It’s striking, when one reads female philosophers from the early modern period, how little the arguments that a given trait belongs solely to women or to men have changed over the years. In the 17th and 18th centuries, no one used the term “genetic” or “evolutionary” or “long end of the tail” or “back on Ye Olde Veldte”, but instead argued in terms of “natural” or “innate” differences. What particular traits belong in the set “innate to women” or “innate to men” have changed according to social fashion, but what’s curious is that the form of the argument hasn’t:
Girls are from their earliest infancy fond of dress. Not content with being pretty, they are desirous of being thought so; we see, by all their little airs, that this thought engages their attention; and they are hardly capable of understanding what is said to them, before they are to be governed by talking to them of what people will think of their behavior.
That’s Mary Wollstonecraft quoting Rousseau in her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. If you insert “princess dresses” and update the language, it would not be out of place in the mouth of someone blathering on today about how natural it is that little girls play with dolls rather than trucks.
Of course, she has a response to Rousseau and all the other writers who gave advice to young ladies! Here’s a hint from the chapter title. The Effect Which An Early Association of Ideas Has Upon the Character:
Every thing that they see or hear serves to fix impressions, call forth emotions, and associate ideas, that give a sexual character to the mind.
And of course, as girls are cherished for being fearful, and delicate, and forbidden to run around and play, later:
..when all their ingenuity is called forth to adjust their dress, ‘a passion for a scarlet coat’, is so natural, that it never surprised me…
I am proposing a new maxim: those who wish to argue from personal anecdote that a certain character trait is dictated by evolution should endeavor to advance the argument beyond 1792.
The Edge of the American West 
26 comments
August 27, 2010 at 7:26 am
chris
Girls are from their earliest infancy fond of dress.
Considering that in their *earliest* infancy they can’t talk or even purposefully move their arms and legs, I wonder how anyone claimed to understand what they were fond of.
Most likely this means “Girls are from the age of two or three…” but of course by that age they have already learned a lot, including which behaviors get them what kind of adult attention. (If a horse can figure out what people expect of him, so can a baby.)
One wonders if the people who made such statements had ever actually *met* any infant girls and had the opportunity to observe them and the people around them from “earliest infancy”.
August 27, 2010 at 7:28 am
politicalfootball
I mentioned my daughter’s preference for a pink mitt in another recent thread. I remember some years ago seeing a “scientist” suggest women’s eyes and brains are designed to prefer colors like pink. Sociological Images has some nice discussions of how pink has been perceived in the U.S. here and here and here.
August 27, 2010 at 7:41 am
dana
One thing that seems to be recent is the number of gender-neutral toys and accessories that are made gendered by being pink. Here are youth sports jersey to support the child’s favorite team — in pink for girls! Here is a tennis racket — in pink! Here is a BMX helmet — in pink!
I don’t find the pinkness to be a problem, exactly, because I know too many people who are raising smart little girls who are completely obsessed by princesses, but it does seem to be a very persistent theme in marketing to girls. Do anything — as long as it’s pink! (Two ways to read this: femininity and achievement aren’t in conflict (positive spin) or if you want to do something manly, make sure you femme it up (negative).)
It’s common in women’s marketing, too. Here is a bicycle designed for women’s anatomy. Great! Why did you have to paint it purple and put little butterflies on it?
August 27, 2010 at 7:57 am
nicoleandmaggie
Yes.
August 27, 2010 at 8:54 am
bsci
I believe the biological basis for sex color preference is promoted by Leonard Sax
Sorry for continuing book promotion, but Eliot rips into him in amazing detail and bluntness in Pink Brain Blue Brain”
As for play differences, Eliot also goes into some cool studies that show very slight sex-based toy preferences at young ages, but the differences are amplified if a toddler is playing in the same room as another toddler (i.e. If another kid is watching, boys know what they’re supposed to be playing with).
August 27, 2010 at 9:41 am
dana
You’re not going to rest until I read the book, are ya? Hehe.
August 27, 2010 at 10:31 am
Mark
@Dana: I have a baby girl, and recently bought her one of those plastic-donuts-of-different-sizes-on-a-peg toys. There were two types: one where the donuts were all different colors (except pink), one where they were all pink. There were also blocks that were either in different colors (except pink) or all pink. Why would anyone want monochrome blocks?
August 27, 2010 at 10:40 am
ac
It’s equally impossible to find boys’ clothes without basketballs, footballs and baseballs all over them. Or things that say, e.g., “I’m Mr Fix-It!”
