Mumsnet Talk

They're colourist, imo - ignoring orange, yellow, red, green, teal, indigo, brown, etc, etc

The pic of the pink in ToysRUs is foul!

boak at that picture of ToysRUs! God I hate pink so much, but you don't exactly get much choice. Most of the stuff we bought DD for Christmas was the boys' version as I couldn't stand any more pink in the house.

eeek! that picture is horrible. Glad they picked up the point that 'pink is for girls' is a recent idea.

Flipping heck - that Toys 'r' us aisle is a sight to behold.

I don't mind the colour pink, so the picture doesn't bother me any more than had it been all blue, green or orange. I don't have any particular problem with any colours TBH.

My DD has always been a girly girl and into pink and glitter and dolls and Barbie, etc. She still doesn't do pestering and asking in shops though.

Yes, Edam - pink such a recent hijack for girls. DS2 is a one-boy attempt to send it back the other way though - he adores all things pink

I've always been firstly amused, then really bored by the lack of choice on the high street (the inevitable pink/the evil camouflage).

ds used to like pink but now he's in Year One he's given in to peer pressure. He grabbed a catalogue from a stand outside Boots before Christmas and was flicking through going 'no, too girlish' or 'YUCK, too pink'!

Funny thing is two of his bestest friends at school are girls - although admittedly they aren't frilly girls who fit into marketing stereotypes.

My DM was going on about the (I assume since she would never read the Daily Mail) Guardian/Observer take on this - which was apparently saying that girls are no longer 'allowed' to inherit their older brother's clothes and toys - DM was threatening to send pictures of DD looking angelic in DS's hand-me-downs.

There is a balance to be struck somewhere. My DD went to bed on Christmas Day clutching new doll in one hand and new tractor in the other. So far so good but she is only 2 .

I'm more concerned with the actual toys than the pinkness.

We went into Toysrus to get dd a present and came out with zilch, I've never seen such rubbish in all my life. Basically there was a choice between Polly Pocket (who spends her life shopping),Bratz(who dress like hookers and want to be stars)or Barbie(who aspires to being a princess or TV chef),baby doll stuff.

It was all extortionate and dreadful quality(most of the boxes contain a cheap,flimsy plastic toy padded out with cardboard). They have very little play value(except for the baby doll stuff)as are all pretty much identical but created so girls want to collect them,thus wasting vast amounts of money.

DD 4 has a pink bedroom(ok after twin boys I went a bit mad when pg with dd)we both now hate it. She almost never wears pink but has a variety of toys pink and mostly not pink. She loves Playmobil and now also Sylvanian families, she's also heavily into her baby dolls, books and roleplay stuff likes till etc. Her dolly pushchair is red which she chose and as a lot of our toys were the boys first they tend to be lime green.

I'm not anti pink as such just anti crap toys that are not worth a fraction of what they cost. DD had a box of wooden cakes in a fushia pink box for Xmas. The play value already has been fantastic and they are such good quality I'll probably be passing them on to my grandchildren. They were £8 half the cost of Barbie Princess Maraposa(sp?)

Today dd and my dtwins set up the Brio stuff to the Playmobil seaside stuff and camper van-they went travelling round the world!!!!!! The boys took the Sylvanian babies prisoner after stealing all the bread from the bakery and put them in the castle dungeo,dd rescued them with the aid of a knight. Yes these toys are expensive but my dc just have less.

Basically with good quality toys children can engage in quality play and become whatever they want to be. They can also engage in quality play with the simplest of things eg a cardboard box or a stick.

I worry that parents are now being fooled into buying utter crap for their girls and there dd are subsequently loosing their imagination and just aspiring to be a princess,star or live in a shopping mall

"deliberately widening the gap between the sexes" How can liking pink do this? Does liking pink immedialty confir a lesser status on people? I don;t think so. Neither does it discourage young girls from thinking for themselves.

Author of a book called Toxic Childhood? She should go visit kids in underdeveloped countries and really see what a toxic childhood is. Silly silly woman.

<<whispers - MilaMae if you can close your eyes to all the tat (which is at least as bad for boys as it is for girls, BTW) ToysRUs often have good deals on Playmobil>>

We did look but just seemed to be inflated pre-Xmas prices.,thanks for the tip though,if I ever manage to drag dp back will check it out.

