Posted on 12/08/2012 10:28:32 AM PST by nickcarraway
Is it discriminatory and degrading for toy catalogs to show girls playing with tea sets and boys with Nerf guns? A Swedish regulatory group says yes. The Reklamombudsmannen (RO) has reprimanded Top-Toy, a licensee of Toys"R"Us and one of the largest toy companies in Northern Europe, for its "outdated" advertisements and has pressured it to mend its "narrow-minded" ways. After receiving "training and guidance" from RO equity experts, Top-Toy introduced gender neutrality in its 2012 Christmas catalogue. The catalog shows little boys playing with a Barbie Dream House and girls with guns and gory action figures. As its marketing director explains, "For several years, we have found that the gender debate has grown so strong in the Swedish market that we have had to adjust."
Swedes can be remarkably thorough in their pursuit of gender parity. A few years ago, a feminist political party proposed a law requiring men to sit while urinatingless messy and more equal. In 2004, the leader of the Sweden's Left Party Feminist Council, Gudrun Schyman,proposed a "man tax"a special tariff to be levied on men to pay for all the violence and mayhem wrought by their sex. In April 2012, following the celebration of International Women's Day, the Swedes formally introduced the genderless pronoun "hen" to be used in place of he and she (han and hon).
Egalia, a new state-sponsored pre-school in Stockholm, is dedicated to the total obliteration of the male and female distinction. There are no boys and girls at Egaliajust "friends" and "buddies." Classic fairy tales like Cinderella and Snow White have been replaced by tales of two male giraffes who parent abandoned crocodile eggs. The Swedish Green Party would like Egalia to be the norm: It has suggested placing gender watchdogs in all of the nation's preschools.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Some time ago I saw a documentary about a boy who,when he was a baby,somehow suffered major damage to his you-know-what..I think it was the result of an operation gone wrong.The doctors then decided that,given the circumstances,it was best to turn him into a girl and raise him as a girl.Long story short,the guy,interviewed for the documentary,said that he know all along that he didn't want to do girl things and that there was something very wrong with the way he was treated...and that was *before* he understood anything about what happened.IOW,being a boy...or a girl...is innate,at birth,to all kids and only the most disordered individuals attempt to buck that important fact of nature.
Curious how it is socially acceptable for a girl to be a tomboy but not the other way around. In fact, there is no real antonym for "tomboy" other than "sissy", which is about the worst thing in the world you can say about a boy.
Growing up, the girls often joined us in "boy" games such as stickball, shooting stuff with BB guns and catching frogs. But if a boy ever did anything with the girls such as play house with tea sets and Easy-Bake ovens, he would be ostracized.
In the 1960s, university researchers conducted studies about gender orientation, and these studies were essentially duplicated by the US government in the 1980s.
About halfway through mammalian gestation, a male fetus will secrete a small amount of testosterone, which travels to its brain and tells it, that it is a “male” brain. If the testosterone does not arrive, by default the brain is a “female” brain.
The researchers interfered with this process, creating animals that were physically male but psychologically female, and visa versa. They also tried limiting the hormone to just one brain hemisphere, and came up with animals that would exhibit traits of both genders in mating.
However, they noted even back then, while this was enough to determine animal sexuality, it did not do the same for humans. That is, feminine boys were still mostly sexually attracted to girls, with only the typical number homosexual.
The researchers noted with some concern that female hormone can block testosterone, and plant estrogen was and is being widely used to increase crop yields. Since it is chemically similar to animal estrogen, they worried that it might result in far more feminine male children over time.
Androgynous, though still mostly heterosexual.
Eventually it turned out that females who consumed either male or female hormones prior to pregnancy could influence their offspring’s gender, but it had far less effect on the halfway through gestation brain “genderization”.
Exactly. I’ve never heard of a girl being ostracized for being a tomboy. In fact, she’s often lauded as being a girl with spunk and spirit. The reverse situtation is very different.
Are “action figures” dolls??
I say yes. and GI Joe??
They don't. Each succeeding generation just accepts the nannyism as normal and goes along or ignores it without protest [mustn't offend anyone, you know.] In my never-to-be-humble opinion, we've lost the culture and there's nothing in place to get it back.
I said, pretty much, the same thing at post #19.
Exactly
KK <-— who never reads the whole thread before posting :-)
I hate the people pushing this.
The muslims are rolling on the floor about this. It will make their take over so much easier.
Can’t get little boys play with dolls? What the hell do they think “action figures” are? They are basically nothing but little toy dolls.
All the macho action figures,,,Superman, G.I. Joe, The Incredible Hulk, etc., are nothing more than little toy dolls designed for boys.
Barbara gave Kristi a Sea King Explorer kit, and Kristi wrapped her legs in a green towel and said she was a mermaid. Barb said, "But you could be a Sea King! You could be anything you want!"
"Anything?"
"Anything."
Sez Kristi, "I want to be a boat."
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