questions I can't get answered
Here an issue that truthfully stymies me. Time and again I hear that video games don’t need to be made less violent because research has perpetually failed to find any causal link from game violence to real-life violence. But time and again I hear how games do need to be more inclusive and representationally respectful toward women and other minorities because they're reinforcing stereotypes and misogynistic behavior. I’m going to be frank here: to a non-expert-psychologist such as me, this looks like a double standard at first glance, and that in light of the former, it makes sense to investigate the latter rather than take it on faith. I don’t know where to do that, though. Every forum I can think of that hosts the appropriate expertise would kick me out for trolling or chide me for being too dense to see how the situations aren’t analogous.
And another. There is concern (justifiable, IMHO!) about the ever-increasing division between the products and marketing techniques that toy companies employ with girls versus those they reserve for boys, and the resulting messages it sends kids about what it is and isn’t appropriate for them to do with their lives. Of course girls are going to grow up thinking their sex makes them bad at math if boys get more Legos and Tinker Toys to practice building bridges and latticework.
Engineer Debbie Sterling got so fed up with this state of affairs that she designed a construction toy that would appeal to girls. In the behind-the-scenes video, she says this: A lot of companies try to take their construction toys, then make them pink to appeal to girls. And while, yeah, it’s true, girls do like pink, I think there’s a lot more to us than that. So I’ve spent the last year researching this. How do you get girls to like a construction toy? It all kind of came down to one simple thing: boys like building, and girls like reading. So I came up with a really simple idea. What if I put those two things together? Spacial + verbal. Book series + building set.
And I thought, “Girls do like pink”? “Boys like building, and girls like reading”? This is the opposite of the talk I expected to hear! These statements are the very same alleged myths that we need non-boy-biased math-and-science-toys to correct, aren’t they? I’d like to ask Sterling or some equivalent expert whether she feels these different characteristics of girls and boys is more Nature or more Nurture. Is it that:
- Girls are currently so biased by existing societal mores that it’s more effective at present to play to their existing notions rather than ply them with a toy they’re already conditioned to dislike?
- There really are significant, unignorable differences in psychology and academic aptitude between the sexes?
- Sterling did poor research?
I don’t know. I might never. I don’t foresee anyone in the know volunteering good-faith effort at answering my questions about this.