We got some great prices at this baby site somebody on here recommended,can't rem the name but everything was cheaper and free postage. The Playmobil site sometimes does offers, the Supersets were 3 for 2 a while back

She seems to have missed the point that it's pink becasue it sells. What possible reason could marketing people have with forcing pink on little girls - if they could do such a thing anyway? If blue sold more units, they isles would be decked blue, or purple or orange. The most popular colour would predominate. There's no sinister agenda here.

It's just a reminder to avoid Toys'r'us and go to different shops. We manage to mostly avoid the pink plague despite having 3 girls. If you shop online or in traditional toyshops it's a lot easier to avoid pink plastic tat.

I'm not sure it's entirely true that there's no sinister agenda. It is about shifting units, but one of the most successful things about it must surely be to cut down on the amount of sharing between different sex siblings. You can buy pink everything for a girl, even a carseat and buggy FFS but there are very few people who would clothe a boy head to toe in pink, so, if they are suckered into the pink trap, would be forced to buy it all again if they had another child and it was a boy this time.

I agree there are good toys and there are crap toys, and in shops like Toys R Us the crap predominates, so that it is hard to find decent things if you shop there in the wrong mood.

I love pink and so does my DS. There is nothing wrong with the colour, but its exclusive use on girls' toys is, IMO, to encourage more gender segregation and therefore more spending from families who have one or more of each.

It is damaging. I cannot believe the number of times I've heard a mum of boy(s) say they don't know what to buy a preschool girl for her birthday because they dont' know anything about girls/girls' toys, as though they were a separate species.

It's about stereotyping little girls to be pink and frilly so when they grow up they will be passive and no threat to men.

It's the backlash and it's grim.

The preponderance of pink is depressing, I totally agree with whoever said that it's to cut down on the possibility of sharing between sibs and thus make the manufacturers more money.

Having ventured into Toys R Us for the first time recently, I'm not sure what gave me the greater headache - the blazing pink girls' aisle, or the McDonalds branded 'My First Drive Thru' I saw among the toddler toys.

<returns to smelly hippy corner and weaves own yoghurt>

"One mother wrote: 'Every b**y thing you go to buy, you have to choose whether you want the girls' version - pink and yellow and gross - or the boys' version - blue and grey and gross.' "

Me! It was me! I said that! Ha ha, I've been quoted in the DM.

Burn the witch!

We saw a set of play McDonalds food-who on earth would part with good money and buy that?

It's funny. When I was growing up my mum was a feminist and refused to let me wear dresses or have anything pink and was appalled when I asked for a doll when I was six for christmas.

Now she buys all manner of pink things for DD. Who frankly likes them but then she likes stuff generally. She came back from the shops the other day with a wooden spoon she'd fallen in love with and persuaded DH she needed!

Let's face it, kids like presents and really it's not about the colour but it's the shiney newness.

But I do think most of the toys in Toys r us et all are shockingly shite. Where are the nice wooden trains and bricks and stuff?

We don't go into ToysRUs much (DD doesn't like shopping) but when we have, she always avoids the 'pink aisle' unless we've been buying birthday presents for girly friends.

There is absolutely no rule against girls having any colour product. She chose the 'boys' pogo stick not the 'girls' (so did her 'girly' friend, who knows whats cooler!).

Don't go to TRU if you don't like it. ELC is pretty good for little 'uns, and online Tridias and Bright Minds (to name but two) do loads of good stuff.

You cannot force a toddler to like anything. As parents we all know that. Our kids are not passive objects and liking pink and frilly things does not make them into passive objects.

Anything archityically feminine has negative connotations because second wave feminism decided femininity was weak and masculinity was the model we should aspire too. Roll on the 4th wave of feminism, I say.

archetypically. As you were

Oh Fennel, I do wish you would engage on this issue. How is feminism supposed to progress...or am I wrong in thinking it an progessive movement?

Oh come off it MT, do you think 90 per cent of the little girls in the country individually decided they really, really, really like pink all on their very own taking no account of what they see around them at all? Completely oblivious to marketing budgets, promotions and advertising?

I'm all in favour of celebrating things that girls are into, but there's a bit difference between genuine appreciation and being pushed and kneaded by Mattel, Hasbro et al.

