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CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS	 - Christina Hoff Sommers is a resident 
scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. A revised edition 
of her book The War Against Boys will be published next summer.

http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/12/you-can-give-a-
boy-a-doll-but-you-cant-make-him-play-with-
it/265977/?google_editors_picks=true

The logistical and ethical problems with trying to make toys 
gender-neutral.

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largest toy companies in Northern Europe, for its "outdated" 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 urinating�less 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 Egalia�just 
"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Snow White have been replaced by tales of two male giraffes who 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. "Egalia gives 
[children] a fantastic opportunity to be whoever they want to 
be," says one excited teacher. (It is probably necessary to add 
that this is not an Orwellian satire or a right-wing fantasy: 
This school actually exists.)

The problem with Egalia and gender-neutral toy catalogs is that 
boys and girls, on average, do not have identical interests, 
propensities, or needs. Twenty years ago, Hasbro, a major 
American toy manufacturing company, tested a playhouse it hoped 
to market to both boys and girls. It soon emerged that girls and 
boys did not interact with the structure in the same way. The 
girls dressed the dolls, kissed them, and played house. The boys 
catapulted the toy baby carriage from the roof. A Hasbro manager 
came up with a novel explanation: "Boys and girls are different."

They are different, and nothing short of radical and sustained 
behavior modification could significantly change their elemental 
play preferences. Children, with few exceptions, are powerfully 
drawn to sex-stereotyped play. David Geary, a developmental 
psychologist at the University of Missouri, told me in an email 
this week, "One of the largest and most persistent differences 
between the sexes are children's play preferences." The female 
preference for nurturing play and the male propensity for rough-
and-tumble hold cross-culturally and even cross-species (with a 
few exceptions�female spotted hyenas seem to be at least as 
aggressive as males). Among our close relatives such as vervet 
and rhesus monkeys, researchers have found that females play 
with dolls far more than their brothers, who prefer balls and 
toy cars. It seems unlikely that the monkeys were indoctrinated 
by stereotypes in a Top-Toy catalog. Something else is going on.

Biology appears to play a role. Several animal studies have 
shown that hormonal manipulation can reverse sex-typed behavior. 
When researchers exposed female rhesus monkeys to male hormones 
prenatally, these females later displayed male-like levels of 
rough-and-tumble play. Similar results are found in human 
beings. Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) is a genetic 
condition that results when the female fetus is subjected to 
unusually large quantities of male hormones�adrenal androgens. 
Girls with CAH tend to prefer trucks, cars, and construction 
sets over dolls and play tea sets. As psychologist Doreen Kimura 
reported in Scientific American, "These findings suggest that 
these preferences were actually altered in some way by the early 
hormonal environment." They also cast doubt on the view that 
gender-specific play is primarily shaped by socialization.

Professor Geary does not have much hope for the new gender-blind 
toy catalogue: "The catalog will almost certainly disappear in a 
few years, once parents who buy from it realize their kids don't 
want these toys." Most little girls don't want to play with dump 
trucks, as almost any parent can attest. Including me: When my 
granddaughter Eliza was given a toy train, she placed it in a 
baby carriage and covered it with a blanket so it could get some 
sleep.

Androgyny advocates like our Swedish friends have heard such 
stories many times, and they have an answer. They acknowledge 
that sex differences have at least some foundation in biology, 
but they insist that culture can intensify or diminish their 
power and effect. Even if Eliza is prompted by nature to 
interact with a train in a stereotypical female way, that is no 
reason for her parents not to energetically correct her. Hunter 
College psychologist Virginia Valian, a strong proponent of 
Swedish-style re-genderization, wrote in the book Why So Slow? 
The Advancement of Women, "We do not accept biology as destiny 
... We vaccinate, we inoculate, we medicate... I propose we 
adopt the same attitude toward biological sex differences."

Valian is absolutely right that we do not have to accept biology 
as destiny. But the analogy is ludicrous: We vaccinate, 
inoculate, and medicate children against disease. Is being a 
gender-typical little boy or girl a pathology in need of a cure? 
Failure to protect children from small pox, diphtheria, or 
measles places them in harm's way. I don't believe there is any 
such harm in allowing male/female differences to flourish in 
early childhood. As one Swedish mother, Tanja Bergkvist, told 
the Associated Press, "Different gender roles aren't problematic 
as long as they are equally valued." Gender neutrality is not a 
necessary condition for equality. Men and women can be 
different�but equal. And for most human beings, the differences 
are a vital source for meaning and happiness. Since when is 
uniformity a democratic ideal?

