gender-neutral toy

Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-And What We Can Do About It

by Jennifer Breheny Wallace  · 21 Aug 2023  · 309pp  · 86,747 words

than the average teen and relative to inner-city kids; suburban girls, in particular, were suffering from much higher levels of clinical depression, and both genders showed slight elevations of clinically significant anxiety relative to norms. To Luthar, the results of the study seemed counterintuitive. To others, they seemed simply wrong

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that it’s virtually unreachable for all but the most privileged parents who have the time and resources to parent this way. Despite advances in gender equality, the responsibility of launching a “successful” child still weighs more heavily on mothers, research suggests, no matter their employment status. Since the mid-1970s

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, relying on the latest research and theories. As William grew, I offered him endless energy, eye contact, playground visits, and reliable routines. I bought him gender-neutral toys. Knowing that his vocabulary was directly affected by how much I spoke to him, I talked all day long, narrating our lives: “Now Mom is

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be especially toxic for students who fall outside whatever is considered the institution’s “norm”—whether in terms of class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity. One young woman of Mexican descent wrote about a conversation with a classmate who asked her how she, as a Mexican, could be “so

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, 70, 72, 78, 107, 117, 196–97, 223, 240 competition, xiv, 3 “adaptive style” of, 169 among parents, 13, 158–60 in college, 4, 8 gender differences in, 170–71 growth mindset and, 119 healthy types of, 166–73, 239 increase in, 9, 16 managing it, 151–57, 239 mattering is

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, 229 transactional, 121, 146 unconditional love of, 238 G Galloway, Scott, 71–72 Gallup study, 128–30 Gallwey, W. Timothy, 169–70 Garman, Bryan, 43 gender, 6, 84, 162–63, 170–71 Georgetown, 162 gifted program, 39, 46 Ginsburg, Kenneth, 149 girls all-girls schools and, 59, 152–53, 192–93

Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right

by Angela Nagle  · 6 Jun 2017  · 122pp  · 38,022 words

, tracing the online culture wars that have raged on below the line and below the radar of mainstream media throughout the period over feminism, sexuality, gender identity, racism, free speech and political correctness. This was unlike the culture wars of the 60s or the 90s, in which a typically older age

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response, each one responding angrily to the existence of the other. Trumpian meme-makers ramped up their taboo-breaking anti-PC style in response to gender-bending Tumblr users, who themselves then became more sensitive, more convinced of the racism, misogyny and hetero-normative oppression of the world outside of their

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feminists but it’s really hard work’, ‘19 Of The Most Totally Amazing Body-Shaming Clap Backs’ and many others on toxic masculinity, fat pride, gender-neutral toys and quandaries about moral and culturally sensitive consumerism. Clickhole, a project of The Onion, emerged as a timely satirical site that brilliantly mocked the liberal

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for Vox Pops as a telegenic young blonde woman with a sarcastic disapproving tone of voice. At another protest, Southern shouted ‘there are only two genders’, before a protester poured a container of urine over her head. Southern was also heavily involved in ‘The Triggering’ in response to International Women’s

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had, according to many who shared this view, ceased being revolutionary and instead were becoming reactionary and culturally conservative, while the identity movements along race, gender and sexuality lines were becoming more radical than ever. In academia, the ‘cultural turn’ saw a radical shift in scholarship whereby universities made culture the

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at the time. The acceptance of homosexuality had been part of a much broader freeing up of sexuality that both Milo and his Tumblr-dwelling gender fluid enemies continue to take influence from in different ways. Time magazine covered The Sexual Freedom League in 1966 and The Joy of Sex was

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tied Rome’s collapse to sexual decadence. Camille Paglia’s work, greatly admired by Milo, is preoccupied with this same causal link between homosexuality, promiscuity, gender fluidity and civilizational decline. Neocon Gertrude Himmelfarb also used her scholarship of Victorian Britain to suggest that Western civilization had weathered the storm of modernity

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the opposite direction by restricting speech on the right but expanding the Overton window on the left when it came to issues of race and gender, making increasingly anti-male, anti-white, anti-straight, anti-cis rhetoric normal on the cultural left. The liberal online culture typified by Tumblr was equally

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as its rival culture on the right, is worth sketching out here. Mainstream newsreading audiences were baffled when Facebook revealed it was offering over 50 gender options for its members to choose from in 2014 and around the same time the campus wars over safe spaces, trigger warnings, no-platforming and

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gender pronouns emerged. But the social media corporation was merely taking its cue from online subcultures that had been emerging for years before, and the youth

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emerged out of them. The main preoccupation of this new culture (the right named them SJWs and snowflakes, let’s call it Tumblr-liberalism) was gender fluidity and providing a safe space to explore other concerns like mental ill-health, physical disability, race, cultural identity and ‘intersectionality’ – the now standard academic

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,’ wrote French feminist and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir in 1949. By 1990, Judith Butler had taken this several steps further, or perhaps more literally, in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity, in which she argued that the coherence of the categories of sex

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sexuality were entirely culturally constructed through the repetition of styled and cultivated bodily acts, which created the appearance of an essential ontological ‘core’ gender. By the early 2010s, Tumblr had put Butler’s theory into practice and created an entire subcultural language, set of slogans and style to go

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with it. The most marked preoccupation of Tumblr’s cultural politics has been identity fluidity, typically but not exclusively around gender. It was the subcultural digital expression of the fruition of Judith Butler’s ideas. For years, the microblogging site filled up with stories of young

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people explaining and discussing the entirely socially constructed nature of gender and potentially limitless choice of genders that an individual can identify as or move between. The following are just a few of the ever-expanding list of

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genders, now in the hundreds, all taken directly from Tumblr: Alexigender – Gender identity that is fluid between more than one gender, but the individual cannot tell what those genders are. Ambigender – A feeling of two genders simultaneously, but without fluidity/shifting. May be used synonymously

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in some cases with bigender. Anxiegender – A gender affected by anxiety. Cadensgender – A gender that is easily influenced by music. Cassflux – When your

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level of indifference towards your gender fluctuates. Daimogender – A gender closely related to

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demons and the supernatural. Expecgender – A gender that changes depending on who you are around. Faegender – A

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gender that changes with the seasons, equinoxes and moon phases. Fissgender

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– A gender experience that is in some way split, similar to

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bigender or demigenders. Genderale – A gender that is hard to describe. Mainly associated with

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plants, herbs and liquids. Kingender – A gender somehow related to being otherkin. Levigender

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– A lightweight, superficial gender you don’t feel very much. Necrogender

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– A gender that used to exist but is now ‘dead’ or nonexistent

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. Omnigay – Genderfluid, with one’s attraction to other genders changing with one’s gender, so that the individual is always

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attracted to the same gender. Perigender – Identifying with a gender, but not as that gender. Polygenderflux – Having more than one

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gender, which intensity fluctuates. Technogender – Only comfortable with one’s gender when using technology/online, usually because of

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way as a nonbinary boy or nonbinary boy-adjacent. Xirl – Someone who identifies in some way as a nonbinary girl or nonbinary girl-adjacent. These gender orientations on Tumblr are closely related to, and often make direct reference to, another online subculture of identity fluidity known as otherkin. This is a

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subculture, but it does tell us something, as an extreme example, of the broader theme of identity fluidity that seems to run through it. While gender non-conformism is nothing new, and has certainly been ever more mainstream since the beginning of the sexual revolution and the gay liberation movement, this

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central to contemporary liberal identity politics, as it is enacted in spaces like Tumblr. It is also common in communities with a strong focus on gender fluidity to openly identify themselves as having disabilities and mental health issues that make them, by their own admission, extremely vulnerable and suffering. Some of

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a dude who cares about feminism sometimes I want to join all men arm-in-arm & then run off a cliff and drag the whole gender into the sea.’ On the morning following the election of Donald Trump, columnist Laurie Penny tweeted: ‘I’ve had white liberal guilt before. Today is

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and including everything from great works of classical literature to expressions of pretty mainstream non-liberal opinion, like the idea that there are only two genders. At the height of all this Germaine Greer was announced to speak at Cardiff University about ‘Women & Power: The Lessons of the 20th Century’. The

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and was eventually exonerated. These are just a few select cases in what felt like an endless stream of campus culture wars over these sexuality/gender/identity issues that emerged after years of a particular kind of identity politics being nurtured online. But how do these compare with past campus wars

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has expanded and thrived online in recent years so, too, has anti-feminist masculinist politics, which again developed in the context of evermore radical liberal gender politics and increasingly common anti-male rhetoric that went from obscure feminist online spaces to the mainstream. The ‘red pill’ metaphor that has been central

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Retribution itself, just before the climactic massacre… My War on Women… I will attack the very girls who represent everything I hate in the female gender: The hottest sorority of UCSB. On 4chan the day the story broke, one contributor posted an image of Rodger and wrote: ‘Elliot Rodger, the supreme

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, as in rape threats and other sexual comments. The audience was receptive, and afterward I spent many hours in the hotel bar discussing issues of gender, objectification, and misogyny with other thoughtful atheists. At around 4 a.m., I excused myself, announcing that I was exhausted and heading to bed in

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their borders. Again, this is nothing new. In reference to John Osbourne’s Look Back in Anger and Rebel Without a Cause, as a similarly gendered attack on the mediocrity of the post-war social order, Joy Press and Simon Reynolds wrote: ‘The rebel discourse of the 50s is haunted by

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elite were female: It is indeed striking to observe how the political, psychological, and aesthetic discourse around the turn of the century consistently and obsessively genders mass culture and the masses as feminine, while high culture, whether traditional or modern, clearly remains the privileged realm of male activities. I want to

Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time

by Brigid Schulte  · 11 Mar 2014  · 455pp  · 133,719 words

scientists call the “crisis” level.4 Steven Philip Kramer, a professor of strategy at the National Defense University, warns that countries that fail to address gender equity, redefine traditional families, reform immigration, and pass government policies that help men and women more easily combine work and family “do so at their