The massive branding of everything also leads to a narrowing of imagination, I think.

for example the princess dressing-up dress; it seems all but impossible to get a generic princess dress on the high street - every single one is Disney branded.

admittedly some of them are blue etc but the agenda is clear - reinforce the idea that a REAL princess looks like one of the disney characters; collect several and get the matching dolls, with mini-versions, and so on.

no encouragement of the idea that girls or boys can have their own idea of what a princess wears or looks like or does.

same for boys - the 'boys' dressing up is exclusively super heroes or pirates. That's it, other than Halloween or Christmas themes.

the whole pink thing is part of that - in a society that is so enormously consumer focussed, it is a colossal reinforcement of the idea that a 'proper' girl has pink when everything in sight looks that way.

Mind you, I remember being seriously pissed off as a child because ALL dolls were blonde with blue eyes. At least these days I'd stand a chance of finding one that looked a little bit like me without going on a major expedition.

Most toys in most shops are awful, I find. I hanker after the days, long before I was a parent, when most of the toys in the Early Learning Centre were wooden. And I went off Playmobil when I noticed that the fairy castle page of the catalogue has a pink border, while the police motorbikes and what have you are on a page with a blue border.

There is a massive choice of toys available though that are not pink; my daughter does have the girl type stuff- Hannah Montana, High School Musical and the Hairspray dolls, but mostly she plays with animal themed toys - Sylvanian families, animal puppets, animal books etc, and it is really the different animal species she is keen on, not any particular brand.

Also the ladybird classic tales books are good if you want traditional illustrations of the fairy tale characters that are not disneyfied, they are a much more appealing alternative.

Well my dd [5] likes pink & certainly wasn't pushed into it by Matell or Hasbro.

She liked it way before she discovered dressing up, My Little Pony etc. She has pink walls in her room which was painted when she was only playing with Bob The Builder & Thomas The tank Engine.

Until 9 months ago, she barely had a 'girlie toy'. Then her new friend had My Little Ponies & she got into them. She was given a Bratx by her other friend for her b'day but I think she threw it away!

She had $25 for Christmas, and she knew she could buy what she liked. Dh took her to TrU & she by passed all the pink stuff & brought a remote control dinosaur...[noisy bloody thing!] which is has played with more then her 'pink stuff'.

Just because she likes pink it doesn't dominate her life, sha can take it or leave it & seeminly doesn't buy into 'pester power' from the manufactorers!

A lot of little girls are dressed in pink from the day they are born. It very rarely happens to little boys, so it's a bit rich to pretend that this is all down to children's choices.

I've certainly heard enough parents telling their sons and daughters that pink is for girls. Children do pick up on this stereotyping stuff.

ELC's bloody awful for it - although I do every now and then email them to complain (like after discovering their toy barbecue set was available in baby pink and baby blue but not something reasonable like green) and they do have a few different colours in there now. One year, pretty much every toy was available in pink or blue and that was it.

only thing is hunker, you then have people in the shops saying to the staff- "I'd buy it if it was in pink." Which then gets fed back to the team at head office. If a certain number of requests for pink for particular items crop up, then they are well within reason to assume that that is what the customer wants therefore the stuff is ordered in pink because it makes profits.

Am I the only one who when hearing the phrase "pink toys" immediately thinks of a rampant rabbit?

Oh, I know. It's fecking tragic. A pink barbecue set fgs?

Having said that, I might get this for DS2's birthday - he's obsessed with having a pink cake for his birthday atm!

"Oh come off it MT, do you think 90 per cent of the little girls in the country individually decided they really, really, really like pink all on their very own taking no account of what they see around them at all? Completely oblivious to marketing budgets, promotions and advertising?"

Occam's razor Edam. Yes. About 90% of girls do prefer pink to any other colour. That's not to say they aren't encouraged to buy it, but no one has them in an arm lock forcing them to do it.

What I don't get though is what is wrong with pink? Except 90% of boys tuning their noses up at it?

And, just another thought, both boys and girls watch the same TV ads, yet still most girls gravitate towards girls toys and boys to Ben 10. That is total freedom of choice in action.

My son is in the 10% minority of boys who like pink though he seems to growing out of that now. I didn't dress him in pink from birth.

No, I think the TV ads make it very clear that pink is for girls and superheroes for boys.

