Sorry, Dennis, a lot of points in your article — which seems to boil down to "gender-neutral toys spell the end of civilization" — just don't hold water. Or testosterone.
1. It would be nice if you actually linked to the NYT article in question, rather than just asserting what it says and means. (For the record, it's here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/28/business/sweeping-away-gender-specific-toys-and-labels.html)
2. Mattel says its internal research "showed some differences in what girls and boys wanted in their action figures, Ms. Missad said. ‘For boys it’s very much about telling a story of the good guy killing the villain. …’ [Girls] would tell us: ‘Why does the good girl have to kill the villain? Can’t they be friends in the end?’"
For some reason, Dennis, you switch this around to mean that toys need to be sold that respond to boys wanting violence and girls wanting reconciliation. But that has very little to nothing to do with getting rid of the "Boys Toys" and "Girls Toys" labels. An action figure (or Halloween costume) of Captain America doesn't dictate the story to be told with it. Even assuming that Mattel's research is correct (see below), a girl can just as easily make that Superman figure "be friends" with Luthor, even as a boy has Superman punching Luthor's brains out. Why, then, label the figure as a "Boys Toy"?
3. You praise business research as inherently accurate because it is profit-based, not ideological, and academic research as inherently prone to political correctness because it doesn't deal with dollars and cents.
Given the businesses that go bankrupt every year — or the major companies that launch product flops — your faith in the profit-driven research done by businesses and advertisers seems misplaced. You also assume that companies are, in fact, wholely rational actors; anyone in the business world will tell you when the boss wants to see the business do X, the research will tend to bear X out; the researchers are quite driven by their own internal profit / payroll motivation.
For that matter, when Mattel's researchers report that boys and girls toys are of necessity altogether different, how much of that is driven by the amount of money Mattel has already invested in ostensibly gender-specific toy lines?
4. The rest of the article seems to be about:
a. Men are violent, women are nurturing. Except for Margaret Thatcher (but hooray for Margaret Thatcher!)
b. Men need women to make them not quite so violent. Women need men to make them not so victimizable by violent people.
c. Getting rid of gender-specific toys will mean lower Department of Defense budgets (as pushed for by the "feminized" Barack Obama), allowing the violent men in the Middle East to wreak their evil ways. If only we hadn't "abandoned" Iraq in such a feminized fashion and let our troops stay there and kill all the bad men!
Aside from what strikes me as overly-generalized binary determinations of what makes "men" and "women" (not to mention some sketchy geopolitics), I think you miss the point, Dennis. If a boy wants to have Batman kill the Joker, cool. (Well, not cool. Imprison the Joker, I should think. Batman, traditionally, doesn't kill. Or should that be changed, Dennis?) If a boy wants to have Batman reform the Joker, hey, that's his story, too.
Similarly, if a girl wants to buy Batman and Joker action figures and play out whatever scenario she wants (from bloodfest to tea party), I really don't have a problem with that.
Providing non-gender-labeled toys (or making "girly" versions in pink and purple) doesn't mean that kids won't follow their instincts or will somehow have their genetic programming messed up. The world seemed to maintain pretty strict gender roles even before toys were cataloged as being for one gender or the other.
But would it would mean is that kids whose instincts to don't automatically mesh with your black-and-white thinking about gender roles (Margaret Thatcher strangely notwithstanding) will be able to pursue that without getting a message from the manufacturer or store that they are wrong or forbidden from doing so. That strikes me as a good thing, Dennis.
But, then, I'm not personally inclined toward violence or killing as a core gender value. So maybe I'm part of the problem.
Dennis Prager – Feminization of America Is Bad for the World
Last week the New York Times published an article, Sweeping Away Gender-Specific Toys and Labels, that contained three sentences that explain one of the most important phenomena in American life.
Frankly, this article is bizarre.
The logical flow is an amazing jump from assumption to assumption given incredibly dubious connections.
I can do the same thing:
"Apples are sometimes red, which is the color of communism which is the most dangerous foe of the American Way which is how we get rich. Therefore: Apples make us poor."
It doesn't mean I'm right. In fact, it makes me seem really focused on whatever message I'm trying to make–if you respect me enough not to think I'm a raving lunatic.
Following his logic in simplest terms:
A NYT article had 3 lines that says "there are differences in how genders play with toys" which is "the most important" gender difference which "can actually shape the future of America and of the world."
He then changes tack to sometimes these differences are bad: When women don't become man-like through marriage, and when men are democrats.
When women don't get married, they raise boys to be women, and they become democrats. When men are democrats…well, we just can't have that–because they don't oppose evil. And so democrats reduce military spending funding which causes us to stop fighting evil.
Up to this point, I'd have guessed the lesson would be "all toys should be boys toys" so everybody has a desire to fight evil."
But then he reverses direction and "both genders are important, so men don't act so aggressive and act as sexual predators. And women have to be taught that evil is bad by men." QED.
Um…what???
+Greg Stockton Yeah, that's a pretty good summary.
Aside from the binary gender roles described, the Prager also dances around (by using the term "feminized" instead of "effeminate") all sorts of other issues that boil down to "Democrats are girly men and momma's boys and would probably be better suited to careers as hair stylists and florists" kind of mudslinging.
Women, as a whole (with the noteworthy exception of Margaret Thatcher) don't get it much better: their role is to take care of the "micro" matter about the house and to keep men from being too bloodthirsty and "sexually aggressive" — but to always remember their place, because men naturally have the last, best say on when to send in troops or bomb the snot out of the Bad Guys.
It's really … remarkable. Especially because it's all threatened by not having an actually labeled "boys toys" aisle and a "girls toys" aisle.