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contributes to the overwhelm, it became clear complicated factors are at play: extreme work hours,12 rapidly evolving technology, information overload, globalization, changing demographics, shifting gender roles, the high status of busyness, economic anxiety, and cutbacks that “offload” more work onto the fewer remaining employees, not to mention the increased cost

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James—The Unintended Slide into Traditional Roles By the time DeGroot began coaching Anna and James, a couple in Minnesota, they had slipped into traditional gender roles despite their best intentions. Anna, who had an emotionally volatile childhood with parents who divorced early, was between careers when they had their first

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on once obscure research that has found that preschool children with more involved fathers show more cognitive competence, more self-control, more empathy, and less gender stereotyping than preschool children with less involved fathers. Adolescents with more involved fathers are more likely to have better self-esteem, self-control, social competence

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in the workplace, equal pay, equal opportunity, equal influence in society, and are considered of “equal worth.”40 Denmark has shied away from requiring formal gender quotas, like other European countries. But Danish law does require that where possible, all boards, commissions, institutions, and other organizations that receive government funding,

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have equal gender balance. When a position becomes vacant, the law requires that equal numbers of men and women be suggested as replacements. With women making up nearly

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twentieth century, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland so profoundly shifted their views on men and women. Labor shortages as much as ideology sparked the drive to gender equity, she explained, as governments sought to have mothers fill the gap rather than import immigrant workers, as in America. Nordic political systems are also

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, director of KVINFO, the government-funded Danish Centre for Information on Gender, Equality and Diversity, told me. And some complain that Nordic countries can take gender equity too far, as when Swedes insisted on having only gender-neutral toys in preschools and created a new gender-neutral pronoun hen (it), to use instead of han (him

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the “cycle of responsiveness” that makes work feel intense and unending. Love • Banish ambivalence. Know that society’s ambivalence about working mothers, caring fathers, changing gender roles, changing workplace, and dismissal of leisure time feeds your own guilt and ambivalence. Know that humans have evolved to conform and fit in with

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.org/learn-more/articles-by-riane-eisler/economics-business-organizational-development/the-economic-value-of-housework. Also Janet C. Gornick and Marcia K. Meyers, eds., Gender Equality: Transforming Family Divisions of Labor, the Real Utopias Project, vol. 6 (New York: Verso, 2009). 16. Iatur.org. In 1995, the United Nations

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, 2005, 13). 37. Lyn Craig, “Does Father Care Mean Fathers Share? A Comparison of How Mothers and Fathers in Intact Families Spend Time with Children,” Gender & Society 20, no. 2 (April 2006): 259–81, doi:10.1177/0891243205285212. 38. Bianchi, Wight, and Raley, “Maternal Employment,” 13. For the difference between

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–2003” (working paper, Department of Sociology, University of Oxford, 2011), www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/documents/working-papers/2010/swp101.pdf. 43. Ibid. See also “Gender Brief,” OECD Social Policy Division, March 2010, www.oecd.org/social/family/44720649.pdf, 16. 44. Bianchi, Robinson, and Milkie, Changing Rhythms, chap. 5.

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turn-to-medications-to-ease-their-mental-woes-women-lead-the-trend-133939038.html. 31. Christena Nippert-Eng, “‘Mommy, Mommy’ or ‘Excuse Me, Ma’am’: Gender and Interruptions at Home and Work” (paper presented at the American Sociology Association annual meeting, Pittsburgh, August 1992). 5: THE IDEAL WORKER IS NOT YOUR

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html. See also Sheelah Kolhatkar, “Mayor Bloomberg’s Delicate Condition,” Upstart Business Journal, Nov. 11, 2008, http://upstart.bizjournals.com/executives/features/2008/11/11/Gender-Discrimination-at-Bloomberg.html. 11. Opinion and Order, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Bloomberg L.P., United States District Court Southern District of New York

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Labor Statistics Monthly Labor Review, February 2007, www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2007/02/art2full.pdf. See Chart 1. 17. Schor, Overworked American, 114. 18. “Gender and Global Differences in Work-Life Effectiveness” (paper presented at the Families and Work Institute/SHRM Work-Life Focus: 2012 and Beyond conference, Washington, D

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Stephen Benard, and In Paik, “Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?” American Journal of Sociology 112, no. 5 (March 2007): 1297–1339, http://gender.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/motherhoodpenalty.pdf. The authors write, “If work commitment is measured by the importance people attach to their work identities—either

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Inequality (blog), September 11, 2012, http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/fact-checking-david-brooks-citing-hanna-rosin-edition/. Cohen, a sociologist who studies gender and income inequality at the University of Maryland, quotes a Bureau of Labor Statistics July 18, 2012, news release on “Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage

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sociology, faculty associate, Center for Public Policy Administration, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, before the U.S. Joint Economic Committee hearing on “New Evidence on the Gender Pay Gap for Women and Mothers in Management,” September 28, 2010, included in the report, United States General Accounting Office, Invest in Women, Invest in

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better-if-they-did-less-and-thought-more-praise-laziness. 60. Sreedhari D. Desai, Dolly Chugh, and Arthur Brief, “Marriage Structure and Resistance to the Gender Revolution in the Workplace,” working paper, Social Science Research Network, March 12, 2012, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2018259. 61. Shankar

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at Work: Expanding the Boundaries, ed. Naomi Gerstel et al. (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002), 7, 9. See also Joan C. Williams, “Jumpstarting the Stalled Gender Revolution: Justice Ginsburg and Reconstructive Feminism,” Hastings Law Journal 63 (June 2012): 1267–97, www.hastingslawjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Williams_63-HLJ

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no. 5 (December 2010): 399–409, http://esp.sagepub.com/content/20/5/399.refs. See also Kristiana Brix, “National Identity Crisis: The Intersection of Gender Equality and Ethnic Minority Integration in Denmark,” Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union, vol. 2009, article 4, doi: 10.5642/urceu.200901

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the National Study (New York: Families and Work Institute, 1993). 71. Lyn Craig and Abigail Powell, “Non-standard Work Schedules, Work-Family Balance and the Gendered Division of Childcare,” Work Employment & Society 25, no. 2 (June 2011): 274–91, doi: 10.1177/0950017011398894. 72. Karen Shellenback, Child Care & Parent Productivity:

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Russell Matthews, industrial-organizational psychology professor at Bowling Green State University, phone interview with author, May 11, 2012. 4. Eileen Patten and Kim Parker, “A Gender Reversal on Career Aspirations: Young Women Now Top Young Men in Valuing a High-Paying Career,” Pew Social & Demographic Trends, Pew Research Center, April 19

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and Alternative Work Schedules for Civilian Employees,” Administrative Instruction 28 (January 5, 2011), www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/a028p.pdf. 8: THE STALLED GENDER REVOLUTION 1. Joan Williams, “Holiday Survival Guide for Women,” Huffington Post (blog), December 20, 2011, www.huffingtonpost.com/joan-williams/holiday-survival-guide_b_1158828

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Housework and Husbands,” Sociological Images (blog), July 11, 2009, http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/07/11/of-housework-and-husbands/. 3. Pew Global Attitudes Project, Gender Equality Universally Embraced. 4. Sue Shellenbarger, “Housework Pays Off Between the Sheets,” Wall Street Journal, October 21, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704500604574485351638147312.html

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’s $1, and women shoulder far more of the domestic burden. 7. David A. Cotter, Joan M. Hermsen, and Reeve Vanneman, “The End of the Gender Revolution? Gender Role Attitudes from 1977 to 2008,” American Journal of Sociology 117, no. 1 (July 2011): 259–89, doi: 10.1086/658853. 8. “The Top

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Parental Leave Use: Evidence from Sweden,” Finnish Yearbook of Population Research 2009, 49–62. 9. Brittany S. McGill, “Navigating New Norms of Involved Fatherhood: Employment, Gender Attitudes, and Father Involvement in American Families” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, 2011). 10. Brad Harrington, Fred Van Deusen, and Beth Humberd, The New

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and Gaps: Feminist Perspectives on Women’s Leisure (State College, PA: Venture Publishing, 1999), and Samuel, Women, Leisure and the Family. 10. Beck and Arnold, “Gendered Time Use,” 139. The study found that fathers, too, experienced short leisure episodes, but fathers were still more likely than mothers to have some leisure

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Masses,” Journal of Cognitive Liberties 2, no. 2 (2001): 59–66, www.cognitiveliberty.org/5jcl/5JCL59.htm. 15. Shira Offer and Barbara Schneider, “Revisiting the Gender Gap in Time-Use Patterns: Multitasking and Well-Being Among Mothers and Fathers in Dual-Earner Families,” American Sociological Review 76, no. 6 (December 2011

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-collar work; flexibility Bonke, Jens Bono boredom Boston Boston College Bowdoin College Bowlby, John Brach, Tara brain; attachment and; blink; development; effect of stress on; gender differences; information overload and; mindfulness and; play and; pulsing; shrinkage; sleep and; urge to conform and Brannen, Barbara Bravo, Ellen Brazil breadwinner-homemaker stereotype breakups

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about raising; birthday parties; brain development; chores of; cost of; custody battles; Danish; decision not to have; family responsibilities discrimination; family size; fathers and; first; gender equity in care of; gritty and happy; homeschooling; imaginary worlds of; intensive mothering of; latch-key; mothers and; natural parenting of; obesity; overscheduled; parental guilt

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child care family responsibilities discrimination; lawsuits Fargo, North Dakota fathers; age of; alloparents; breadwinner-homemaker stereotype; children and; Danish; divorced; family responsibilities discrimination; finding time; gender equity issues; groups; guilt; ideal worker; leisure and; as multitaskers; new dads; of 1950s; of 1960s; nurturing; parental leave; stay-at-home; see also men

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Shift holidays Holt, Luther Emmett Hölzel, Britta homeschooling homework homosexuality hormones; stress hotels; labor Hot Mommas Project housework; breadwinner-homemaker stereotype; Danish; gay couples and; gender equity issues; men and; women and housing prices Hout, Michael Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer; Mother Nature; Mothers and Others Hsee, Christopher Huizinga, Johan Hunnicutt, Ben hunting