I'm very glad that ds prefers Ben 10 to power-rangers and Marvel Comics superheroes, btw - far more bearable. But atm he really, really likes playing with my old doll's house. I doubt very much he'll play with it when he has little boys round, though - he is getting a serious message from his peers and TV ads that dolls houses are for girls and girl stuff is yuck.

But really, not being arsey here, do you really think our kids are so easily led? That they have no preferences of their own that also might happen to be gender specific?

I still don;t see what's wrong with pink. Can someone please explain that?

Sorry, x-posts. But agaon, it's chicken and egg, isn;t it?

I don't see anything wrong with pink per se but I do object to small children being told if you are a girl you play with pink girly toys and if you are a boy you play with blue toys.

And expecting an individual small child to stand up against the weight of society's expectations is a big ask. It's hard enough for adults to buck the trend.

I don't think it is chicken and egg. When I was very little, in the 70s, pink really wasn't a huge thing. Toys were far less obviously gender-differentiated. Have discussed this with my mother who agrees.

Mind you, there was one horrible little girl who chucked my sister out of the play house in reception 'because your Mummy works'!

Oh 70s a differnt ball game. Things were totally segragated then. Oddly, far less choice.

See my comment about blonde, blue-eyed dolls! Oddly enough my slightly racist grandmother bought us a black baby doll. But told us it was called 'Blackie'. <cringe>

And yes, lots of people were quite determined to tell girls they should play at ironing and boys with Meccano but manufacturers didn't - the toys on sale weren't pink or blue. ELC especially has really changed.

SOrry MT but the segregation and commercial pressure is there. It's almost impossible to buy anything for a child older than about 6 months that isn't gendered. Even things like colouring books and crayons are either 'Fairy Princesses and ickle butterflies and pink,' or 'trucks and trains and pirates and blue'. All of this reinforces the idea that the most important thing about you is whether you are a boy or a girl, and that gender defines everything. This is just so bad for people - it leads to misery and bullying for the child who doesn't want to slot into a narrow, rigid, gender role and it leads to misery in adulthood when you end up believing wankers like John Gray about hte 'difference' between men and women, which all boils down to 'Men are more important that women, I don't want to talk about my feelings, so shut up, suck my dick and cook my dinner'.
And it's not just toys, either - when it comes to clothes, everything above 3 months is, again, gendered: the only reason you can get newborn clothes in yellow, green, white, etc is because of people wanting to buy without knowing the sex yet. FFS toddlers need simple, practical clothes like leggings and t-shirts in a range of colours, they don't all have to have stereotypical pictures on and in the case of girls' clothes, extra frills and glitter and shit that makes them actually very impractical.

I think pink is a very appealing colour full stop. I know my DS is not alone in being a pink loving 3yo boy. I regularly buy him pink things such as drinking cups, toothbrushes etc. Even his cycle helmet is pink.

BUT I am as guilty of gender stereotyping as the next person really. I took him into our wonderful independent toy shop, hoping to find a large play castle for his Xmas present. He utterly fell in love with a lovely large wooden expensive pink doll's house. He already owns a (cheapo NCT sale plastic) pink doll's house, but this really was fantastic and had far more play value for an older child. Did I buy it for him? No, because I fear he's only got a year or so left before he picks up the "pink is for girls" message and if I don't end up having other children to play with the house, it will have been a bad investment.

People gender stereotype children, casually, all the time. It starts as early as the 20 week scan if you find out the sex (one of the reasons I don't). I find it immensely depressing and not entirely escapable.

Incidentally, even in our wonderful independent toy shop full of hugely expensive wooden toys, there is a corner of the shop with a distinctly pink glow, where the "girls' stuff" resides.

solidgold, perfectly put.

the pink/blue preference is clearly culturally determined, not innate - back in ye olden days pink was seen as a boys' colour, as it was regarded as pale red therefore active and aggressive. And blue for girls - calm and passive.

So all those little girls who have lots of pink clothes and pink toys and ask for a pink duvet or pink colouring book are actually reacting to what they see around them, not demonstrating an individual preference.

My DD is three, and she loves pink, but I do have limits on what toys I allow her to have.

