Last week, I read an article about a gender discrimination complaint filed against Toys R Us. The complaint was launched by a bunch of Swedish 6th graders who found the Toys R Us 2008 Christmas catalogue offensive because it reinforced stereotypical gender roles by featuring boys in active roles and girls in passive ones. According to the class’s teacher, the complaint brought forward by these children is the result of more than 2 years’ work on gender roles.
This story makes me want to jump for joy. To see an example of young people recognizing and trying to actively combat sexism and outdated gender roles gives me hope that today’s youth really can effect change in the world. One of the students even stated that children of either sex should be able to be whoever they want to be even if “guys want to be princesses sometimes.” How could I not swoon?
And then I read the online reader comments that followed the story. And I wanted to cry.
Although I’ve been around the block enough times to know how attached people are to the idea of gender and gender roles, I somehow am repeatedly shocked at how essentialist some people get. Several readers who posted comments seemed to confuse the Swedish children’s complaint as a desire to obliterate sex/gender altogether and homogenize all human beings, and many argued that there is a distinct, innate difference between boys and girls. Seriously, people, it’s the 21st century and you’re still trying to peddle that nonsense?
There’s really too much to address on this topic in a simple blog post, and, frankly, this whole discussion is so old that I can’t believe I’m even writing about it. But after having researched and written many an undergraduate psych paper on gender roles, I do know that an array of reputable psychologists and sociologists have studied gender and gender roles in children and have pretty much determined that gender is largely socially constructed. The types of toys children are given to play with, the types of clothes they’re dressed in, the types of activities they’re encouraged to pursue, and even how adults interact with boy babies versus girl babies: all that stuff makes a mark on a kid.
I don’t think the Swedish kids are calling for a complete erasure of sex and gender. I think the point is that we all need to be more mindful of how boys and girls/men and women are treated and represented and what kinds of expectations we have on each. The point is that difference shouldn’t be based on biological sex. Boys can be princesses and girls can be knights in shining armour. Get over it.
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