Few would deny that parents and teachers should expose children 
to a wide range of toys and play activities. But what the Swedes 
are now doing in some of their classrooms goes far beyond 
encouraging children to experiment with different toys and play 
styles�they are requiring it. And toy companies who resist the 
gender neutrality mandate face official censure. Is this kind of 
social engineering worth it? Is it even ethical?

To succeed, the Swedish parents, teachers and authorities are 
going to have to police�incessantly�boys' powerful attraction to 
large-group rough-and-tumble play and girls' affinity for 
intimate theatrical play. As Geary says, "You can change some of 
these behaviors with reinforcement and monitoring, but they 
bounce back once this stops." But this constant monitoring can 
also undermine children's healthy development.

Anthony Pellegrini, a professor of early childhood education at 
the University of Minnesota, defines the kind of rough-and-
tumble play that boys favor as a behavior that includes 
"laughing, running, smiling, jumping, open-hand beating, 
wrestling, play fighting, chasing and fleeing." This kind of 
play is often mistakenly regarded as aggression, but according 
to Pellegrini, it is the very opposite. In cases of schoolyard 
aggression, the participants are unhappy, they part as enemies, 
and there are often tears and injuries. Rough-and-tumble play 
brings boys together, makes them happy, and is a critical party 
of their social development.

Researchers Mary Ellin Logue (University of Maine) and Hattie 
Harvey (University of Denver ) agree, and they have documented 
the benefits of boys' "bad guy" superhero action narratives. 
Teachers tend not to like such play, say Logue and Harvey, but 
it improves boys' conversation, creative writing skills, and 
moral imagination. Swedish boys, like American boys, are 
languishing far behind girls in school. In a 2009 study Logue 
and Harvey ask an important question the Swedes should consider: 
"If boys, due to their choices of dramatic play themes, are 
discouraged from dramatic play, how will this affect their early 
language and literacy development and their engagement in 
school?"

What about the girls? Nearly 30 years ago, Vivian Gussin Paley, 
a beloved kindergarten teacher at the Chicago Laboratory Schools 
and winner of a MacArthur "genius" award, published a classic 
book on children's play entitled Boys & Girls: Superheroes in 
the Doll Corner. Paley wondered if girls are missing out by not 
partaking in boys' superhero play, but her observations of the 
"doll corner" allayed her doubts. Girls, she learned, are 
interested in their own kind of domination. Boys' imaginative 
play involves a lot of conflict and imaginary violence; girls' 
play, on the other hand, seems to be much gentler and more 
peaceful. But as Paley looked more carefully, she noticed that 
the girls' fantasies were just as exciting and intense as the 
boys�though different. There were full of conflict, pesky 
characters and imaginary power struggles. "Mothers and 
princesses are as powerful as any superheroes the boys can 
devise." Paley appreciated the benefits of gendered play for 
both sexes, and she had no illusions about the prospects for its 
elimination: "Kindergarten is a triumph of sexual self-
stereotyping. No amount of adult subterfuge or propaganda 
deflects the five-year-old's passion for segregation by sex."

But subterfuge and propaganda appear to be the order of the day 
in Sweden. In their efforts to free children from the 
constraints of gender, the Swedish reformers are imposing their 
own set of inviolate rules, standards, and taboos. Here is how 
Slate author Nathalie Rothchild describes a gender-neutral 
classroom:

One Swedish school got rid of its toy cars because boys "gender-
coded" them and ascribed the cars higher status than other toys. 
Another preschool removed "free playtime" from its schedule 
because, as a pedagogue at the school put it, when children play 
freely 'stereotypical gender patterns are born and cemented. In 
free play there is hierarchy, exclusion, and the seed to 
bullying.' And so every detail of children's interactions gets 
micromanaged by concerned adults, who end up problematizing 
minute aspects of children's lives, from how they form 
friendships to what games they play and what songs they sing.

The Swedes are treating gender-conforming children the way we 
once treated gender-variant children. Formerly called "tomboy 
girls" and "sissy boys" in the medical literature, these kids 
are persistently attracted to the toys of the opposite sex. They 
will often remain fixated on the "wrong" toys despite 
relentless, often cruel pressure from parents, doctors, and 
peers. Their total immersion in sex-stereotyped culture�a non-
stop Toys"R"Us indoctrination�seems to have little effect on 
their passion for the toys of the opposite sex. There was a time 
when a boy who displayed a persistent aversion to trucks and 
rough play and a fixation on frilly dolls or princess 
paraphernalia would have been considered a candidate for 
behavior modification therapy. Today, most experts encourage 
tolerance, understanding, and acceptance: just leave him alone 
and let him play as he wants. The Swedes should extend the same 
tolerant understanding to the gender identity and preferences of 
the vast majority of children.

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