There is a post it on my mum and dads fridge called "Evelyns Forbidden Toys" which has a list of the toys I will not allow in my house. The list is:

* No Bratz (dress like hookers)
* No Barbie
* No Baby Anabelle / Baby Born / talking baby dolls
* No Hannah Montanna (she is too young)
* No High School Musical (she is too young)

DD does like pink. She had her room painted pink last week. She also likes purple. She has barbie type dolls but they are the disney princess types (mum got them from Woolies, she has Belle, Ariel, Cinderella, Snow White, Aurora, Jasime and a singing Ariel) but she plays with them as the films she has seen.

She does have dolls (baby type ones, and a pram) but they are typically soft dolls rather than the baby annabelle ones. She rarely plays with them.

I hate Bratz and will not allow them in my house.

DD's favourite toys are: her princess dolls, her peppa pig house and camper van, her dora laptop and some weebles stuff. Main colours are yellow, purple and green.

She is a Disney fan as well, she has loads of jigsaws which she loves to play with.

"'Men are more important that women, I don't want to talk about my feelings, so shut up, suck my dick and cook my dinner'."

That's the difference bewteen the sexes? lol

Who says? Really? Or it that a bit of a straw man? I have few John Grey books. Never read that in them, funnily enough.

Lookl, al the evidence points to the fact that men and women are different. Difference doesn't equal inferior by any stretch of the imagination. I know socisty was built on those kind of dichotomies, and women;s roles were proscribed. But things have changed a lot.

I just wonder when feminism can judge itself by it's successes rather than it's failures, becasie it's hardly a great pitch to young women to say, we've failed at everything when the chioces women have today, even if feminists don;t like them, are evidence of great success in many areas, especuialy equality issues which has a 80% success rate. What if that remaining 20% was women chosing.

I really think women are more vital and actiuve than feminism gives them credit for.

MT, men and women are not that different except in the few obvious areas of women not being able to produce sperm and men not having ovaries. If it were true that preferring, say, pink over blue, or football over 'pampering' was a genetically-programmed secondary sexual characteristic then women engineers, male nurses etc would all be sterile.
The obsession with labeling and reinforcing gender differences is really about reinforcing male privilege. If there's no hierarchy then there's no need to be so panic-stricken about human beings who don't fall into the stereotyped categories. It sets up the default human being as male, and females as 'other' ie a human being needs a basic toolkit for minor home repairs (you know, hammer, screwdriver, allen keys, spanner etc). So a human being goes to a shop to buy one. Nowadays, though, if that human being is a female, she has the, er, choice, to pay extra for a PINK toolkit, thus reinforcing the idea that women aren;t really people and that the idea of hanging a picture is frightening and strange to them so they have to have a pink dolly hammmer to do it with just till they find a nice Man to do it for them. Etc.

LOL @ men and women are not that different, look at the divorce rate.

Haven't read all the thread but I disagree that by choosing a pink toolkit (or a pink mobile phone, iPod or laptop, etc), it reinforces male privilege. If I choose to buy something pink, then it because that is my choice. My current car is black, my last car was bottle green and my next car will probably be black. However, I could equally choose that my next car should be pink.

I do think the 'pinkness' of toys has been overdone but then again, how many parents don't buy pink baby clothes for their daughters?! Manufacturers/marketers are just cashing in on age-old preferences; girls will generally choose/prefer 'girly' things whilst boys will generally choose/prefer 'boy' things. And more women than men choose to wear make-up.

The pink for adult women marketing craze is absolutely sickening.

It's got a lot more to do with gendered stereotyping than it has to do with choice.

<<Applauds solidgold and dittany. Books day trip to France to buy girls clothes which are neither sugar pink nor encrusted with effigies of Barbie, Dora or Bratz.>>

The difference between any two individuals is far greater than any difference you might predict by saying 'that one's got a womb, that one's got a penis'. Saying 'men are like this, women are like that' reduces unique individuals to stereotypes. SOME women like knitting, I don't. SOME men like Top Gear, so do I, despite having breasts.

Women have, on average, more connections between the two halves of the brain. But that's an average, doesn't saying much about any one person's brain.

And women are more likely to suffer from migraine, which is thought to be at least partly to do with oestrogen and possibly other hormones. But plenty of women don't and plenty of men suffer from hormones. You can't reduce an individual to the sum of their bodily parts.

I meant plenty of men suffer from migraine, not hormones!

