The Big Picture: Pink Is Not The Problem

Farther than stars

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I suppose this depends on what way you look at it. Sure, pastel and plastic are fine, but one might argue that merely by arranging them into a 'pink aisle' and marketing them to girls, we - as a society - are already forcing young girls to adopt these practices in order to seem normal. Removing this practice would then help to level the playing field. To extend the analogy: sometimes all you can do is treat the symptoms to fight the disease.
Fun fact: 'straw man' actually refers to Medieval public trials, when the person on trial would be required to find witnesses in his favour. 'Straw men' were men who put a straw behind their bootstrap to indicate that they were open to bribery. The person on trial would then call them forward to bear witness in their favour, thus 'distracting' the proceedings away from their guilt. So the straw man fallacy doesn't actually have anything to do with a dummy.

CymbaIine said:
Very muddled episode, the main thing I took from it is that Bob has an extremely limited understanding of a very complex issue.
That's actually quite an offensive way to it. I appreciate that you firmly stand on the side of 'vanity is bad', but plenty of accredited feminists do not. MovieBob's intelligence should not be pulled into question on this point. The main reason why the 'vanity is bad' argument is problematic, is that 'it is OK to have fun'. If wearing make-up makes you happy, you should be allowed to do that, the same way that it's OK for me to play a round of FTL if I get enjoyment out of it. In that same instance, it is progressive to make short shrift of the attitude that 'video games are something for kids'. Even utilitarianism does away with functionality at the moment that it impedes on human happiness.
 

MegaSuperUberMe

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Bob, honey, I hope you do realise that the "pink isle", the "gender roles" and all the stuff that comes with it is never going away. Man and women evolved a little bit differently and our brains perceive the world a little bit differently. We like different things for a reason. Male and females have different brain "wiring". The common stereotypes in men and women excelling at different tasks is there for a reason, the differences between gender is a natural difference and not socially constructed. Numerous of the largest scientific brain scan studies has concluded that the developmental trajectories of males and females separate at a young age, demonstrating wide differences during adolescence and adulthood.
It is possible that the reason why male and female brains are "wired differently" could be argued to be the result of environmental and/or socialization differences, and not the result of a inherent biological difference. That, however, still makes all the effort to "smash teh gender roles" fruitless, because it is literally thousands of years of social programming at work and will take at least half as long to break it.
 

Yal

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Therumancer said:
A defense isn't even necessary. At the end of the day there is nothing wrong with having an effeminate, homosexual, and/or crossdressing bad guy. One of the biggest problems with liberalism is that it tends to lead to outcries that turn into an effort to declare certain groups into sacred cows where you can't say, do, or use them in any kind of bad, or antagonistic role at all. One of the reasons why I inherently oppose 99% of this stuff, because even when there is a legitimate point, in many cases acknowledging it is going to do 100x more damage than was being done by what it was intended to address.
I completely agree with you. We don't need to narrow our range of villain archetypes, that would be a terrible loss to creativity. Rather, we need to expand our set of heroes. We need protagonists who not just female, although that's fun too, but also feminine and even effeminate.

Until that happens it is somewhat tedious that some characters are only allowed to be bad guys, comic relief, or both.

But Him in particular bothered me not just because it played up the effeminate male as creepy and off-putting, but because that character is just straight up Satan. The joke there is that the devil is flaming, that evil is gay. Maybe it doesn't hold that reciprocal is also true, but dang, ain't that a fine line to be walking.

Plus South Park made the same joke a few years later, a clear sign it is time to reevaluate one's life choices.
 

Urameshi13

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When I was in middle school, taking shop and sewing/home economics were required courses for both boys and girls. Contrast that with when my mom was in school and only the boys got to take shop while the girls were relegated to classes forcing them to be housewives.

Of course these days NO ONE gets to take Shop because that got tossed right out the window.
 

Farther than stars

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MegaSuperUberMe said:
It is possible that the reason why male and female brains are "wired differently" could be argued to be the result of environmental and/or socialization differences, and not the result of a inherent biological difference. That, however, still makes all the effort to "smash teh gender roles" fruitless, because it is literally thousands of years of social programming at work and will take at least half as long to break it.
This is too simplistic an attitude to the nature-nurture debate when evolutionary biology is still a rapidly developing field. I don't really have time to delve into this right now, but I recommend researching the concepts of 'Swiss Army knife psychology' and 'epigenetics', in combination with learning. From an illustrative point of view: there are people in Pakistan who are being trained to carry out suicide bombings because of religious fundamentalism, while they live in the same country with genetically equivalent secularists.
It might be important to consider that being man or woman is both biological and social. Your basic argument might hold more water if human society was closely related to our biology, like that of ants, but, as it stands, there is no research to suggest that.
 

