Why Boys Dont Play with Dolls

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Why Boys Dont Play with Dolls

• By Katha Pollitt

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Building vocabulary

• A. the National Organization for Women
• B. belief in and organized activity in support of
  political, economic, and social equality for
  women the revolution refers to the changes in
  attitudes, laws, and practices resulting from
  organized feminist activity dating roughly from
  the late 1960s to today.

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Building vocabulary

• C. a Barbie doll head with hair designed for
  hair styling
• D. aggressively and stereotypically male values
• Refers to the popular advice book, Men are from
  Mars and Women Are from Venus by John Gray.

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Understanding the writers ideas

• 1. That twenty years of womens lib activism has
  not had much effect on sex roles.
• 2. Thins outside of social mores, such as
  genetics.
• 3. The ways we raise kids (par. 4).

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Understanding the writers ideas

• 4. Her view is either give Barbie as a present,
  or dont. But dont try to have it both ways by
  giving Barbie as a present and trying to negate
  the gift by apologizing. It cant be that you
  think Barbie is bad (therefore the apology) but
  you continue to buy the doll and give it as a
  gift. Choose one or the other.

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Understanding the writers ideas

• 5. Not very.
• 6. They let parents off the hook by sanctioning
  the path of least resistance to the dominant
  culture (pars. 10 and 11).
• 7. Things have changed. Women are doctors as well
  as nurses. Boys skateboard and cook. (pars.
  13-15).

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Understanding the writers ideas

• 8. People have common sense they are
  well-intentioned, and try to behave as well as
  possible, but common sense also says that you
  have to do what you have to do, and its not
  worth it to buck the dominant practices. The
  writer thinks diversity in sex roles is possible
  but that you do have to (its necessary to)
  imposed some view of what it means to be male and
  what means to be female.

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Understanding the writers techniques

• 1. Sources for behavior within society and
  outside of it. Accepting Barbie and rejecting
  Barbie. Accepting sexual conventions and flouting
  them. The adult world and the childs world.
• 2. The way we raise kids is an index of how
  unfinished the feminist revolution is and how
  tentatively it is embraced even by avowed
  feminists (par. 4)

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Understanding the writers ideas

• 3. People give Barbie as a present but apologize.
  Feminists who would not dream of discouraging
  their sons from engaging in macho athleticism
  (par. 8).
• 4. But apologize for Barbie? (par. 5). See the
  questions that make up par. 9, and the question
  that ends part. 13. Isnt that what adults
  always do, consciously or unconsciously? par.
  16)

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Understanding the writers ideas

• 5. Annoyed, exasperated. But in places the writer
  becomes sympathetic to the plight of todays
  parents, as in pars. 10 and 11.
• 6. The ending is effective insofar as it shows
  that the idea of sex roles cant be evaded, as
  some feminist thinking might at one time have
  suggested. But the conclusion is ineffective
  insofar as it sidesteps the issue of whether the
  feminist revolution can ever hope fully to alter
  sexist gender distinctions, the difficult
  question with which the writer opens the essay.

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Mixing Patterns

• Pollitt says we have to look no farther than how
  we actually raise kids (pa4. 4).

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Exploring the writers ideas

• 1. Pollitts omission of the genetic argument
  raises at least a doubt in the readers mind
  about the credibility of Pollitts point of view.
  Is she unwilling to look at evidence that
  questions her beliefs?

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Exploring the writers ideas

• 2. She uses example and analysis. She implies
  that whatever explanations there may be for sex
  roles outside of society, these explanations are
  complementary to social explanations, not at odds
  with them. We cant do anything about genes, she
  implies, but we can do something about society.

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Exploring the writers ideas

• 3. Feminism is a developed set of ideas, and in
  that sense can be said to be an ideology. Fexible
  sex roles the boy who skateboards and cooks.
  Although Pollitt certainly implies that social
  explanations of behavior take precedence over
  othersjust because our genes may be sexist does
  not, in her view, in any way mean that we must be
  sexistits safe to say that a lot depends on the
  social implication of non-social sources of
  behavior. Would feminists reject biological
  determinism if biology demonstrated that gender
  roles are not in any way pre-determined
  genetically?