Although men do suffer from fluctuations in the level of male sex hormones.

Mr Inferior suffers from my hormones sometimes, I will freely admit.

>>>The pink for adult women marketing craze is absolutely sickening.

I don't find it sickening, just unnecessary. But manufacturers are just cashing in on preferences that already exist, in that the majority of women want to appear different from men. Choosing a pink car/laptop, etc, is just another way of achieving this because not many men would choose to drive a pink car or to buy themselves a pink laptop.

>>>It's got a lot more to do with gendered stereotyping than it has to do with choice.

I disagree. You could say that dolls for girls, cranes for boys and make-up for women is gender stereotyping but I think that gender differences and free choice play a bigger part.

Believer: the divorce rate has more to do with people having different expectations of what a marriage should be/marrying for the wrong reasons/getting bored with each other than any kind of essential difference between men and women. Lesbian and gay marriages break up as well, you know.

(And if anyone feels like trying to split hairs about how a civil partnership isn't 'really' a marriage, then why not just go and fuck yourself with a sharp stick instead?)

"Choosing a pink car/laptop, etc, is just another way of achieving this because not many men would choose to drive a pink car or to buy themselves a pink laptop."

And that's the problem right there, because most women won't have issues with a blue car or a grey laptop if that's what's on offer but men will refuse to have anything to do with pink because it's connected to women and in our sexist society that means inferior. A man with a pink laptop or car would also mocked for being feminine or gay (homophobia springs from misogyny).

I think your claims that all this is down to some sort of innate sex differences (what is the gene for liking pink BTW) is mistaken given the millions upon millions spent on promoting these stereotypes. Advertisers and marketers aren't immune from sexism you know - in fact some of the worst male sexists I've come across worked in those spheres.

>>>> but men will refuse to have anything to do with pink because it's connected to women and in our sexist society that means inferior

but only if you choose to view it in that way. I don't. My dh has two pink shirts that he wears regularly and AFAIK, it doesn't make him feel inferior.

I don't think there is a gene for liking pink but there is a gene for being female. Jordan sells pink horse accessories and I don't think she's sexist, just somebody who is canny enough to know how to make a very fast buck out of young girls who want to dress their horses in something other than grey/blue. Most advertisers play to sterotypes, particularly cosmetics ads.

For some reason pink clothing (especially if the guy is posh) doesn't have the same connotations. Maybe men just like wearing what suits them.

However pink objects do. You keep going back to individual choice, however sexism exists socially. Go to any part of the country and you will find men who would never dream of owning or using pink items because of their feminine connotations. If you don't believe me buy your dh a pink i-pod and ask him to use it in public. His refusal isn't an individual choice, it's a socially created antipathy to a colour which is caused by its socially created connection to women who are still regarded as inferior to men by society at large.

If there isn't a gene for liking pink then liking pink has nothing to do with being female, it's a social construct. But actually you seem to agree with me when you say that advertisers play to stereteotypes - indeed they do and its one of the ways that these so-called preferences are created in the first place.

I see we made it into the Saturday telegraph with this discussion

LOL at my dh being posh!! Must tell him when he gets back later....

Of course I realise that pink for girls, blue for boys is a social constuct in the same way that make-up for women is a social construct. That much is obvious and it's a social construct that is currenlty serving manufacturers well.

Howeever, rather than viewing women as inferior beings to men because of their aversion to pink objects, I prefer to see men as the more restricted gender. The poor things have to stick with blue, green and grey and can't wear heels, skirts, make-up or dresses (excepting those men who choose otherwise of course).

I would say that any parent who frowns on their young son for wanting to wear pink, play with dolls, play with girls, etc, is no different from the sexist advertisers/manufacturers that you mentioned earlier but I'm guessing that most social constructs begin at home.

Sterile? Um, no, that doesn't follow. sorry.

To say male and female sexuality is different is not to reduce people down to anything. There are myriad individual charateristics within that schema. But there are statistical facts and pshychsexual difference is just that - a fact. It's not speculation. That difference is no threat to anyone, unless you secretly fear women are inferior. Gender inferiority doesnt occur in biology. I always wonder wehy it if faminists who have the hardest time believeing that.