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Lessing, Doris Levo League Listservs Little Eagles Day Care London Business School Lopez, P. David Los Angeles Los Angeles Times love; Danish; do one thing; gender equity issues; intensive mothering; new dads; see also children; fathers; marriage; men; mothers; women Lucchesi, Liz Luthar, Suniya Lyubomirsky, Sonja Madsen, Svend Aage Maitland,

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: Future Work Malnourie, Josh Mannell, Roger manufacturing marketing Markey, Patrick marriage; breadwinner-homemaker ideal; busyness and; Danish; divergent realities; failure of; gay and lesbian couples; gender equity issues; husbands outearned by wives; of 1950s; of 1960s; older man/younger woman; traditional Masarie, Kathy Masterson, Kathryn maternal gatekeeping maternity leave Mathews, Karen

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McEwen, Bruce McGill, Brittany meditation memory men; biological clock; breadwinner-homemaker ideal; childless; children and; Danish; divergent realities; family responsibilities discrimination; finding time; gay couples; gender equity issues; housework; ideal worker; leisure and; as multitaskers; new dads; of 1950s; of 1960s; nurturing; parental leave; play and; stress and; unemployed; wage gap

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Motherhood Manifesto, The (Blades) mothers; African American; age of; alloparents; ambivalence and; breadwinner-homemaker stereotype; busyness; children and; Danish; education; family responsibilities discrimination; finding time; gender equity issues; guilt; homeschooling; ideal; ideal worker; intensive; leisure and; maternal gatekeeping; “mommy track”; mommy wars; as multitaskers; natural; of 1930s; of 1950s; of 1960s

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, Mary Oprah Orfalea, Paul Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development outdoor time Outrageous Kid Parties (TV show) overwhelm; brain shrinkage and; busyness and; finding time; gender equity issues; ideal worker; information; intensive mothering and; leisure and; love and; mommy wars; multitasking and; new dads; role overload; time research and; work and

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; lack of smartphones smiling Smith, Tom social media software South Africa South Korea Soviet Union Spain Spira, Jonathan: Overload! sports; travel teams Sprague, Elizabeth stalled gender revolution Stanford University Starbucks State Department Stenhouse, Todd stereotypes, power of Stevenson, Betsey Stewart, Martha Stieglitz, Nadia Stoller, Tia stress; benefits of; effect on brain

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; leisure and telework terrorism testosterone Texas texting Thanksgiving ThirdPath Institute Thompson, Jody: Why Work Sucks Thorning-Schmidt, Helle time; androgyny; busyness; crunch scale; diaries; finding; gender equity issues; horizons; ideal worker; intensive mothering and; kairos; leisure; love and; mommy wars; new dads and; research; role overload; serenity; stress and effect on

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; ambivalence and; biological clock; breadwinner-homemaker ideal; busyness; childless; children and; Danish; divergent realities; education; entrepreneurs; family responsibilities discrimination; fear and; fertility issues; finding time; gender equity issues; guilt; housework and; husbands outearned by; ideal worker; intensive mothering; leisure and; lesbian couples; in military; mommy wars; as multitaskers; of 1950s; of

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; blue-collar; breadwinner-homemaker stereotype; bright spots; caregiver bias; change; culture; Danish; do one thing; family responsibilities discrimination; flextime; four-day workweek; full-time; gender discrimination; gender equity issues; growing work week; hourly; ideal worker; low-wage; military; millennials; mommy wars; motherhood and; in 1950s; in 1960s; in 1970s; in 1990s; overtime

Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class

by Charles Murray  · 28 Jan 2020  · 741pp  · 199,502 words

is also reflexively assumed that males have innate advantages—aggressiveness, perhaps, or initiative—that make them better hunters. This conflation of social role and gender role persists after the original physical justification for some social role has disappeared. These beliefs about stable, inherent properties of men and women have solidified

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role theory includes a role for biology. “Men and women selectively recruit hormones and other neurochemical processes for appropriate roles, in the context of their gender identities and others’ expectations for role performance,” Eagly and Wood write. “Testosterone is especially relevant when, due to personal identities and social expectancies, people

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social interactions as involving bonding and affiliation with close others.”13 Biology interacts with psychology in two ways. Men and women alike psychologically internalize their gender roles as “self standards” for regulating their own behavior. They also regulate their behavior according to the expectations that others in the community have

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recent findings about sex differences in the brain. A WORD ABOUT USAGE From now on I will usually refer to “sex differences” instead of “gender differences.” “Gender” was popularized in the 1960s to designate socially constructed differences.[1] But it turns out that there is no clear division between biological and

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But their treatment of “small” collides with the position taken by the most influential work arguing for small sex differences in cognitive repertoires—the “gender similarities hypothesis” originated by psychologist Janet Shibley Hyde in the September 1985 issue of American Psychologist, the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association.

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distinctive but conceptually related traits. 2 Sex Differences in Personality Proposition #1: Sex differences in personality are consistent worldwide and tend to widen in more gender-egalitarian cultures. Bimbo. Jock. Feminine. Macho. A great lady. A true gentleman. Males and females have been stereotyping each other from time out

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to be more warm, altruistic, sympathetic, sociable, and artistically sensitive than men. Sex Differences in Personality and a Society’s Gender Egality I use gender egality in preference to gender equality to signify not just progress toward diminishing sex differences but also institutional, legal, and social changes intended to put men and

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that seems to cut across a variety of sex differences: Many sex differences in cognitive repertoires are wider rather than smaller in countries with greater gender egality. Personality traits offers the first example. The Evidence for Wider Personality Differences in Advanced Countries The Costa study. The Costa study discovered this

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stability, –.57 for extraversion, –.49 for openness to emotion, and –.42 for agreeableness.30 On average, personality differences were wider in countries with greater gender egality. The McCrae study. The McCrae study applied the same measures plus one for conscientiousness to a larger sample of nations, using an observational measure

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countries.[37] Explaining Wider Personality Differences in Advanced Countries Why haven’t the sex differences in personality gotten smaller in countries that have aggressively adopted gender-egalitarian policies? Why instead, and contrary to all expectations, have they tended to widen? Costa and his coauthors hypothesized that in traditional societies with

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to meet cultural norms. Perhaps such conditions also warp the expression of male personality. Under this hypothesis, genetically-grounded personality differences widen in the most gender-egalitarian societies for the simplest of reasons: Both sexes become freer to do what comes naturally. 3 Sex Differences in Neurocognitive Functioning Proposition #2:

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through socialization. The parsimonious explanation for the international female advantage in verbal tests, across cultures that cover the full range from openly oppressive to aggressively gender-equal, is that women have a genetic advantage. Measures of Visuospatial Skills Some evidence indicates that sex differences in visuospatial skills are greater in

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noted earlier, we have good reason to think that the SMPY women disproportionately grew up with gender-neutral toys, had mothers who were in professional careers, had parents both of whom proactively told their daughters to transcend gender stereotypes, were educated in progressive upper-middle-class schools, and had peer groups consisting of

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those who are multiply-burdened and obscures claims that cannot be understood as resulting from discrete sources of discrimination.”2 Separating issues of racial discrimination, gender discrimination, and socioeconomic class was theoretically and empirically wrong. It was not long before Crenshaw’s ideas and her introduction of the word intersectionality

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something to work with in the form of the systematic components of the nonshared environment that I listed in chapter 10: family composition (birth order, gender differences), sibling interactions (differential responses to the same events), differential parental treatment of their children, and extrafamilial networks such as peer groups. The phrase

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adjustment, personality, and cognition, the largest proportion of explained variance was .053 for differential peer/teacher interactions. “Family constellation” (birth order, age, age spacing, gender) explained .011, differential parental behavior explained .023, and differential sibling interactions explained .024.52 These are all extremely small numbers. “We emphasize that these findings

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had underestimated the role of differential socialization (e.g., Block (1978), Block (1983)). Lytton and Romney (1991), a subsequent meta-analysis of 172 studies of gender socialization, examined socialization regarding eight topics: amount of interaction, achievement encouragement, warmth, nurturance, responsiveness (including praise), encouragement of dependency, restrictiveness/low encouragement of independence,

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programs that provided systematic discussions of biological evidence for sex differences in cognitive repertoires. I found a single example: Cornell University’s course FGSS 3210, “Gender and the Brain,” cross-listed as biology course BIONB 3215, which tells prospective enrollees, “Reading the original scientific papers and related critical texts, we

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Performance in Hiring”; “Precarious Sexuality: How Men and Women Are Differentially Categorized for Similar Sexual Behavior”; “Unemployment, Temporary Work, and Subjective Well-Being: The Gendered Effect of Spousal Labor Market Insecurity”; “Policy Generosity, Employer Heterogeneity, and Women’s Employment Opportunities: The Welfare State Paradox Reexamined”; “Is There a Male Marital

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Collecting Data and Doing Social Scientific Research on Race. Washington, DC: American Sociological Association. Andersen, Margaret L., and Patricia H. Collins, eds. 2019. Race, Class, Gender: Intersections and Inequalities. 10th ed. Boston: Cengage Learning. Anderson, Edgar, and G. Ledyard Stebbins. 1954. “Hybridization as an Evolutionary Stimulus.” Evolution 8: 378–88.

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73: 41–59. Davis, Shannon N., and Barbara J. Risman. 2015. “Feminists Wrestle with Testosterone: Hormones, Socialization and Cultural Interactionism as Predictors of Women’s Gendered Selves.” Social Science Research 49: 110–25. Dawkins, Richard. 1976. The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Deary, Ian J., Michelle D. Taylor, Carole

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Callosum.” Science 216: 1431–32. Del Giudice, Marco. 2009. “On the Real Magnitude of Psychological Sex Differences.” Evolutionary Psychology 7 (2): 264–79. . 2015. “Gender Differences in Personality and Social Behavior.” In International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, edited by J. D. Wright. New York: Elsevier. Del Giudice

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Gyral Based Regions of Interest.” NeuroImage 31 (3): 968–80. Dessens, Arianne B., Froukje M. E. Slijper, and Stenvert L. S. Drop. 2005. “Gender Dysphoria and Gender Change in Chromosomal Females with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 34 (4): 389–97. Détroit, Florent, Armand Salvador Mijares, Julien Corny, et

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. 2014. “Geographic Population Structure Analysis of Worldwide Human Populations Infers Their Biogeographical Origins.” Nature Communications 5 (3513). Ellison, Glenn, and Ashley Swanson. 2010. “The Gender Gap in Secondary School Mathematics at High Achievement Levels: Evidence from the American Mathematics Competitions.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 24 (2): 109–28. Else-Quest

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from Twin Studies? A Comprehensive Evaluation of the Equal Environments Assumption.” Social Science Research 43: 184–99. Fenstermaker, Sarah, and Candace West, eds. 2002. Doing Gender, Doing Difference. New York: Routledge. Field, Yair, Evan A. Boyle, Natalie Telis et al. 2016. “Detection of Human Adaptation During the Past 2000 Years.”

