate school. Reasons are unknown, but in general we can say that "girls aren't bad at math".

[boboblong]

When people speak of "abstract math", they generally mean mathematics, because they use the term "math" far too loosely. In a very real sense, a person can be taught to "do math" all the way through Calculus III, Linear Algebra, and even Differential Equations and still not have any real aptitude for mathematics.

[pbhjpbhj]

>stereotype is that it limits choice ("I'm a boy so I -must- play with guns instead of dolls"), which leads to inefficient use of the potential of the next generation //

Stereotypes don't themselves limit choice they enable statistical analysis of populations. It's what you choose to do with the analysis that can lead to limitation of choice.

However, if I'm tall and you're short then it's not better for us together as a [small] population to cut short my legs and give you stilts to give us a semblance of similarity - who's going to reach all the high and low places [efficiently] then?

Of course this doesn't speak to an individuals worth, but your sentence says "the next generation" and so we're looking at the population as a whole.

>To miss out on a math genius just because she happened to be a girl and was taught that she's too stupid to handle advanced math is detrimental to the advancement of the human race. //

Individuals are largely irrelevant to the advancement of the human race.

Now the question is if group A have a propensity born out of their biology to activity X but you have to ensure that equal numbers of group B are doing X, despite their propensity for that activity being statistically reduced over group A's then that is inefficient. I would warrant in a far more significant way. It's a big if of course.

No one is supporting teaching people they're stupid.

>So limit an individual's choices based on gender is as dumb as limiting them based on race. //

I don't agree that these are comparable. If I want to be a mother then my race is largely irrelevant.

However, those who wish to remove gendered play are attempting to limit choice based on gender. By not letting gender-C do activity Y _because that's a stereotypical activity thusfar for gender-C_ you are doing that very thing that you'd claim not to. Moreover you're assuming that the behaviour is bad just because of the gender of the subject.

[FWIW if you'd couched your arguments in terms of something akin to a Kantian imperative instead of in terms of benefit to the human race I think they'd be much stronger].

[lmm]

The thing is that even true stereotypes can be harmful. If 90% of group A like thing 1 and dislike thing 2, and you form a stereotype on this basis (a true, accurate stereotype) - you offer As 1s when they come round, you market your job that involves a lot of 2s to Bs rather than to As - then you can exclude and harm the 10% of As who like thing 2 and dislike thing 1. It's not being false that makes a stereotype bad.

[emmapersky]

What is wrong with stereotypes is that they are stereotypes. They are fine as theoretical constructs in an educated debate, but they reek havoc on those who are still developing their sense of identity.

Gender stereotypes are the reason kids get called fag or dyke at school, irrespective of their sexual orientation. This is real, and these kids are suffering terribly because of it. The number of student suicides because of homophobic bullying is on the rise, and it is something we can fight against.

I'm not saying there are no differences (although there are virtually no professions that need be gender specific - men and women can be equally proficient at almost everything), but that we should foster an environment where we minimize those differences because the outcomes of not doing that quite literally destroys lives.

All the evidence you need can be found by checking out the "It Gets Better" campaign started by Dan Savage.

[mattmanser]

Minimizing the differences between the sexes destroys lives by emasculating men, leaving them depressed, unable to secure a mate and suicidal. See, we can all do it. The "It Gets Better" campaign has nothing to do with this, taking a tiny subsection of the population and trying to say it shoud apply to us all is bad science.

I am absolutely fine with saying we should foster the understanding that there are different gender choices than just hetro male/female. That we should embrace those choices as willingly as the other two.

What I am vehemently opposed to is your outrageous view that the way to do that is for us all to become the same. I'm for more choices, not less.

[subsystem]

"Minimizing the differences between the sexes destroys lives by emasculating men, leaving them depressed, unable to secure a mate and suicidal."

Do you have any support for that claim? I've seen much more support for male "suck it up" sterotypes causing suicides, by keeping people from getting help with PTSD and similar issues. Not that the two would be mutually exclusive.

[emmapersky]

You are putting words into my mouth, and attacking me with an ad hominem (outrageous is totally unnecessary there). I never indicated we should all be the same, rather we should all be free to develop our identities without the social constructs that society puts in our way. If you want yo express your identity by farting, belching and touching your groin every five minutes, I'm fine with that. But if toy go round saying that women should do that, or its unladylike, or in any other way assert those behaviors as masculine to kids and teens who have no had a chance to fully form their identities, well then we have a problem.

As for source material, the bibliography of Delusions of Gender is a good place to start.

[irahul]

> I never indicated we should all be the same, rather we should all be free to develop our identities without the social constructs that society puts in our way.

Minimizing differences, which you have advocated again and again, imply we should all be same.

[afuchs]

The OP's article describes a Swedish school's overreaction to gender bias by forcing behaviour modification on students who display gender-conforming behaviour. This is an overreaction to gender bias issues both real and perceived. Ignoring the context presented by the article, emmapersky is advocating gender neutrality. They aren't advocating the forced minimization of gender differences; they want to end bias against those who display gender-variant behaviour.

Gender bias is present in our society along with the pressure to conform to gender stereotypes. Boys who play with dolls are often bullied by other boys and are socially rejected by their peers. Girls who don't dress the right way are bullied by other girls and are also socially rejected by their peers. In adult life, men who chose careers such as nursing are chastised for it by members of both genders. Women who chose professional careers are pressured forgo their careers to have children, again, by the members of both genders. To those who take gender-variant roles, this is a problem.

While there is a problem, some overreact to it trying to treat gender-conforming behaviour as a disease; as this example in the article:

  Hunter College psychologist Virginia Valian, a strong
  proponent of Swedish-style re-genderization, wrote in the
  book Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women, "We do not
  accept biology as destiny ... We vaccinate, we inoculate,
  we medicate... I propose we adopt the same attitude toward
  biological sex differences."

That is not a reasonable solution. Gender-variant behaviour should be tolerated instead of being discouraged. The article's conclusion agrees:

  There was a time when a boy who displayed a persistent
  aversion to trucks and rough play and a fixation on frilly
  dolls or princess paraphernalia would have been considered
  a candidate for behavior modification therapy. Today, most
  experts encourage tolerance, understanding, and
  acceptance: just leave him alone and let him play as he
  wants. The Swedes should extend the same tolerant
  understanding to the gender identity and preferences of
  the vast majority of children.

Postscript: Anyone engaged in the debate of gender bias and gender stereotypes should be aware of both their own and other's social biases[1].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_biases_in_judgment_and_...;

[irahul]

> I'm not saying there are no differences (although there are virtually no professions that need be gender specific - men and women can be equally proficient at almost everything), but that we should foster an environment where we minimize those differences because the outcomes of not doing that quite literally destroys lives.

I have absolutely 0 interest in minimizing difference. Some people are straight, some are gay. Straights should act a little gay, or gays should try to be straight to minimize differences?

Minimizing differences is not the objective, embracing differences is.

[emmapersky]

Sadly I think you have completely missed the point here. The notion that there is a way to act gay or straight is exactly what is being debated.

[irahul]

> Sadly I think you have completely missed the point here

What point did I miss? From the very beginning of this thread, you are advocating minimizing differences? And I am saying minimizing differences is bad. There are differences - gender differences, sexual preference difference, personality difference...Minimizing differences is not only misguided, it's wrong.

[saraid216]

And with one fell blow, you ignore the entire existence of transgenders. Good job!

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