Xyzzy’s Comments

• Jul 17th, 2013 @ 9:54pm

  Re: Theme Song

  on Man Suggests Nature Walk To Observe NSA Spies Threatened Habitat; Has Law Enforcement Visit His Habitat
  I was thinking more along the lines of Jethro Tull's "Watching Me Watching You" (and the way he stares, feel like locking my door and pulling my phone from the wall...he's still watching me, watching you watching him watching me)
• Aug 30th, 2012 @ 3:20am

  Re: Re:

  on DailyDirt: Toys For Girls
  Sounds like a variant of how I played with mine as a girl -- I found it kind of boring to just make houses or whatnot, I thought the real appeal was to build sideways (either bricks top-to-bottom but rotated 90° or truly to the side) as far as possible before it broke somewhere, figure out how to patch/prevent that break without adding enough weight in bricks to cause it to break at an earlier point, then (once I'd fixed it) start trying to lengthen it until it broke somewhere.
  
  Then again, the only use I ever found in the silly Barbie dolls my relatives kept getting me was in dismembering them, then rubber-banding wheels from other toys onto each individual body part, and rubber-band slingshotting them across the kitchen floor with my little brother, either to see which we could shoot the farthest or in a slightly demented form of bowling using other smallish toys. (Unsurprisingly, when my 7th grade science class had to create rubber-band propelled vehicles, I chose a Barbie leg as the core of mine.)
• Aug 30th, 2012 @ 3:03am

  Re:

  on DailyDirt: Toys For Girls
  Horses only became a "girl" thing after it somewhat abruptly stopped being a "kid" thing -- it's no coincidence that in virtually all of the children's horse books written prior to 1950 (Black Beauty, The Black Stallion series, My Friend Flicka, many lesser-known books) plus adult fiction involving kids/horses like Steinbeck's The Red Pony, the kid's a horse-crazy boy. Until cars took their place as the "boy" interest, horses were even considered a specifically masculine interest, not something for girls at all!
  
  Regarding the toys: I agree that it's good that they're not pushing the worst of the stereotypes, but it's still taking normal gender-neutral toys that kids in general enjoyed, and making a small segregated crappy version what girls get. That gives the message that normal/mainstream things are male by default with a "feminine" version being a more limited girly-looking version, and that 'real' boys/girls wouldn't want certain toys. That results in different abilities being strengthened through play in the two sexes, then gives them the impression that they're better/weaker at certain things because those interests or abilities are inherently gendered (which can push kids to weaken or neglect what they're good at in order to follow their gender identity or avoid possible bullying).