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Always Produces Male Domination. New York: Morrow. . 1993b. Why Men Rule: A Theory of Male Dominance. Chicago: Open Court. Goldin, Claudia. 2014. “A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter.” American Economic Review 104 (4): 1091–119. Goldstein, H. 2008. “Building Cognitive Ability Tests with Reduced Adverse Impact.” Paper presented at

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of Sex Differences in Spatial Ability: A Meta-analysis.” Child Development 56: 1479–98. Lippa, Richard A. 2010. “Sex Differences in Personality Traits and Gender-Related Occupational Preferences Across 53 Nations: Testing Evolutionary and Social-Environmental Theories.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 39 (3): 619–36. Lippa, Richard A., Marcia L

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Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society

by Cordelia Fine  · 13 Jan 2017  · 312pp  · 83,998 words

male,”7 as Harvard University’s Sarah Richardson observes. Reinforcing this cleanly binary view of sex is the apparently obvious state of the world. Even gender theorists, who unmoor themselves daily from reality as they grapple with the dizzying possibilities for reconstructing masculinity and femininity, agree that whatever genitalia you had

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well-being—are relatively small. University of Wisconsin–Madison psychologist Janet Hyde drew attention to this important point in a now classic paper proposing the “gender similarities hypothesis.”72This was based on a synthesis of forty-six meta-analyses of sex differences in those fundamental building blocks. A meta-analysis is

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workplace, start to seem almost offensive. Testosterone Rex implicitly blames women for their lower salary and status, distracting attention away from the “unruly amalgam” of gendered influences—the norms, beliefs, rewards, inequalities, experiences, and, let’s not forget, punishment by those who seek to protect their turf from lower-status outsiders

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reactivity via the stereotypes that help create expectations or shape explanations for success or failure, the existing inequalities that create double standards for performance, and gendered experiences and social networks. After all, as we saw in the previous chapter, a different domain (masculine versus more neutral or feminine), a different cultural

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, would the credit crunch have happened?”2 This question, posed by a Guardian business editor, triggered a “frenzied engagement in the international media with the gender question in international finance.”3 Some commentators, drawing on research reporting links between testosterone levels and risk taking, argued an urgent need for a greater

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than the female students, on average. But when, in two further conditions of the same study, that business opportunity was preceded instead by either a gender-neutral (creative, well-informed) or feminine (caring, making relationships) description of entrepreneurs, women were as likely, or even more likely, respectively, to see a business

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academics Katja Meier-Pesti and Elfriede Penz found exactly that. They primed young women and men with either masculine, feminine, or (in a control condition) gender-neutral stimuli. Men primed with masculinity gave the most risk-tolerant responses on a questionnaire assessing attitudes toward risk taking in investments.44 A more

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positive “feminine” qualities: Were Wall Street firms and regulatory agencies such that they welcomed women and men as equal participants, this might indicate that societal gender stereotypes were breaking down. It might also be likely, then, that certain valuable characteristics and behaviours commonly stereotyped as feminine (such as carefulness) would be

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marketing is futile, he says, because “those XX and XY chromosomes will out in the end.”8 In short, calls for gender-neutral toy marketing are seen by some as tantamount to demands that toy companies put themselves out of business by disrespecting boys’ and girls’ true natures. A

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the frenzied lead-up to Christmas, the Australian Greens senator Larissa Waters catapulted herself into the heart of this debate by endorsing a campaign against gendered toy marketing.9 Waters went further than the usual complaint that “no child’s imagination should be limited by old-fashioned stereotypes.” These “outdated stereotypes

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than are other children.32 Four- to eleven-year-old matched control girls (and boys with and without CAH) preferred a gender-neutral toy that was presented either explicitly or implicitly as being “for them” (echoing findings from the 1970s and 1980s).33 By contrast, girls with CAH were

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sex differences in toy preferences develop around the age that children develop a firm understanding of which side of the critical social divide of gender they belong. The gendered developmental system has achieved what prenatal testosterone can’t. This conclusion, by the way, is perfectly consistent with claims that back in our

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behaviors as “essential” traits is so important. Instead, the genetic and hormonal components of sex collaborate with other parts of the developmental system, including our gender constructions. There have been massive shake-ups in that developmental system since the Pleistocene—laws, social welfare, taxation, medical advances, industrialization, and so on. And

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, usually a man, more likely to assault a partner or former partner? Experts point the finger at a dauntingly long list of influences, including rigid gender stereotypes that tightly circumscribe appropriate female roles and responsibilities, hypermasculine norms, societal excuse making for violence toward female partners, lack of perpetrator accountability, many women

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at odds with the egalitarian goals that feature so prominently in contemporary society.”67 Toy marketing is obviously just one strand of many that weave gender through the developmental system. No single factor is overwhelmingly important in creating sex inequalities. Every influence is modest, made up of countless small instances of

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, Anelis Kaiser, and Gina Rippon—have played a critical role in developing my thinking about scientific models of sexual differentiation, and how to study sex/gender in humans, in part through the following works coauthored with them: Fine, C., Jordan-Young, R., Kaiser, A., & Rippon, G. (2013). Plasticity, plasticity, plasticity … and

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rigid problem of sex. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(11), 550–551; Rippon, G., Jordan-Young, R., Kaiser, A., & Fine, C. (2014). Recommendations for sex/gender neuroimaging research: Key principles and implications for research design, analysis, and interpretation. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 650; Fine, C., Joel, D., Jordan-Young, R

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, L., & Ernst, D. (2000). Essentialist beliefs about social categories. British Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 113–127. This study of Northern American students found that gender is a strongly essentialized social category, particularly with respect to being seen as being a “natural kind”—that is, being natural, fixed, invariant across time

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and place, and discrete (that is, with a sharply defined category boundary). 2. Dupré, J. (forthcoming). A postgenomic perspective on sex and gender. In D. L. Smith (Ed.), How biology shapes philosophy: New foundations for naturalism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 3. Charles Darwin (pp. 245–255) defined

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unalterable differences between men and women. New York: Citadel Press/Kensington. 18. Moss, G. (2014). Why men like straight lines and women like polka dots: Gender and visual psychology. Alresford, UK: Psyche Books. 19. Shambaugh, R. (2013). Make room for her: Why companies need an integrated leadership model to achieve extraordinary

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knowledge with respect to its role in females. 24. This implicit or explicit assumption is described by van Anders, S. M. (2013). Beyond masculinity: Testosterone, gender/sex, and human social behavior in a comparative context. Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology, 34(3), 198–210. 25. Alexander, R. D. (1979). Darwinism and human affiars

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, M., & Ahnesjö, I. (2013). The “sex role” concept: An overview and evaluation. Evolutionary Biology, 40(4), 461–470; Roughgarden, J. (2004). Evolution’s rainbow: Diversity, gender, and sexuality in nature and people. Berkeley: University of California Press. 55. Gwynne, D. T., & Simmons, L. W. (1990). Experimental reversal of courtship roles in

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Wood (2005) and Ryan and Jethá (2005) note, Schmitt’s study didn’t include any samples from nonindustrial societies, some of which have more egalitarian gender relations than are seen in any modern, industrialized societies. Eagly, A. H., & Wood, W. (2005). Universal sex differences across patriarchal cultures ≠ evolved psychological dispositions. Behavioral

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male strangers’ sexual offers revisited. Psychological Reports, 97(1), 11–20. Quoted on p. 16. 40. Tappé, M., Bensman, L., Hayashi, K., & Hatfield, E. (2013). Gender differences in receptivity to sexual offers: A new research prototype. Interpersona: An International Journal on Personal Relationships, 7(2), 323–344. On a scale of

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of a differential contribution for health risks, although these didn’t emerge as being very important in Conley’s research. 60. Baumeister, R. F. (2013). Gender differences in motivation shape social interaction patterns, sexual relationships, social inequality, and cultural history. In M. K. Ryan & N. Branscombe (Eds.), The Sage handbook of

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. For discussion of this point in relation to human neuroimaging, see Fine (2010), ibid.; Hoffman, G. (2012). What, if anything, can neuroscience tell us about gender differences? In R. Bluhm, A. Jacobson, & H. Maibom (Eds.), Neurofeminism: Issues at the intersection of feminist theory and cognitive science (pp. 30–55). Basingstoke, UK

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. de Vries, G. (2004). Sex differences in adult and developing brains: Compensation, compensation, compensation. Endocrinology, 145(3), 1063–1068. 48. Fausto-Sterling, A. (2012). Sex/gender: Biology in a social world. New York & London: Routledge. 49. Fausto-Sterling (2012), ibid. Quoted on p. 31, references removed. Fausto-Sterling cites the work

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infancy? Developmental Psychobiology, 58(1), 5–16. 58. de Vries & Forger (2015), ibid. Quoted on p. 11. 59. See discussion in Fine, C. (2015). Neuroscience, gender, and “development to” and “from”: The example of toy preferences. In J. Clausen & N. Levy (Eds.), Handbook of neuroethics (pp. 1737–1755). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer

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), ibid. Quoted on p. 377. 24. Nelson, J. A. (2014). The power of stereotyping and confirmation bias to overwhelm accurate assessment: The case of economics, gender, and risk aversion. Journal of Economic Methodology, 21(3), 211–231. Nelson uses the examples of domestic violence, and pregnancy and childbirth. 25. Mortality ratio

