*nods* which is why it baffles me when people speak of these things in absolute terms. When people say things like 'most girls' do this, or 'most boys' do that. Many of the studies which are talked about in terms of proving the distinction between male and female brains, and between male and female thinking actually show nothing of the sort - they show that one gender, when taken in aggregate, show a slightly greater tendency towards x than y. That then gets reported as 'men really are hardwired to read maps!' and 'girls really are hardwired for empathy!'.
If a study shows that,when presented with a choice between a doll and a toy truck, boys choose the truck 60% of the time and girls only choose the truck 47 percent of the time - then that does not show that 'boys naturally like toy trucks' and girls naturally like dolls'. I remember a study a few years ago that seemed to prove the old theories of girls being more talkative than boys and having more sophisticated language use and vocabulary - but they were looking a single cohort of children. In that cohort, the difference between the two genders was marginal and was only present for about a year, after which they evened out. During the period in which there was a distinction - that distinction was simply that more boys scored lower down the scale and fewer scored higher up the scale. In fact there was much greater disparity between individuals within each gender than there was between the two genders. Yet, again, it was rolled out as proof of the vast gulf that separates male and female brains.
Quote:
|
I agree, but what I am more curious about is less in judging the phenomena and more in understanding it's role in larger dynamics. What does it do to young and still maturing girls to see those depictions? How does it shape world view, ego, ideals for the self, interaction with the opposite gender, and so on?
|
Not sure really, how to answer that. So much of this stuff happens at a subconscious level. I think, like much of this stuff, it is a double edged sword. The idea of women as somehow the 'grown-up' in a relationship (with the fellah as basically one more kid for her to chivvy along) also plays out in childhood with the notion of 'boys will be boys' while girls supposedly roll their eyes at their antics. So - ok, that shold in a sense give girls a boost to their self-esteem - but it can also be a conceptrual trap that makes them grow up faster and take on the expectation that they shold be sensible - it is coupled with the idea of girls as clean and demure - they aren't supposed to roll around in the dirt getting filthy and exploring the world with gay abandon,like the boys who are, in that rubrik, big kids.
Similarly, messages about male strength and vitality may have a positive impact on boys - but can also be a conceptual trap that reduces the number of social and emotional strategies that they are comfortable employing.
Personaly, I always gravitated more towards getting dirty and exploring the derelict factory up the road with my friends. We were a mixed bunch of boys and girls and we were pretty much all covered in grime with scraped knees. It used to rankle with me when my dad or one of my aunties would tell me that what i was doing wasn't 'ladylike'.
The double edged sword of female wisdom is that the 'grown-up' woman, surrounded by her actual children and her big kid husband, seems a bit of a killjoy - where fun and larking becomes a male trait. Games and toys, and fun are for children and men. That was a message I despised as soon as i became aware of it. It also ran counter to my own experience - ten to a penny if there was larking about in our house, Mum was at the centre of it.
As to how that plays out in the real world - it's fairly recent that computer gaming has started to become a mainstream passtime - up until a few years ago computer games were seen as play, as frivolity. Lots of girls played computer games - but many dropped off by the time they hit their early teens. In my own experience, I stayed with gaming for a long time. This past 3 or 4 years is probably the longest period I have had in my life without a game on the go. When I was 12 and home computers really broke through, loads of us got computers for Christmas. As i recall, there were at least 5 or 6 of us girls in our class who'd been given computers (mine was a Vic20, my best friend had a C64, another friend had a spectrum, one girl whose dad was a regional manager of some big business had a BBC Micro - can't recall the rest). We all talked games and swapped and met up at each others' houses and got involved in the computrer club that one of the teachers set up after school.
By the time I was 16, I knew very few girls who played computer games (or at least who discussed them). I knew plenty of lads who did. By 16, girls wanted to seem grown-up and looked down on the boys who were acting like big kids. The whole culture was coding games as play and therefore for children. That meant they also got coded male - or more accurately not female.
There were lots of other factors at play - some of which took 10 or 15 years to play out - but I do think thatmay be one of the reasons that girls tended to drop off games when they got to their teens in a way that boys didn't: boys had cultural permission to continue playing into adulthood and girls did not.
Now that games are becoming more mainstream and there is a greater acceptance of them as an adult passtime - more girls are staying with games into adulthood. Again, there are many factors at play, but I do think this is one of them.
It also plays out in the world of sports. It may well be one of the reasons that girls are less likely to play sports once they leave school than boys. Sports, like computer games, are play - and play is for children and men.
One of the most positive changes in our culture in recent years, to me anyway, is a much greater sense of play extending into adulthood for girls as well as boys. And a much greater sense that boys and men can be emotionally confident and equally socially adept is probably the other really good change. Obviously I'm basing this on British culture, I don't know what it's like elsewhere.