nature nurture gender sterotype test - help please...

[ICBINEG]

Hi all. This might be too trivial for these hallowed halls but how about:

An online quiz with real picture of real babies/toddlers where in the first image everything parent imposed is removed (digitally) including earrings (yurrck) obvious hairdos, clothes, jewelry (double yurrck) toys etc.

The second image goes as is, with all of the above if present.

Under each you get to move a slider indicating how male....neutral....female you think the baby is.

Obviously you don't see the second picture till you have voted on the first.

This would demonstrate two things. Firstly that in most cases our kids only appear gendered to us because we know their gender. Secondly what fraction of looking like a girl or a boy is down to imposed stereotyping, and what is genetically present.

So does anyone think this might be interesting? Do you have photos? Do you have the expertise to write the web app?

It could be a fun app - pretty sure there's research done on ability to tell gender when a baby is dressed in a neutral white babygro, as I know there is on how people treat said baby when they're told it's a boy or it's a girl (regardless of the actual sex).

Probably easiest to put a circle round the face and black out the surrounding area to avoid seeing clothes and some earlobes. If you just want people to guess male versus female, I think Surveymonkey might suffice (or click a button for different probabilities of female and male). A slider is a bit more tricky.

yes...I am sure people have done real research - but my training in teaching is that nothing gets the message across better than proving it to yourself....

Ill check out survey monkey though - thanks!

What is this supposed to prove? That all babies look like babies?

wow the feminism boards on here are a waste of time aren't they....

it isn't supposed to "prove" anything. I thought it would be an interesting demonstration of just how much we influence the way our kids grow up based purely on gender....

But you would only demonstrate that babies don't look like a particular gender. Many parents believe that gender is associated with distinctive personality traits as well. I expect this has more influence than what the child looks like.

But males and females do look different - that's not much to do with feminism. It takes a while for babies to develop male or female characteristics, but I don't think any feminists would disagree that there is a male / female binary. I think you're confusing sex and gender IMO.