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: Sometimes it does hurt to ask. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 103, 84–103; Rudman, L., & Phelan, J. E. (2008). Backlash effects for disconfirming gender stereotypes in organizations. Research in Organizational Behavior, 28, 61–79. 44. Hoffman & Yoeli (2013), ibid. 45. Small, D. A., Gelfand, M., Babcock, L., & Gettman, H

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of female competition in a later publication. Apicella, C. L., & Dreber, A. (2015). Sex differences in competitiveness: Hunter-gatherer women and girls compete less in gender-neutral and male-centric tasks. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, 1(3), 247–269. 60. Cashdan, E. (1998). Are men more competitive than women? British

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for patterns of testosterone secretion, mating systems, and breeding strategies. American Naturalist, 136(6), 829–846. 8. van Anders, S. M. (2013). Beyond masculinity: Testosterone, gender/sex, and human social behavior in a comparative context. Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology, 34(3), 198–210. One primary and important purpose of this paper is

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you: Busting myths about human nature. Berkeley: University of California Press. Quoted on p. 16. 78. For example, Ridgeway, C. L. (2011). Framed by gender: How gender inequality persists in the modern world. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. 79. Liben, L. (2015). Probability values and human values in evaluating single-sex education

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difference disappeared when the gambles were put into the less abstract context of insurance decisions. However, for contrasting findings, see Powell, M., & Ansic, D. (1997). Gender differences in risk behaviour in financial decision-making: An experimental analysis. Journal of Economic Psychology, 18(6), 605–628. 22. Vlaev, I., Kusev, P., Stewart

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). Little emperors: Behavioral impacts of China’s one-child policy. Science, 339(6122), 953–957. 25. Gneezy, U., Leonard, K. L., & List, J. A. (2009). Gender differences in competition: Evidence from a matrilineal and a patriarchal society. Econometrica, 77(5), 1637–1664. These studies used nontrivial stakes. 26. Gong, B., & Yang

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, C.-L. (2012). Gender differences in risk attitudes: Field experiments on the matrilineal Mosuo and the patriarchal Yi. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 83(1), 59–65. 27

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. (2014). Sex hormones and choice under risk. Working Papers, University of California, Department of Economics, No. 12, 7; Sapienza, P., Zingales, L., & Maestripieri, D. (2009). Gender differences in financial risk aversion and career choices are affected by testosterone. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

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and adults. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 116(2), 367–379. 27. Zosuls, K., Ruble, D. N., & Tamis-LeMonda, C. S. (2014). Self-socialization of gender in African American, Dominican immigrant, and Mexican immigrant toddlers. Child Development, 85(6), 2202–2217. 28. Lamminmäki, A., Hines, M., Kuiri-Hänninen, T., Kilpeläinen, L

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. Hines, M., Pasterski, V., Spencer, D., Neufeld, S., Patalay, P., Hindmarsh, P. C., et al. (2016). Prenatal androgen exposure alters girls’ responses to information indicating gender-appropriate behaviour. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 371(1668). doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0125 33. For example, Masters

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), 247–260. 34. Pasterski, V., Zucker, K.J., Hindmarsh, P. C., Hughes, I. A., Acerini, C., Spencer, D., et al. (2015). Increased cross-gender identification independent of gender role behavior in girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia: Results from a standardized assessment of 4- to 11-year-old children. Archives of Sexual Behavior

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relationship to mechanisms of motivated social cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(4), 686–702; Morton, T., Haslam, S., & Hornsey, M. (2009). Theorizing gender in the face of social change: Is there anything essential about essentialism? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(3), 653–664. 55. Wood, W

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Herald. Retrieved from http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/greens-link-barbies-trucks-and-childhood-toys-to-domestic-violence-in-call-for-gender-inquiry-20151124-gl716h.html on November 26, 2015. 63. Bigler, R., & Liben, L. (2007). Developmental intergroup theory: Explaining and reducing children’s social stereotyping and

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, 191 Darwin, Charles, 29–31, 109, 201n, 205n Datoga, 144 Davies, Nick, 44 DC Thomson, 174 Del Giudice, Marco, 225n Delingpole, James, 175 Delusions of Gender (Fine), 103, 183 dendritic spines, 90 Denmark, 55 Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, The (Darwin), 30 developmental plasticity, 233n–34n developmental

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” (Clarkin), 61 hunter-gatherer societies, sex roles in, 100 Hutterite group, 47 Hyde, Janet, 100–101 Illinois, University of, 148 India, 38, 125, 156 infants, gendered behavior in, 181–82 “innate,” use of term, 188 intersex individuals, 85–86, 88 Intersex Society of North America, 85 “Intuitive Evolutionary Perspectives in Marketing

Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing

by Rachel Plotnick  · 24 Sep 2018  · 359pp  · 105,248 words

interactions available to users. In many instances, society constructed the meaning and use of buttons in contradictory ways that both reinforced and defied expectations of gender, class, and race. Power Button is arranged in three parts that build on one another, detailing a set of practices, ideas, problems, and technologies around

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, Dark Light: Electricity and Anxiety from the Telegraph to the X-Ray (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2004). See also Graeme Gooday, Domesticating Electricity: Technology, Uncertainty and Gender, 1880–1914 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008). 17. “Contagion (n),” in A Dictionary of the Derivations of the English Language (London: William Collins, Sons, & Co., 1872

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gravitated toward and possessed a “remarkable ability for mechanical work” more so than they would take an interest in history or literature.90 Views about gender roles led most professionals to agree that girls, too, could benefit from lessons on “domestic economy” and the simple devices such as a push button

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punch line of a joke in a quickly evolving, machine-driven environment. A misstep with a button often produced slurs against the presser’s race, gender, age, or class, and thus button pushing served as an outlet for expressing preexisting tensions and negotiating power relations. Although a change from pull to

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their other-worldliness encapsulated technological fantasies and fears, often acting as a suture between everyday experiences and larger societal concerns based on race, class, and gender.18 Through press coverage of button-pressing activities, because their remote nature meant that few experienced the event in person, lay audiences were asked to

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of man’s control over his environment. Quite unlike the descriptions common to US presidents, those written about presidents’ wives received a specific kind of gendered attention in press accounts of these events. Here, women’s perceived gentility, frailty, and inexperience were emphasized to stress the need for button pushing as

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, portraying her as relatable and domesticated while also in control.27 In general, the world’s fairs often served as breeding grounds for contestations about gender and technology, a setting where women inventors fought for rights in the face of increasing discrimination.28 Women button pushers were often marked by their

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gender and could not escape it; their femininity featured prominently as a justification for push buttons to exist in the first place. Jokes and reports on

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’s limitations. Although readers could not witness how Mrs. Cleveland pushed the button or what she looked like, the author imposed the button pusher’s gendered body on the story. In another instance, journalists speculated that US President Cleveland would allow his baby daughter, Marion, to touch the telegraph button that

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one who pushes the button, as they will receive a shock that they will not forget very soon.”45 The advertisement emphasized how the toy bank, once a neutral object that its owner could show off to visitors, transformed into the conveyor of an electrical (and supposedly unforgettable) performance. A button stood

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. 27. Patricia A. Johnston, Real Fantasies: Edward Steichen’s Advertising Photography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 28. Graeme Gooday, Domesticating Electricity: Technology, Uncertainty and Gender, 1880–1914 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008); Oldenziel, Making Technology Masculine; Thomas J. Schlereth, Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1876–1915 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991

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homes during this time period; these “off-stage” environments reflected how familial roles were performed and shed light on divides that might exist across class, gender, or race in domestic environs. 33. “Anchor Lock Push Button,” 603. 34. E. L. Dunn, “Electric Dumb-Waiter Machines and Systems,” Electrical World 50, no

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. Boys, as “embryo Edisons,” were taught to use their hands for experimentation, creativity, and play, but they also incurred admonishment for their “unruliness.”3 Meanwhile, gendered stereotypes reinforced the notion that the most “basic” human beings, “dainty” and “fragile” girls, would benefit from buttons’ capabilities or would require protection. Disciplinary measures

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, initiating lawsuits, or removing buttons altogether—were the most common strategies for dealing with the first generation of button pushers. Such measures often conflated the gender and character of the presser with the device’s affordances, making it unclear who possessed the privilege to touch. The historical moment described herein offers

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’s push-button actions remained the same.63 The incident served to add more fuel to a broader societal discussion about harassment, privilege, and workplace gender politics already underway in Hollywood, highlighting how prominent men could “abuse” buttons and the people made to heed their call. The second instance, in January

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’s character and intentions become incredibly important. It is clear that pushing a button is anything but “easy.” Buttons both reflect and shape conceptions of gender, race, and class at a given historical moment. They continually relate to understandings of labor, effort, and control. And they reflect uncertainty about what it

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, Lisa. Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. Gooday, Graeme. Domesticating Electricity: Technology, Uncertainty and Gender, 1880–1914. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008. Gordon, J. E. H. Decorative Electricity. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1891. Collections of the Bakken Museum, Minneapolis

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(see Transportation) Big Red Button. See Warfare Bodies and death penalty (see Death penalty) ergonomics, 32, 49, 145, 159, 190, 192–193, 228, 236, 240 gender (see Gender) human factors, 145, 236 illness, 8 metaphors, 12, 94–98, 128, 236, 252, 321n22 sexuality, 95, 97–98, 128, 213, 243, 254–256, 330n34

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Cameras. See Photography Children and advertising, 111, 113 and education, 36–39, 231 and femininity, 37, 75–77, 86, 195, 231 (see also Gender; Women) and injuries, 194–195 and labor, 193–194 and mischief, 43–47, 49, 86, 93, 146, 159, 180–181, 322n32 and spectacles, 75–77

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, 224–226 Fool-proof, xvii, 200–201. See also Children Furniture, 13, 38, 142, 149, 228, 284n9 Gaming, 19, 253 Microsoft Kinect, 253 Oculus, 253 Gender femininity (see Women) and housewives (see Women) Lauer, Matt, 254–256 (see also Managers) masculinity, 79–81, 83, 93, 256 Gilbreth, Frank and Lillian, 197