Urameshi13

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One thing I found interesting during this video. You said, and I'm paraphrasing, stuff is just stuff. It is the purpose that stuff is used for that can be good or bad.

I think that's a great point. However, I think you should also consider that frame of reference when speaking on guns and gun violence. A gun can be used to harm or protect. It can also be used to take out to a range and have target practice.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to plant the NRA flag here. You provide a unique perspective in your videos and columns which get me thinking. Just trying to return the favor.
 

Gorbachof

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I'd love to know how Bob does his research. I mean he goes in depth with such a broad range of topics it makes me believe there's a cloned army of him on computers and university libraries 24-7. Is there like a website somewhere called "in depth analysis of slightly random trending topics."? Seriously though, whats his method?
 

Farther than stars

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Urameshi13 said:
One thing I found interesting during this video. You said, and I'm paraphrasing, stuff is just stuff. It is the purpose that stuff is used for that can be good or bad.

I think that's a great point. However, I think you should also consider that frame of reference when speaking on guns and gun violence. A gun can be used to harm or protect. It can also be used to take out to a range and have target practice.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to plant the NRA flag here. You provide a unique perspective in your videos and columns which get me thinking. Just trying to return the favor.
The difference being, of course, that it's not so easy to kill someone with a Barbie doll, hence there's no/less collateral damage coming from the 'pink aisle'. Criminals with guns, however, outnumber vigilantes with guns, so there's more damage to third parties. Even libertarianism needs the second limit laid upon it by John Locke and Ayn Rand: the freedom in question should not cause harm to someone else, otherwise: Rapture.
 

MegaSuperUberMe

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Farther than stars said:
MegaSuperUberMe said:
It is possible that the reason why male and female brains are "wired differently" could be argued to be the result of environmental and/or socialization differences, and not the result of a inherent biological difference. That, however, still makes all the effort to "smash teh gender roles" fruitless, because it is literally thousands of years of social programming at work and will take at least half as long to break it.
This is too simplistic an attitude to the nature-nurture debate when evolutionary biology is still a rapidly developing field. I don't really have time to delve into this right now, but I recommend researching the concepts of 'Swiss Army knife psychology' and 'epigenetics', in combination with learning. From an illustrative point of view: there are people in Pakistan who are being trained to carry out suicide bombings because of religious fundamentalism, while they live in the same country with genetically equivalent secularists.
It might be important to consider that being man or woman is both biological and social. Your basic argument might hold more water if human society was closely related to our biology, like that of ants, but, as it stands, there is no research to suggest that.
Actually there is a few researches that clearly show that male and female brains develop in adolescence and react differently to different stimuli differently. Your "illustrative point" does not really apply to this particular situation (or maybe I understood it wrongly, due to a language barrier, English is my fourth language and still struggle with it from time to time). Simply because sex is tied to biology (and gender is more likely tied to sex than social construct) and to assume that two mammals that had completely different roles in society, means to achieve status,a better mate and are even psychophysically different somehow stopped evolution at the neck is quite bogus. I also really fail to see how religious fanatics and secularist can translate to physical and neurological differences in males and female. The lack of research in to secularist and highly religious fundamentalist is also not helping the case.
 

TheRealCJ

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One of the major problems with this whole "Get rid of the pink aisle!" thing is that, well... girls like pink. I don't think that it's really a societal stereotype forced on them. It's just a colour girls like, so the toy companies pander to them. If girls were more attracted to lime green, we'd be having the argument that we should 'ban the green aisle!'

Okay, yes, I'm sure that decades (no centuries - Pink before the 1900s was traditionally a 'boy's' colour) of conditioning means that girls have been trained almost genetically to be predisposed to liking pink. But they like it, who cares?

