By Ben Shapiro
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
I have two children. Our four-year-old is a girl; her two-year-old
brother is a boy.
I know these things because I have a functioning inferior
temporal cortex.
Apparently, the editors at the BBC do not. There,
recognition of sex is a mark of stereotypical discrimination. In a video
hashtagged #NoMoreBoysAndGirls, the BBC swapped the clothing of two children
who appear to be about a year old; in their words, “Marnie becomes Oliver;
Edward becomes Sophie.” Then they place these children on a play rug, where
adults come in and proceed to give them toys they believe are appropriate to
their gender — so a woman comes in and gives “Sophie” a doll, for example. The
BBC explains, “Men hugely dominate careers prizing maths, spatial awareness,
and physical confidence. Are boys ‘better’ at these? Is it nature or nurture? .
. . When children play spatial-awareness games frequently, their brains change
physically within just three months.”
When informed that they have given stereotypical toys to
these clothing-swapped children, the women are aghast at their own behavior. “I
thought that I was somebody who had a really open mind,” one woman lamented.
So, is toy stereotyping truly a reflection of our
patriarchal system?
No. No it isn’t.
Robust studies demonstrate different toy preferences
among boys and girls. A 2016 study from City, University of London, found that
“children as young as 9 months-old prefer to play with toys specific to their
own gender.” A 2017 research review from the same university found that
“despite methodological variation in the choice and number of toys offered,
context of testing, and age of child, the consistency in finding sex
differences in children’s preferences for toys typed to their own gender
indicates the strength of this phenomenon and the likelihood that it has a
biological origin.” This shouldn’t be shocking: Even rhesus monkeys
differentiate toy preference by sex. And the patriarchy among rhesus monkeys is
difficult to chalk up to gender stereotyping.
So, are boys succeeding in STEM fields because they’re
handed trucks? Or are they succeeding because they prefer trucks? A solid way
of finding out is by looking at countries with the weakest patriarchies —
what’s the job distribution there among men and women? Unsurprisingly, it turns
out that countries with greater “gender equality” show fewer women seeking STEM degrees. Per capita, more women in
countries such as Albania and Algeria are seeking STEM degrees than are women
in much-ballyhooed Norway. Why? Because women in rich countries choose not to pursue STEM fields as often.
Yet we’re supposed to believe that we have the ability to
change natural differences between boys and girls by swapping their clothing.
This is not only idiotic, it’s counterproductive. What’s
wrong with little girls liking little-girl things? What’s wrong with little
boys liking little-boy things? Nothing. Differences between boys and girls are
one of the great joys of life.
But, say the critics, we’re neglecting the little boys who
want to dress in tiaras. What of them? Isn’t our reinforcement of gender
stereotyping damaging to those boys? For the vast majority of boys, the answer
is no: Reinforcing gender confusion will be far more damaging to little boys
than simply telling your son to put down his sister’s tiara. (He’s likely
picking it up only to annoy his sister anyway.) And encouraging gender confusion among otherwise unconfused kids simply
to “fight stereotypes” ensures that more
children are confused.
Yet the same people who spend their days fretting over
small white girls wearing Moana costumes will say that their brothers ought to
wear Little Mermaid outfits; the same people who claim that brain plasticity is
so great that we can train little girls to become engineers by handing them
robot toys suggest that gender itself is biologically set in stone.
None of this makes any sense — and none of it is about
actually protecting children. At no point do advocates of gender confusion
actually explain why additional gender confusion is better — or even show the
statistical evidence that pushing boys to wear dresses will somehow create more
female engineers, or show why we should push girls to become engineers if they
don’t want to do so anyway. This is social engineering by people hell-bent on
remolding society without regard to the health of children.
Instead, why don’t we simply assume that parents should raise boys and girls differently?
My little girl isn’t going to grow up thinking she can’t perform in science — her
mother is a doctor. My little boy isn’t going to grow up thinking boys don’t
take care of kids — I’m home more than Mom is at this point. But I’m not going
to reinforce gender-bending behavior that tends toward higher rates of
depression and suicide over time, when I can simply reinforce the beauty of the
differences between boys and girls, and make my kids feel safe and secure in
their own biology.
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