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Hart-Hegeman Manufacturing Company, 13, 272n40 (see also Switches) Otis Elevator Company (see Elevators) Media representations, 233, 243–244 Medicine. See Bodies; Hospitals Men. See Gender Mere touch. See Touch; Women Milgram, Stanley, 237–238 Museums. See Information Musical instruments, xix, 15, 267n15 Photography and advertising, 107, 121–124, 126–130

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tumbler, 158–159, 163 Taylorism, 197–198 Telegraph, xviii–xix, 15, 19, 26, 76–86, 261–262, 276n36. See also Communication; World’s Fairs and gender (see World’s Fairs; Women) and world’s fairs (see World’s Fairs) Telephones. See Communication Television. See Remote control Tesla, Nikola, 193 Touch and

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Trains. See Transportation Transportation automobiles (see Automobiles) streetcars, 20, 60–61, 180, 260 trains, 222, 224 Triggers, 4, 16, 99, 256 Trump, Donald. See Warfare; Gender Typewriters, xv, xix, 15, 261. See also Keys Usability, 55–61, 172–173, 230–231, 249–254. See also Switches; Communication Vending machines, xiv, 114

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, 25, 98–99, 232–233, 237–238 Dr. Strangelove, 237 (see also Media representations) and morality, 101–103, 238 Trump, Donald, 255–256 (see also Gender; Bodies) US Navy (see Communication) Wiring bells, 26, 29–31, 34, 40 lighting, 9, 73, 141–142, 166, 209, 226–227, 232, 241, 305n26 Women

T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone That Dominates and Divides Us

by Carole Hooven  · 12 Jul 2021  · 372pp  · 117,038 words

obvious alternative hypothesis is that the greater level of male aggression is largely due to socialization. As the American Psychological Association puts it, “Primary gender role socialization aims to uphold patriarchal codes by requiring men to achieve dominant and aggressive behaviors.” For a less academic way of illustrating the point

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had little impact on the emotionally charged response, nor did it prevent Google from firing Damore a couple of months later due to “advancing harmful gender stereotypes.” This was no doubt unfortunate for Damore, who subsequently sued Google, alleging “open hostility for conservative thought … paired with invidious discrimination on

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to feel sexually attracted to girls. In a later paper, Imperato-McGinley commented on the importance of pubertal changes in the solidification of gender identity and summarized these gender transitions, which occurred despite the anticipated social consequences: Their dawning discovery of maleness was reinforced by the development of a male muscle

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distribution and male body habitus at puberty, together with the onset of morning erections and nocturnal emissions. They ultimately changed gender role from female to male, a change that was enacted independent of interference from physicians and despite fear of social harassment and embarrassment. Some

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with 5-ARD have been discovered in Turkey, Mexico, Brazil, Papua New Guinea, and elsewhere. These populations share some characteristics—they are relatively isolated, gender roles are typically divergent, and families are somewhat inbred, increasing the chances of transmitting rare genetic disorders. Their isolation makes it more likely that such

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with different outfits to put on; the “boys’ toys” included building logs and blocks, a gun, a tool set, and various vehicles; and the “neutral” toys included puzzles and crayons and paper for coloring. (To be clear, these toys were not selected because they were thought to be appropriate for, or

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spent most of their time playing with the boys’ toys, and girls spent most of their time playing with the girls’ toys (remaining toy-time was with “gender neutral” toys). The more interesting results were the comparisons between the toy choices made by unaffected girls and those with CAH. The CAH girls

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the size of the clitoris. And even without surgery, girls with CAH have likely experienced frequent poking and prodding of their genitals and questions about gender-related feelings and behavior. In addition, the argument goes, caregivers who are aware of the girls’ medical condition may implicitly encourage masculine behavior. These

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on nonhuman animals and non-transgender human populations, and other evidence I have discussed throughout this book. Taking or suppressing T as part of a gender transition is the medically assisted counterpart of the “natural experiments” afforded by conditions like complete androgen insensitivity syndrome and congenital adrenal hyperplasia. In particular,

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W. W. Norton, Fine, Testosterone Rex, https://www.wwnorton.co.uk/books/9780393082081-testosterone-rex. “This book brilliantly explains”: “Cordelia Fine’s Explosive Study of Gender Politics Wins 30th Anniversary Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize,” Royal Society, news, September 19, 2017, https://royalsociety.org/news/2017/09/cordelia-fine

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8, no. 4 (1999): 115–20; and Sheina Lew-Levy, Adam H. Boyette, Alyssa N. Crittenden, Barry S. Hewlett, and Michael E. Lamb, “Gender-Typed and Gender-Segregated Play Among Tanzanian Hadza and Congolese BaYaka Hunter-Gatherer Children and Adolescents,” Child Development 91, no. 4 (2020): 1284–301. Fausto-Sterling uses

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has been cited 1,488 times, according to Google Scholar. “in addition to behavioral differences”: Imperato-McGinley et al., “Androgens and the Evolution of Male-Gender Identity,” 1235. “faulty logic and restrictive interpretations”: Bleier et al., “Why Does a Pseudohermaphrodite Want to Be a Man?,” 840. “women’s subordinate position

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Hyperplasia: Clinical Symptoms and Diagnostic Methods,” Acta Biochimica Polonica 65, no. 1 (2018): 25–33. one classic experiment: William R. Charlesworth and Claire Dzur, “Gender Comparisons of Preschoolers’ Behavior and Resource Utilization in Group Problem Solving,” Child Development 58, no. 1 (1987): 191–200. boys are far more likely to

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Two Types of Intersex Surgery on Children,” USA Today, October 22, 2020. These social influences, in this view: Jordan-Young, “Hormones, Context, and ‘Brain Gender.’” girls are generally policed more leniently: Hugh Lytton and David M. Romney, “Parents’ Differential Socialization of Boys and Girls: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 109

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, “Prenatal Endocrine Influences on Sexual Orientation and on Sexually Differentiated Childhood Behavior,” Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology 32, no. 2 (2011): 170–82; Melissa Hines, “Human Gender Development,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 118 (2020): 89–96; but see Rebecca Christine Knickmeyer, Sally Wheelwright, Kevin Taylor, Peter Raggatt, Gerald Hackett, and Simon Baron

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-Cohen, “Gender-Typed Play and Amniotic Testosterone,” Developmental Psychology 41, no. 3 (2005): 517–58, for null findings. T makes boy brains: Sex differences in levels of

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effects of reduced T may be different: Anna Wiik, Tommy R. Lundberg, Eric Rullman et al., “Muscle Strength, Size and Composition Following 12 Months of Gender-Affirming Treatment in Transgender Individuals,” Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 105, no. 3 (2019): e805–e813. “lack a sound scientific basis”: Court of

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Archer, “Sex Differences in Aggression Between Heterosexual Partners: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Psychological Bulletin 126, no. 5 (2000): 651–80; Sherry L. Hamby, “Measuring Gender Differences in Partner Violence: Implications from Research on Other Forms of Violent and Socially Undesirable Behavior,” Sex Roles 52, no. 11–12 (2005): 725–42

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lower rates of behaviors related to empathy: Leonardo Christov-Moore, Elizabeth A. Simpson, Gino Coudé, Kristina Grigaityte, Marco Iacobini, and Pier Francesco Ferrari, “Empathy: Gender Effects in Brain and Behavior,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 46, pt. 4 (2014): 604–27. Men … dominate in the most extreme form of intimate-partner

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1 (1991): 15–24; Lisa D. Brush, “Violent Acts and Injurious Outcomes in Married Couples: Methodological Issues in the National Survey of Families and Households,” Gender and Society 4, no. 1 (1990): 56–67; Shilan Caman, Katarina Howner, Marianne Kristiansson, and Joakim Sturup, “Differentiating Male and Female Intimate Partner Homicide

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young male primates: For sex differences in play, and play and hormones, see Melissa Hines, Mihaela Constantinescu, and Debra Spencer, “Early Androgen Exposure and Human Gender Development,” Biology of Sex Differences 6, no. 3 (2015); Vickie L. Pasterski, Mitchell E. Geffner, Caroline Brain, Peter Hindmarsh, Charles Brook, and Melissa Hines,

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is associated with greater rates of male violence of all kinds. Alternatively, monogamous societies are associated with decreased levels of male-male violence, increased gender equality, and increased economic productivity. Reduced T among married men and fathers may be a contributing factor. For a review of how cultural norms

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Archer, “The Reality and Evolutionary Significance of Human Psychological Sex Differences”; and J. Michael Bailey, Steven Gaulin, Yvonne Agyei, and Brian A. Gladue, “Effects of Gender and Sexual Orientation on Evolutionarily Relevant Aspects of Human Mating Psychology,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 66, no. 6 (1994): 1081. polygyny (many wives

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Surgical, and Psychosexual Outcome,” Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 85, no. 8 (2000): 2664–69. Social and emotional factors: Bailey et al., “Effects of Gender and Sexual Orientation on Evolutionarily Relevant Aspects of Human Mating Psychology”; and Archer, “The Reality and Evolutionary Significance of Human Psychological Sex Differences.” Dopamine is

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are more likely to be attracted to male-dominated occupations: LeVay, Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why, 62; Lee Ellis, Malini Ratnasingam, and Mary Wheeler, “Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Occupational Interests: Evidence of Their Interrelatedness,” Personality and Individual Differences 53, no. 1 (2012): 64–69; and Richard A. Lippa, “Sex

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Eric Vilain, and Marc Epprecht, “Sexual Orientation, Controversy, and Science,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 17, no. 2 (2016): 45–101. This association between gender-atypical interests in childhood: Melissa Hines, “Prenatal Endocrine Influences on Sexual Orientation and on Sexually Differentiated Childhood Behavior,” Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology 32, no. 2 (2011

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Richard Green, The “Sissy Boy Syndrome” and the Development of Homosexuality (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 12. All the men in the gender-typical group were heterosexual: As cited in Hines, “Prenatal Endocrine Influences on Sexual Orientation and on Sexually Differentiated Childhood Behavior.” See also Melissa Hines, Vickie

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Pasterski, Debra Spencer et al., “Prenatal Androgen Exposure Alters Girls’ Responses to Information Indicating Gender-Appropriate Behaviour,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 371, no. 1688 (2016): 20150125; and Green, The “Sissy Boy Syndrome,” ch. 4.