Of course, that's a very shallow reasoning about the colour; Let's get to the meat of the issue. Gender stereotypes aren't bad. Forcing gender stereotypes on people who would rather break the mould is bad. We tell women (and especially little girls) they can be whatever they want to be, and then get ANGRY when what they want to be is something that, without ANY kind of external pressure, is considered "bad" in modern feminism. I'm reminded of that rather funny picture of the man who gave both a dollhouse, and toy cars to his toddler daughter - she put the cars to bed like she would a doll. That's not societal pressure, that's just girls being girls.

It's been proven again and again that girls are gentler and softer, that's just their nature. Toy companies aren't 'forcing their ideals' on girls, they're making toys that reflect what sells best for little girls. The same way they sell grossout toys for boys.
 

CelestDaer

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The roomie and I were in WalMart earlier, and on our way out, I saw a bin full of Nerf arrow refills, and they were all for the new Heart-something bows, which have girls on the boxing, and I went, "Since when are bow and arrows exclusively masculine?"
 

lowkey_jotunn

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Ronack said:
The thing about The Hunger Games is that it isn't coded Male and Female, but rather Rich and Poor. It's a commentary on our modern society. Just look at what the Rich are wearing, ffs. Those looks are straight from some designers runway. Butt ugly and expensive as fuck, but the rich still buy it because rich. Whilst the poor need to work their ass off to survive, having to fight against the system by the rich in the meantime.
Yes, no and back to yes... I'll explain.

I actually started having a similar thought in regards to 300. Xerxes is just lavishly rich as opposed to the much more simple and "normal" Leonidas. The Spartans live a well .. spartan(1) life. Togas and sandals, very little jewelry and can't even afford pants ;)

But that comes back full circle to the coded stereotypes Bob is talking about. We've heard it from just about every comedian ever, seen silly pictures about it on the intarwebz(2) and probably lived the reality of it; we're hard coded to just accept that women are more expensive and preened. We accept that these are female traits. Women take longer to get ready in the mornings, their clothes (especially underwear) cost 10x more than men's, they wear perfume, get their hair "done" instead of just "cut," etc. etc. etc.

There's a scary amount of overlap between "obviously evil because they're rich" and "acting like a normal woman"



(1) http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Spartan
a. Rigorously self-disciplined or self-restrained.
b. Simple, frugal, or austere: a Spartan diet; a spartan lifestyle.
c. Marked by brevity of speech; laconic.

(2) http://thehoopla.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/mission-go-to-GAP.jpeg
 

Farther than stars

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MegaSuperUberMe said:
(and gender is more likely tied to sex than social construct)
Well, this is essentially where most forms of feminism disagree with you. There are actually quite a lot of gender difference which don't have any clear biological roots. Why is it feminine to wear skirts? Why is it feminine to have long hair? Why is it masculine to be a car mechanic?
As MovieBob points out, all social constructs are created for a rational reason. In the case of gender differences this is most likely biology. But after that, sociology goes on to contend that the social construct comes to live a life of its own. And history seems to support this. After all, it makes sense for 'the man' to be the sole breadwinner in a primitive society where physical strength for hunting and fighting is necessary. But this tendency carried on well into civilized society, where it no longer had any rational purpose. Sometimes the social construct outlives the biology and in those instances it is a good thing to challenge it, because it would cause too much harm while waiting the thousands of years necessary for a biological change.
Concerning the dearth of research, I was referring to the power a social construct can have outside of the body. So whereas ant society is organized strictly by their genes (i.e. their biology decides whether they're worker, army or queen and gives them their knowledge of how to construct nests and form supply lines), we humans don't have that kind of 1 to 1 genetic programming and the social construct exists outside us (i.e. there are no genes that make us religious fundamentalists; we need to be taught that, in the same way that we need to be taught how to make a light bulb).

P.S. Since English is your fourth language, I feel obliged to point out that "honey" has very specific connotations, quite fitting with this subject. If you're a man, calling another man "honey" would make you seem very metrosexual - which is fine! I just thought you should know.

P.P.S. You're doing a good job, I didn't even notice that English isn't your first language. And kudos for taking on such a complex discussion; I could only debate this issue in two languages and even then I would struggle in the second.

P.P.P.S. Where in the world are you from that English is only your fourth language? I'm guessing China or Eastern Europe.
 

