Shock: Boys Prefer Puzzles and Games to Dolls, and This Somehow... Is Harmful to Girls

I noticed this story on National Geographic's feed a couple of weeks ago.

What was it doing there? I thought National Geographic's mission was to take us to little-seen corners of the globe, not to pluck stories off the Jezebel Network.

But I didn't read the actual story. I should have. Because I don't have enough stupid in my life already. (Link to PJ Media, which quotes this stupid Jezebelized Nat Geo article.)

Apart from the routine stupidity you'd expect -- that gender is a social construction and that kind of garbage -- is this mystifying claim:

This is because girls have leeway in American society that boys do not. "We've really defined a much narrower role of what counts as masculinity," Auster says. "'Tomboy' can mean anything from neutral to great. 'Sissy' is not meant in a positive way among kids."

A 2015 study found that boys are more likely to play with toys that develop spatial intelligence--K’nex, puzzles, Lego bricks--than girls are.

So, if I have this right: Boys are more prone to play with "boy" toys because boys are afforded less freedom by social norms, and are essentially forced to play with boy-toys, and girls are afforded more freedom to play as they choose, and this means that... girls are the oppressed sex?

The authoress goes on to state that the spatial skills that boy-type toys teach are important for later-in-life abilities in STEM fields. (And you can tell how important STEM fields are to feminist theorists by the exactly zero of them who majored in a STEM field.)

So if you follow this dingbat's logic -- and why should you? She obviously hasn't -- then, in order to spur girls into being better at STEM, you should force them, as boys are forced, to play with boy-toys against their inclinations.

And that, you see, will result in more "choice" for girls!

Listen, honey: Why don't you start taking some credits at community college in chemistry or calculus and then get back to me about the crisis of girls choosing fluffier majors than boys choose.

Maybe the Russians #hacked feminists' brains to make them think they didn't want to take courses with icky prereq's like calculus.

Wasn't it Saint Augustine of Hippo who said, "O Lord, give us STEM degrees, but don't give them to us yet"?

posted by Ace at 06:42 PM

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