I know lots of manoly men who were pink shirts. Pink is quite fashinable actually. I really object the idea that girls wear pink cos they are easily led, but men wear it cos they are somehow more liberated. Yoiu can't have it both ways. I have no idea why pink could be seen as sickening when a girl chooses it and tastful when a man does.

The only people obsessed with 'labels' are feminists, who insit the world is agaoinst them. It's not. It's them who are against the world. Our world anyway. There are many misogynous cultures on earth - ours is not longer one of them.

Men suffere from their hormones. Its why their life expectancy is lower than womens.

SExists still exsits of course, just as racists and plain old misanthrpoists. But our society isn't as it was. The cause for equality for 2nd wave feminism has been a success. Again, it's faminists who have the hardest time accepting that becasue it seems they wrote the script in the 70s and expect the outcme to follwo that scripot verbatim. Unsuprisingly, women have are writing their own scripts now. Another feminist triumph.

Fuck me, I'll shurrup

and I'm not sure if the word stereotype is accurate. There are many archrtypical female things.

I haven't read very deeply into feminist literature but I am puzzled by why one gender (female) would want to ape the other gender (male) - surely in doing so, the gender doing the apeing automatically stamps a label on itself that says, 'inferior'??!!

If women and femaleness aren't still percieved as lesser, inferior, 'other', why is it still seen as sort of reluctantly praiseworth for a woman to aspire to maleness, yet horrifying and ludicrous for a man to aspire to femaleness/ Just think of the semantic weighting and connotations of the word 'tomboy' versus the word 'sissy'.
Think of the number of people who would quite happily dress their DD in her older brother's cast-off clothing but would be fundamentally uneasy at dressing a DS in clothing labelled as 'girls'.

Whi says its horrifying and ludicrous for a man to aspire to femaleness? It's just meaningless hyperbole. There is a roaring trade in male to female trensexuals.

And I don't know anyone who would be 'happy' to dress theor DD in thei older brothers Ben Ten cast offs.

>>> Just think of the semantic weighting and connotations of the word 'tomboy' versus the word 'sissy'.

well, I wouldn't have worn my brother's underpants anymore than he would have worn my knickers.

If a person feels inferior to somebody - male or female - then that is their choice.

That's nonsense MMAJ. There are plenty of sexists in this world who work very hard to ensure that women do feel inferior to men and that our material situations reflect that inferiority.

Women still don't receive equal pay, women still get sacked when they get pregnant, rape is still a crime that most rapists can get away with, one in three women will experience domestic violence. These are all examples of discrimination against women - to pretend it is all in women's heads does women no good at all.

If second wave feminists had taken that attitude, we'd be even further behind than we are now. Sexism would be seen as the natural order of things rather than bigotry (although there are plenty of people trying to take us back that way).

As for the underpants thing - most people wouldn't swap underwear whatever the sex of the swapee is. That argument doesn't prove that sexism doesn't exist.

I never once said that sexism does not exist, of course it exists, just like all kinds of other 'isms' exist, which I won't bother to list here. How do these 'isms' get started in the first place, surely that's the best way to decode the problem? It must've been the case that somewhere along the line, one side (of the 'ism' in question) chose to feel inferior in some way to the other side.

In the case of sexism, it suits men if women choose to feel inferior to them. I for one, don't feel inferior to any man, it surprises me that any modern woman would.

Feeling inferior and being treated as inferior are two different things.

Women don't feel inferior which is why so many women have become feminists to fight against men trying (and very often succeeding) to treat us as inferior.

I don't understand why you keep ignoring all the men who do think they are superior to women and act in that manner. It's odd. Like I said discrimination doesn't exist in people's heads, it affects our material lives.

I'm sure there are men who think they are superior to women - so what, doesn't make it a fact. There are also many races who think they are superior to other races. Good luck to them and their distorted view of life.

There might be Dittany. But I'm not convinced women feel inferior today inspirte of them. They are more likely to know that any man who says such things is a sad losers. Which they are. Girls out perform boys in the classroom throught their education, there are many pre-male dominated jobs that are now female dominated, and many more with equal numbers. Some areas are still male dominated, but that is looking like it's more down to women simp0ly not chosing to work in those areas.

It's not enought to simply say 'women don't receive equal pay'. When wages are averages women's pay is 85% of the average mans. 85% in 30 years. That is something to feel good about not bad. And postive lobbying will do more that negative carping.

