I heartily agree with this article - it's a bit of sanity that is much needed with all the push lately for extreme gender neutrality. The Swedish principles are currently being discussed here in Germany as well and are proving popular (though it most likely won't be as extreme for a while).<p>The flip side to all of this of course is the silly "LEGO Girl" product where they apparently forget that girls can (and do) build just as well as boys and instead market little Lego kitchens and household appliances instead of cool bricks.<p>But swinging from one sexist extreme to the other is not the way to go.
> A few years ago, a feminist political party proposed a law requiring men to sit while urinating<p>> In 2004, the leader of the Sweden's Left Party Feminist Council, Gudrun Schyman,proposed a "man tax"—a special tariff to be levied on men to pay for all the violence and mayhem wrought by their sex.<p>Ever since Orwell wrote 1984, people keep confusing it for operation manual for effective governance. I sincerely hope this craziness is a couple of attentions seekers and/or hate mongers, and the majority doesn't agree with them.<p>> One Swedish school got rid of its toy cars because boys "gender-coded" them and ascribed the cars higher status than other toys. Another preschool removed "free playtime" from its schedule because, as a pedagogue at the school put it, when children play freely 'stereotypical gender patterns are born and cemented. In free play there is hierarchy, exclusion, and the seed to bullying.'<p>What brilliant minds. Let's stop citizens from going outside. Because, you know, when people go outside, mugging, rapes and shit happens.
This article misses two absolutely critical points to the gender neutral debate.<p>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 <i>are</i> 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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
I honestly appreciate the efforts of Swedish people to promote equality, but they're a little misguided. Boys and girls just are different, and it's not only a matter of culture; in fact, I've always thought that cultural differences between men and women arose almost exclusively from biological differences that result in different behaviours (of course, each culture evolves those role differences in varied ways). Sociology sure has better insight to that than me.<p>The thing is, there are a lot of gender-neutral toys and games. Just not every one is. It's OK to me: the point of equality is not to remove differences, but to avoid mistreat and discrimination because of them.
Something seriously stinks about this article. I agree that boys should be allowed to act like boys and girls like girls, but I don't see how that's a position that needs to be defended with such a lengthy article. This feels more like some kind of propaganda. I have a really hard time believing the swedes are going batshit crazy trying to repress masculinity wherever they see it, as this article seems to describe. The advertisement of the little boy with the doll was refreshing in my opinion. It seems more likely that sweden is trying to create a more inclusive culture and that's commendable.<p>Gender is something that occurs on a spectrum, but most of the world is still trying to pretend there should only be two boxes to divide us all into. I'm a pretty masculine guy and my daughter loves dolls, but I'm also saving for college so she can be a scientist or engineer some day and if I had a son that liked dresses I'd beat the crap out of anyone that made him feel bad about it. The idea that the gender equality pendulum has swung too far the other way is insane to me. We're still a lot closer to 1950's America than any kind of star trek utopia where gender issues have been solved. That's just talking about the western nations. Not even counting all the parts of the world where gender equality is stuck in the mother fucking stone ages. Seriously.
The opinion piece by Christina Hoff Sommers, a well known critic of contemporary feminism, has little basis in fact and has almost nothing to do with hacking. Boys will be boys is a terrible way to argue about this important issue. I am disappointed to see it here.
The thing I found interesting in this article (the only substantive bit) was the empirical evidence based on hormone exposure behaviour differences.<p>I'd like to see the study, to check it's not some faked up nonsense, and if it's true it would perhaps alter my perception of the issue slightly.<p>Of course, I still think that the enormous societal pressure of gendered marketing (transmitted most effectively through peer pressure even in very small children, it seems) makes it almost impossible to actually measure anything in these systems ethically. I just think that if there is an underlying biological signal there as well (which I didn't really believe before) then insisting on absolute neutrality everywhere (as in the Swedes' school setup) seems like it won't work.<p>Quite why the article included all the wacky ideas of the crazy lefties who <i>aren't</i> in charge, like a "man tax," I don't know; makes the article seem less balanced for sure.
I think the author would have written a rather different article had they appreciated that not all humans experience gender in such a clear-cut and binary way.
I think it's interesting how all toy decisions are judged as messing up children's perceptions of the world in terms of gender, yet the one toy flying off the shelf has no gender association to it, and is perhaps doing more damage to childhood development.<p>The idea of substituting toys with iPad games is going to have consequences on our children. There are kids going into kindergarden classes these days who don't have the dexterity in their hands to hold crayons, simply because their parents don't let them play with their hands enough; holding things, and manipulating objects.<p>There are a lot of technologies these days for children that are so focussed on the cognitive development of kids that they ignore the physical development. Your kid doesn't need to be in MENSA by age 4. Teach your kids the tactile skills they need!
If my childhood is anything to go by, the boy will try to look under the doll's clothes, then try to pull its head off, swap its limbs around or otherwise deform it, then get bored and find something else to do.<p>I have no idea if girls do the same and wouldn't wish to make a value judgement...
It's good to be reminded that the toys you like to play with really have nothing to do with masculinity or femininity.<p>But to other people it's the first sign that gender realignment surgery might be required.<p>What gives? What really is the correct response to toys?
Would be awesome if the article actually represents Sweden in any way. It doesn't. It takes a few fringe institutions and proposals and pass them as some kind of Swedish norm. They are not. It is true that gender equality is hotly debated and sought after here, but this article does not reflect reality.<p>The party Gudrun Schyman represents had 0.40% of the vote 2010; not passing the 4% bar for a mandate in the parliament.
Tanja Bergkvist is a vocal anti-feminist, and not just "a mother".