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both direct and indirect actions of T are at work: Sheri A. Berenbaum, “Beyond Pink and Blue: The Complexity of Early Androgen Effects on Gender Development,” Child Development Perspectives 12, no. 1 (2018): 58–64. “not exclusively heterosexual”: CAH and sexual orientation: Melissa Hines, Mihaela Constantinescu, and Debra Spencer,

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transcript. “do not conform to what is typically associated with their sex assigned at birth”: American Psychological Association, “Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming People,” American Psychologist 70, no. 9 (2015): 832–64. A note on usage: The APA guidelines refer to biological sex as “sex assigned

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https://knowledgeconnection.mainehealth.org/lambrew-retreat-2020/47. In England, for example, the number of young natal females: National Health Service (UK), “Referrals to the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) Level Off in 2018–19,” Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, June 28, 2019, https://tavistockandportman.nhs.uk/about-us/news

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/stories/referrals-gender-identity-development-service-gids-level-2018-19/. Hormones and surgery for transgender people are booming: In the United States, coverage for transgender services, such as

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(2010): 926–33. delaying puberty may cause irreversible losses in bone strength: Caroline Salas-Humara, Gina M. Sequeira, Wilma Rossi, and Cherie Priya Dhar, “Gender Affirming Medical Care of Transgender Youth,” Current Problems in Pediatric and Adolescent Health Care 49, no. 9 (2019): 100683. blocking puberty may also reduce opportunities

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gain comfort with their natal sex and see dysphoria resolve, and which ones won’t. See Richards, Maxwell, and McCune, “Use of Puberty Blockers for Gender Dysphoria.” the options for maintaining fertility: Timothy C. Lai, Rosalind McDougall, Debi Feldman, Charlotte V. Elder, and Ken C. Pang, “Fertility Counseling for

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Carl-Fredrik aromatase aromatase deficiency Arquette, Rosanna aspartame assault, physical. See also aggression; headbutting; murder; sexual assault; violence athletes. See also sports; women’s sports gender tests and Atlas, Charles ATP Austria axon “Baby X Revisited” (Fausto-Sterling) baldness Bartoli, Cecilia Bayliss, William BBC behavioral endocrinology Berenbaum, Sheri Berthold, Arnold Better

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effect cell differentiation cell membranes cell nucleus cell specialization cervix Challenge Hypothesis chemical messengers chickens children athletics and care of fathers and female aggression and gender-nonconforming gender segregation in sex differences and sugar and chimpanzees China cholesterol chromatin chromosome chromosomes, defined. See also XX chromosomes; XY chromosomes; Y chromosome Clark,

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France fraud gametes. See also eggs sperm transgender transitions and Garcia-Navarro, Lulu Gavin, Helen gender-atypical traits gender clinic gender discrimination gender dysphoria Gendered Brain, The (Rippon) gendered social environment gender equity Gender Identity Development Service (NHS) gender imbalances gender roles gender segregation gender testing gene expression genes. See also specific genetic disorders gene transcription puberty and upregulation of Genghis

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Harvard Crimson Harvard University headbutting height hemoglobin Hepburn, Katharine Himba of Namibia and Angola History of Animals (Aristotle) homosexuality (LGBTQ) “gay gene” and gay men gender-atypical behavior and lesbians and nonhuman animals and sexual novelty and honor hormone-receptor complex hormones. See also estrogen; testosterone; and other specific hormones chemistry

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sex differences; testes; testosterone; and specific behaviors; physical attributes; and social issues defining fetal development and society and social attitudes toward male-to-female (MtF) gender transition athletic performance and testosterone suppression in marathon runners martial arts masculine behavior nontoxic problematic or “toxic” testes and testosterone and, vs. socialization and mass

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Chanel moles, Cape golden monkeys rhesus macaque Talapoin monogamy Mormons mRNA Muller, Martin Müllerian ducts Müllerian inhibiting hormone murder Murray, Andy muscles Muslims Myths of Gender (Fausto-Sterling) naked mole rat National Health Service (UK) National Public Radio naturalistic fallacy natural selection Nature nervous system neuroendocrine system neurons neurotransmitters New England

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of running Ružička, Leopold Rwanda Saini, Angela saliva, testosterone levels in Sambia people same-sex marriages Sapolsky, Robert Saudi Arabia Savinova, Mariya Science Science and Gender (Bleier) scorpion fly scrotum seals secondary sex characteristics secretin Seidler, Maren self-control Selfish Gene, The (Dawkins) Semenya, Caster Sex and the City (TV

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Love (film) sheep Singapore Sistine Chapel 60 Minutes (TV show) slut-shaming Smith, Joseph snails socialization. See also environment and culture aggression and children and gender and testosterone vs., and masculine behavior women and STEM and Society of Biology (Paris) Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI) Sorvino, Mira Southeast Asia SOX9 gene

Toast

by Stross, Charles  · 1 Jan 2002

to be seen as a major tragedy, a destroyer of families. Access to transportation and privacy caused a chain reaction in social relationships between the genders in the middle of the century, a tipping of the balance that is still causing considerable social upheaval. When we start changing our own minds

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, an—” he looked around at the other occupants of the bar and shuddered, guiltily. “Anorak?” I asked, trying to keep my tone of voice neutral. “Furry toys.” He glared at his glass but refrained from taking another mouthful. “That’s where the action is, not mainframes or steam engines or wearables or

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!” At the next table a person with make-up and long hair who's wearing a dress -- Manfred doesn't want to speculate about the gender of these crazy mixed-up Euros -- is reminiscing about wiring the fleshpots of Tehran for cybersex. Two collegiate-looking dudes are arguing intensely in German

Organized Simplicity

by Tsh Oxenreider  · 3 Nov 2010  · 210pp  · 55,131 words

, it’s probably best to have a more family-friendly space for these toys. Do your best to keep art supplies, books, and toys for everyone in one neutral space. It will lessen the sibling quarrels, and it will provide a more cooperative playing environment. 3. Do your kids have a good

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the line who can wear the old clothes (or if you think there might be in the future), store the clothes organized by size and gender. If you won’t need them in the next year, store them somewhere like the garage or the attic (but be aware that in a

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more than watch and be entertained. The toy is doing more playing than the child. Open-ended toys allow for longer creative play, spanning both genders, with a large age range. Opt for these kind of quality, long-lasting, open-ended toys. My favorites are: 1. Wooden blocks. A simple set

The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop Per Child

by Morgan G. Ames  · 19 Nov 2019  · 426pp  · 117,775 words

role in the project, even as those stories discounted the social and infrastructural resources that enabled this exploration and ultimately perpetuated classed, racial, linguistic, and gendered tropes about what computing culture is and who belongs in it. Chapters 3 through 6 explore how these ideals played out in practice: how the

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did not translate to most users: fully two-thirds of children hardly ever used their laptops. Some nonuse was due to breakage, which occurred along gendered and socioeconomic lines, complicating some of the benefits the project was supposed to provide. However, most nonuse was due to disinterest: about half of all

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shows how the communities in which these children are embedded experience the multiple forms of entrenched marginalization that the laptop was supposed to overcome—particularly gendered marginalization (where only boys were allowed to be “hackers”) and linguistic marginalization (where English was uncritically accepted as the universal language of programmers). Chapter 6

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become more of a private act, and people with good ideas ... will be able to offer them in an open marketplace directly to consumers.”89 Gender and the Technically Precocious Boy This shared ethos between constructionism and hacker culture at MIT and beyond—a belief in the universal appeal of computers

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imaginaries share an exclusionary masculinity that is often hostile to outsiders, including girls and women, people of color, and others who do not fit the gendered norms implicit in the imaginaries, as we will see. The technical toys that support the social imaginary of the technically precocious boy have helped define

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States and around the world have broadened their markets and have ostensibly started to target some toys toward a more gender-neutral audience. However, without efforts to actively and specifically push back on the effects of decades of gendered targeting, this legacy lives on: the boy user for these products may no longer be

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explicit, but he is still implied—what scholars in cultural studies would call “unmarked.”97 Likewise, the online world heralded as gender egalitarian in the heady days of cyberutopianism in the 1980s and 1990s has also proven to be a sexist (as well as deeply racist) space

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spaces are often explicitly harassed and excluded.98 With its focus on programming and technical tinkering, One Laptop per Child likewise fit into this tacitly gendered narrative. Indeed, its charisma relied on its connection with this social imaginary, which continues to be a powerful force in American culture. While the programming

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could open up the field to different ways of knowing. Papert and his third wife, fellow MIT professor Sherry Turkle, explored this in relation to gender specifically. Their article “Epistemological Pluralism” attempts to separate computer programming skills from what they acknowledge is a masculine technical culture by discussing more “concrete” and

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the context of broader cultural debates about the value of video games.36 It also ignored the ways that video games and gameplay have been gendered by game companies and other media since the 1980s, as we saw in the previous chapter. If play and video games were so closely linked

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Marcelle Stienstra found that although attempting to design for “everybody,” the predominantly male designers they studied had inscribed their own tastes, competencies, and views of gender identity onto their users in an attempt to “configure” these users in the designers’ own image (what the authors called the “I-methodology”).83 The

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2013, Paraguay Educa started subsidizing the cost of parts to help poorer families (though parts remained scarce and hard to procure). Breakages were also gendered, following Paraguayan gender norms that, as in the United States, socialized boys into being more rambunctious than girls. Whereas software problems were roughly equal, my August 2010

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, as well as some of the meanings that some children themselves had started to develop. Moreover, the machines were unruly along lines that both were gendered and reinforced existing socioeconomic divides. This illustrates how privilege—through infrastructure, environment, and social support—can influence a child’s opportunities in ways that may