Men expereince male violence in far greater numbers than women do. If you look at the stats, men seem to hate other men far more than they do women. That's not to say there isn;t a place for feminism. But it needs to move on just as the world has. I have lost count of the young women that tell me they'd like to say they were feminists but are too embarressed and becasue they don;'t agree with much of the hyperbole. All the rhetoric about oppresion just doesn't square with their day to day expereinces. And that's a feminist triumph, it's only feminism that can't see it.

Rape prosecutuon is the biggest iussue for feminism today. But what is happening is that funding for rape crisis centres is being cut, becasue they are little more than outposts for 2nd wave feminism. The rhetoric on the england and Uk websites is all abotu feminoism and nothing to do with offering help to women who might have just expereinced sexual assault. What about women who have been assaulted but don;t subscrbe to 2nd wave feminist ideas? Where do they go, because Rape Crisis is more alienating than helpful.

Is it women that matter or feminism? I'd assert that the formers needs must come before the latter, but somehow that's been lost sight of.

Who is trying to 'prove sexism doesn;t exist'?

england and wales sites - not, interestingly though, scotlands sites

My god Dittany, you have to ignore the male supremacist idiots. Why dignify them with any engagement? It's they who are the minority now.

Are you OK MT? I can't understand what you are trying to say.

MMAJ - once again sexism affects women's material lives detrimentally. Until that changes it's not possible to just brush off the sexists or racists. Unfortunately there are a lot of sexist and racists with power to affect the lives of people whom they discriminate against.

I am spinning trying to understand this sorry Dittany, "Women don't feel inferior which is why so many women have become feminists to fight against men trying (and very often succeeding) to treat us as inferior."

So it's women who don't feel inferior who become feminists? Most feminist text challenges that. If anything, it's feelings of personal oppression and inferiority,l that subjective perspective that defines much feminism.

A healthy perspective, Manny!

It seems you are MT, which is why I was asking if you were OK.

If a person believes they are inferior they aren't going to fight against being treated as inferior because they will believe that is the natural order of things. Thus when feminism came into being, women were being constantly told that men were superior and women inferior, but feminist women decided they didn't agree with that and railed against the unjust treatment.

Feeling that you are oppressed is not the same as believing you are inferior. If you're struggling to understand, think of Nelson Mandela and the ANC - they believed that they were oppressed by the whites of South Africa but they didn't believe that they as black Africans were inferior to the whites. The whites did believe that they were superior to black Africans which is why they thought it was OK to oppress and suppress them.

Which feminist texts do you think argue that women are inferior to men?

It seems you are MT, which is why I was asking if you were OK.

If a person believes they are inferior they aren't going to fight against being treated as inferior because they will believe that is the natural order of things. Thus when feminism came into being, women were being constantly told that men were superior and women inferior, but feminist women decided they didn't agree with that and railed against the unjust treatment.

Feeling that you are oppressed is not the same as believing you are inferior. If you're struggling to understand, think of Nelson Mandela and the ANC - they believed that they were oppressed by the whites of South Africa but they didn't believe that they as black Africans were inferior to the whites. The whites did believe that they were superior to black Africans which is why they thought it was OK to oppress and suppress them.

Which feminist texts do you think argue that women are inferior to men?

>> once again sexism affects women's material lives detrimentally

but surely this is because it is mainly men who are in charge of pay-rises, in charge of politics and finance and so on. Women can now aim for any career they choose but until they stop having families and relinquishing their ascent up the greasy pole, then it will surely be difficult for women to dislodge men at the very top in equal numbers. So in a way, women who choose to stay at home with their families (or work part-time in roles that have little or less chance of progression) also contribute to the preponderance of men at the top.

I don't know you were a professor of psychology Dittany. "If a person believes they are inferior they aren't going to fight against being treated as inferior because they will believe that is the natural order of things." Wow, you need to get that nugget of wisdom published.

Carry on please, you demonstrate better than anyone what it looks like to follwing a political creed above plain common sense.

A person doens't have to be a professor of psychology to work that one out. Silly MT.

I'm thinking this is a repeat of last night because I still can't understand what you're trying to say, so like others did, I'll leave you to it.

No please continue Dittany. Nobody does it better

Just a quick link for Dittany about rhetorical tautology