Therumancer

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Yal said:
Therumancer said:
A defense isn't even necessary. At the end of the day there is nothing wrong with having an effeminate, homosexual, and/or crossdressing bad guy. One of the biggest problems with liberalism is that it tends to lead to outcries that turn into an effort to declare certain groups into sacred cows where you can't say, do, or use them in any kind of bad, or antagonistic role at all. One of the reasons why I inherently oppose 99% of this stuff, because even when there is a legitimate point, in many cases acknowledging it is going to do 100x more damage than was being done by what it was intended to address.
I completely agree with you. We don't need to narrow our range of villain archetypes, that would be a terrible loss to creativity. Rather, we need to expand our set of heroes. We need protagonists who not just female, although that's fun too, but also feminine and even effeminate.

Until that happens it is somewhat tedious that some characters are only allowed to be bad guys, comic relief, or both.

But Him in particular bothered me not just because it played up the effeminate male as creepy and off-putting, but because that character is just straight up Satan. The joke there is that the devil is flaming, that evil is gay. Maybe it doesn't hold that reciprocal is also true, but dang, ain't that a fine line to be walking.

Plus South Park made the same joke a few years later, a clear sign it is time to reevaluate one's life choices.
Well, I do not believe in "sacred cows" in any way, shape, or form. To be honest when you start saying "making the devil gay" is a problem, the same can be applied to making the devil anything at all, and honestly while Powerpuff Girls and South Park did a very similar joke, it should be noted that they have also made the devil both a man, a woman (Liz Hurley for example), and Androgynous in various works through the years. Not to mention donating to, or sponsoring political parties (or making faustian deals with politicians), and pretty much anything you can think of. I guess you could say it's about as equal opportunity as you can get.

It doesn't matter what group you are, or how it's defined, everyone and everything gets to be the punch line of jokes like that at some point. It's just how things are, laugh and move on, or if your offended, simply don't subject yourself to the media in question. Political correctness and the censorship it leads to is a greater threat than even genuine hate speech could ever dream of being. Nobody and nothing should be considered taboo as far as jokes like this go. To be honest knocking the government could arguably be considered a much bigger deal than knocking a minority as it affects a lot more people, yet it happens every day.
 

persephone

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May 2, 2012
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As a little girl, I liked pink fluffy dresses. The pinker and fluffier, the better! And on the playground, when my peers were running around pretending to be the Ninja Turtles, I was also the one who decided I was Donatello and climbed up the jungle gym to rescue the girl playing April. I was stunned and confused when she informed me I couldn't rescue her because I was a girl.

Now, granted, she may well have simply meant I couldn't play Donatello, who is, after all, male. (Though the impact at the time was, "you can't rescue me, you're a girl." Not that I let it discourage me; I just concluded she was being silly.) But that memory always stuck with me nevertheless, because to this day I simply can't begin to see why on earth most gender roles exist. The *very* basic ones, like how you have to be female to be a mother, those make sense. But the ones that say mothers have to stay at home, or this is what women should like or do for a living, are just ridiculous.

One thing I've noticed in life is that while gender stereotypes do have a basis in fact, they have a basis in trends, not rules. Women tend to be gentler and better communicators than men, but it's a tendency, not a rule.

I agree completely with Bob about how our society codes "masculine" and "feminine" traits and objects; it's ridiculous. Especially because you do get people like me who both want to dress like a princess and swoop in and save your ass. Preferably with a pair of katanas and some explosions.
 

Izzyisme

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I think a problem with many arguments against Bob in this thread rely on faulty logic. Yes men and women's brains are wired differently to some degree. But every single gender difference in our society does not stem from those differences. Studies show those differences to be memory and social skills, not proclivity for pink toys, violence, etc. So the argument is that if we look at the scientific studies and analyze history, we can try to find out what's societal and what's rooted in biology. Some people do oversell to what degree things are societal, but far more likely is to encounter people who entirely conflate history and nature. And I'm seeing a lot of that here.
 

nondescript

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Best deconstruction ever.

I see lot's of this at my (retail) job - even more now that I'm helping in apparel. Kids getting told a shoe is "too girly" or "looks like a boys shoe," girls turning down a camo shirt since it has a pink stripe or a boys onesie that has feminine drawings. I've even been asked to find another coworker, because the customer didn't want to talk to a man!

I understand that if you want to be "girlie" or "macho" that's your choice and okay. What bothers me is when they treat their opinion as law.