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to be fulfilled—its individualist focus failed to shift the larger structural inequalities that worked to marginalize these youth. This led to a retrenchment of gendered, socioeconomic, and linguistic inequalities rather than the sweeping cultural uplift that the charisma of the XO laptop had promised. Manuelo and Elisa, the Scratchero and

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, may not have fit the social imaginary of the technically precocious boy that Paraguay Educa appears to have been looking for among these youth. The gendered expectations around what uses were considered interesting and who was expected to exhibit them thus did not work in her favor. Moreover, this disconnection shows

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even among these highly-engaged youth. Rather than transforming their social worlds, these youth remained embedded in them, still beholden to the structural limitations of gender, place, and social class. Precocious Youth, Supportive Parents, and Environment Manuelo, Elisa, Isabel, and Nelson were fairly unique at their respective schools, but in 2010

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private schools, and able to afford the best colleges in the country or even the world. The lack of girls in the room demonstrated a gender marginalization that seemed to be completely taken for granted by those present. And, finally, there was a linguistic marginalization, in which knowledge of English, not

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of language as a way in which we construct shared perceptions of reality. (Judith Butler’s analysis of the ways in which gendered expressions socialize us all into particular gender roles provides an especially compelling case in this genre.)11 In this light, Bender’s visit was performative in the ways that

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made it more difficult for those on the project to recognize or appreciate ideological diversity, much less constructively confront problems of socioeconomic disparity, racial and gender bias, or other issues of social justice beyond most of their personal experiences and the imaginaries that animated the project.16 As a result, charismatic

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acknowledge that learning is a fundamentally social process. These trends risk both naturalizing and worsening inequalities that projects like OLPC are meant to eliminate—particularly gendered, socioeconomic, linguistic, and center-periphery divides. This might in fact be the path of least resistance: if OLPC’s laptops settle into the mundane under

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in each school—drawn roughly at random from the student population—if they were willing to be interviewed. I aimed to have equal representation between genders and grades and proportional representation of each school, which I roughly achieved. This group of interviewees included some children who used the laptop for media

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data included types of breakage for each laptop in the program, allowing me to layer on additional levels of analysis, including the laptop owner’s gender (categorized by their name, before I anonymized the data set), grade (provided in the database), and whether they lived in the urban center or the

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way to scout for talent. See Oldenziel, “Boys and Their Toys.” 94. See e.g. See Abbiss, “Boys and Machines” and “Rethinking the ‘Problem’ of Gender”; Alper, “Can Our Kids Hack It?”; Ensmenger, “‘Computer Boys’ Take Over,” Computer Boys Take Over, and “Signs of Rugged Individualism”; Hicks, “History of Computing” and

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), the category of “boy” is thus what the unmarked signifier “child” often represents, while “girl” is specifically marked and set apart. See e.g. Butler, Gender Trouble, chapter 1. 98. On online sexism, see Gray, “Intersecting Oppressions”; Kasumovic and Kuznekoff, “Insights into Sexism”; Kirkpatrick, “How Gaming Became Sexist”; Beavis and Charles

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–197. 6. Khan, “Let’s Use Video”; Kaplan, “Sal Khan.” 7. See, e.g., Clow, “Funnel of Participation”; Liyanagunawardena, Adams, and Williams, “MOOCs”; Paul, “MOOC Gender Gap”; Christensen et al., “MOOC Phenomenon”; Khalil and Ebner, “MOOCs Completion Rates”; Dillahunt, Wang, and Teasley, “Democratizing Higher Education”; Engle, Mankoff, and Carbrey, “Human Physiology

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are not guaranteed to have equal variances. Appendix B: Methods for Studying the Charisma Machine 1. Geertz, “Thick Description.” Bibliography Abbiss, Jane. “Boys and Machines: Gendered Computer Identities, Regulation and Resistance.” Gender and Education 23, no. 5 (2011): 601–617. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2010.549108. ———. “Rethinking the ‘Problem’ of

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Gender and IT Schooling: Discourses in Literature.” Gender and Education 20, no. 2 (2008): 153–165. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540250701805839. ABC Color. “Diez gremios de educadores van a huelga en busca

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of Education and Human Resources Development, Solomon Islands Government, March 2010. https://research.acer.edu.au/digital_learning/7/. Adam, Alison. “Cyberstalking and Internet Pornography: Gender and the Gaze.” Ethics and Information Technology 4, no. 2 (June 2002): 133–142. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1019967504762. Ahearn, Amy. “The Flip

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. http://educationbythenumbers.org/content/girls-computer-coding_1691/. Beavis, Catherine, and Claire Charles. “Would the ‘Real’ Girl Gamer Please Stand Up? Gender, LAN Cafés and the Reformulation of the ‘Girl’ Gamer.” Gender and Education 19, no. 6 (2007): 691–705. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540250701650615. Becker, Howard S. Art Worlds. Berkeley

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. 2 (2015): 271–292. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2015.1013742. Butler, Judith. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge, 1997. ———. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Callon, Michel. “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and

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Blok and Greg Downey. Supplement, International Review of Social History 48, no. S11 (2003): 153–180. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859003001305. ———. “Making Programming Masculine.” Gender Codes: Why Women Are Leaving Computing, edited by Thomas J. Misa, 115–141. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470619926

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the Caribbean. United Nations Publication LC/W.171. Santiago, Chile: United Nations, 2007. Oudshoorn, Nelly, Els Rommes, and Marcelle Stienstra. “Configuring the User as Everybody: Gender and Design Cultures in Information and Communication Technologies.” Science, Technology & Human Values 29, no. 1 (January 2004): 30–63. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243903259190

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–6, 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20110119070241/http://jeffpatzer.com:80/2011/01/ Paul, Annie Murphy. “The MOOC Gender Gap.” Slate, September 10, 2014. https://slate.com/technology/2014/09/mooc-gender-gap-how-to-get-more-women-into-online-stem-classes.html. Pawar, Udai Singh, Joyojeet Pal, Rahul Gupta, and

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, Svetlana, 51 The Boy Mechanic, 39, 188, 231n90 Brazil Lua programming language of, 77, 160, 163 textbooks in, 83, 242n41 Breakage extra laptops and, 88 gender and, 117 in Paraguay Educa, repair and, 88–91, 111, 115–118, 118f, 214–215, 243n54, 247n10 in Plan Ceibal, repair and, 89–90, 244n57

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, 61–67, 71–72, 236n59 Free Software Foundation, 62, 64 Freire, Paulo, 76, 229n67, 239n15 Futuro, 153, 156 García, Alan, 245n73 Geertz, Clifford, 194, 217 Gender boy as default, 43, 232n97 hacker ethic and, 38–40 internet and, 43 laptop breakage and, 117 masculine design, 71 motivation and, 70 OLPC and

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Paraguay Educa, translation and, 80–83, 108, 241n37, 241n40 public, disruption of, 189 Innocenti, Bernie, 239n17 Internet Anglocentrism of, 162, 196, 250n21 charisma of, 101 gender in, 43 MOOCs, 187–188 in Paraguay, home use of, 93, 247n5, 248n20 in Paraguay, parent concerns about, 113, 247n8 in Paraguay Educa, 100–101

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–160, 162 Paraguay Educa and, 156–160, 162–163 Margolis, Jane, 69–70 Marques, Ivan da Costa, 195 Marxist theory, 199, 221n30, 223n42 Masculinity. See Gender Massive open online courses (MOOCs), 187–188 Mazzarella, William, 165, 180–181, 221n35 MEC. See Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, Paraguay Media charisma amplified by

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–88, 109 cultural change promised by, 47–49, 68, 195–197, 236n67 disruption and, 83, 92, 106–107 freedom and core principles of, 50, 61 gender and, 39–40, 43–44, 46, 71 as hackers, architects of, 15, 23 Hole in the Wall and, 194 imperialism and, 132–134, 161, 195

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’s Machine, 30–31, 34, 131, 226n30 The Connected Family, 28 on education, factory model of, 36–37 exceptionalism of, 69 on freedom, 65–66 gender and, 43–44 hacker social imaginary and, 38, 44–45 on individualized learning, constructionism and, 137–138 on laptop, children maintaining, 110 Logo programming language

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with, 16, 210–214, 216–218 fourth-grade classroom of, 83–85, 91–92, 98–99, 102 funding of, 77–78, 183 Futuro and, 153 gender in, 117–118, 144–147, 151–152, 155, 159, 163 government and, 78–80, 104, 170, 240n22, 240n29, 240nn26–27 hacker culture of, 77, 144

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Educa and, 77, 139–140, 153, 157–159, 162–163, 239nn17–18 Proteus of machines, 29, 109, 111, 115 Python, 156–157, 236n59 Rebellion, 230n81 gender and, 28–29, 38–40, 230n73 in hacker ethic, 28–29, 37–41, 46 Reguetón (reggaeton), 119, 124, 143 Religion Catholicism, in Paraguay, 80, 196

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boundary object in, 222n36 coproduction in, 9, 223n39 on performativity, 179 technological determinism critiqued by, 10 Scratch, 27, 56 games designed with, 141–142, 153 gender and, 145–147 Papert influence on, 186 in Paraguay Educa, 140–142, 145–146, 150–151, 153 Scratch (cont.) popularity of, 186–187 Scratch@MIT

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, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference, 3, 176 Thick description, 217 Thiel Fellowship, 189, 252n11 Thomas, Douglas, 226n31 Tinkering, 198–199 Toyama, Kentaro, 13, 244n59 Toys, 231n93 gender and, 41–43 little, XO laptop as, 112–115 technically precocious boy and, 41–42, 231n92 Translation charisma and, 92–106, 137 charismatic, by Paraguay

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Silicon Valley, 189 Vázquez, Tabaré, 79–80 Venture capitalists, 177–179, 189 Video games. See also Consumption; Media; Scratch Doom, 57, 122, 129, 143 as gendered, 43–44, 57 motivation and, 57–58 Negroponte, N., on, 57, 123–124 Papert on, 43, 57–58, 123–124 in Paraguay Educa, 122–124