ally douglas?’s Reviews > Sex/Gender: Biology in a Social World > Status Update

some people are afraid of a "genderless" future in which boys and girls are unknown concepts

Considering that men outside of the Western world seem to throw more similarly to girls of their culture, it is likely that this is a learned social behavior responding to societal expectations.

Here is where I disagree with Fausto-Sterling; it is unlikely that "plain old play" is what distinguishes boys' and girls' throwing. More likely is that boys' differing throwing style (Western boys, that is), is different by practice, in efforts to avoid accusations of "throwing like a girl."

"Girls, after all, wear jeans and overalls— even blue ones— as well as frilly dresses. Boys, however, have no such latitude. It does not take long for the negativity, the aversive training to come the way of a toddler boy wearing a pink frilly dress."

" So it is not hard to imagine that both praise and criticism related to the propriety of clothing and toy color might be especially salient in this time period. Children develop pride and pleasure in their own competence, including becoming competent at being a “strong little boy” or a “pretty little girl.” "

"In sum, whatever happens to produce strong preferences takes shape between the second and third year of development, a period when gender self knowledge and an understanding of social expectations are already under active construction."

this reminds me of banet-weiser's finding that the confidence gap between genders is a social impact, proven by the "like a girl" survey

"boys cling more rigidly to the stereotype than do girls"

In 1910 feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote of the “conspicuous evil” of a “premature and unnatural differentiation in sex in the dress of little children”

men used to wear dresses,

As recently as 1940 red and pink symbolized strength and courage and blue faith and constancy. Catholic traditions in Europe associated blue with the Virgin Mary; but by the 1930s Nazi Germany, especially via the pink triangle used to stigmatize homosexual men, anchored a new association of pink with femininity (Frassanito & Pettorini, 2008).

“If you like the color note on the little one’s garments,” the report advised mothers, “use pink for the boy and blue for the girl.” A 1918 piece in the Ladies Home Journal opined that pink was for boys and blue for girls because pink is “a more decided and stronger color . . . more suitable for the boy, while blue . . . is more delicate and dainty . . . prettier for the girl”