August 27, 2010 at 10:43 am
bsci
@Dana: At the rate I’ve been going, I’ll probably end up re-writing it from memory in your comments sections. :)
Slightly more seriously, if this topic relates to your academic work, I’d call it required reading. If this is merely a topic that interests you, then it still might be worthwhile.
The book could be called either an extremely well written 300 page review article or a slightly dry and pedantic book for a lay audience. While this is far from my area of research, most of what I’ve glanced at in the field is work by sociologists talking about sociology of gender, biologists talking about sex differences, or clinicians who selectively pick data to fit a desired story. Eliot is a neuroscientist who puts serious effort into combining the research in all the domains into a single story. The early chapters focus a bit more on neuroscience and the later a bit more on sociology, but there’s a lot of mixing along the way.
I buy some parts of her combined story more than others, but I’m aware of no other effort that’s both so broad, detailed, and presents enough information to let the reader form personal conclusions/theories. (with the caveat that I haven’t studied this field in depth and might be missing other great works)
August 27, 2010 at 10:50 am
politicalfootball
bsci, your second link cracked me up. Here’s Sax on how boys are being damaged by the failure to define their masculinity properly:
And I gotta admit, he’s on to something here. When I was a kid in the ’60s, women were women and men were men, and boys didn’t spend any time at all playing video games or surfing the internet for porn.
August 27, 2010 at 10:55 am
onymous
At the rate I’ve been going, I’ll probably end up re-writing it from memory in your comments sections. :)
A Pierre Menard in our midst!
August 27, 2010 at 11:06 am
ac
This might be slightly off-topic, but a while ago I read a paper by the economist Claudia Goldin in which she happened to mention that the structure of the work force as women started to enter it actually didn’t have women at the bottom (in class or status terms). Men were at both the top and the bottom, with women in the middle. That is, for instance, the executive was above the (female) secretary who was above the boy in the mailroom.
Of course, part of the idea was that there was more mobility for men, and—proverbially—the boy in the mailroom could rise to be the executive. Whereas women were expected to stay in the same place. But there was a sort of middle class respectability about the traditional woman’s job that many men’s jobs lacked. At least when looked at from a certain perspective.
I’m not sure how this plays into a little kid’s aspiration to be a nurse versus a police officer, but there’s a little class wrinkle in there somewhere.
August 27, 2010 at 11:11 am
dana
I once bought a friend’s new baby girl the cutest little onesie, with a little puppy with a bow and little light blue trim and little pastel curliques all on the nice white fabric.
Realized as I dropped it in the mailbox that there’s a rhyme about snips and snails and puppy dog’s tails. Oops. But puppies! Are cute! Like babies! I have no idea how I missed the signaling but it led to a funny phone call.
It’s funny how arbtitrary it is. Bears on yellow? Neutral. Lions on pink? Girl. Puppies on blue? Boy.
August 27, 2010 at 11:27 am
bsci
@politicalfootball, you might stop laughing when you realize Sax is one of the go-to people for media appearances on sex differences. You saw all the links to is speaking appears on major TV programs and to teachers’ groups?
@dana one of the more amusing things about the color coding is the more expensive the clothing the more options you have. Try buying a $5 onesie with anything short of blue camouflage or pink princesses riding unicorns while picking flowers. Looking at more expensive brands there are shocking things like clothing where yellow and green are featured or things with blue on clothing designed for girls.
August 27, 2010 at 12:17 pm
Colin Danby
pedant alert!
The singular is prolegomenon.
Need to start a society to protect Greek plurals e.g. phenomenon/a
August 27, 2010 at 12:37 pm
dana
Or a society to make sure I don’t post before coffee.
August 27, 2010 at 12:52 pm
CaliFury
If humans evolved sex based differences in preferences for objects (e.g, dresses versus baseballs) wouldn’t the actual objects we developed the preference for be ones from the natural world? For example, do boys like banging rocks together more than girls do and do girls like to pick flowers more than boys do? Banging rocks is pre-human tool-maker behavior and picking flowers would be pre-human gathering. Maybe test not for colors, but for whether given the choice between a rock and a flower, the pre-verbal babies put one or the other in their mouths with higher frequency.
August 27, 2010 at 1:00 pm
JPool
ac,
The problem with that model, as you describe it, is that by the time much of women’s labor took that form, women had already been serving various roles in the wage-labor force for nearly one hundred years, and they had entered on the industrial bottom tier. The historical moment in which women in the work force were mainly lower-status educated professionals (teachers, nurses, secretaries, but not clerks) was one moment in a longer history of gender, professionalization and social class, rather than a point of origin.
You’re right that there was in the past a myth of mobility for men’s white collar work that didn’t carry over for women, in large part because their working lives were presumed to be a limited phase of their lives, with very few examples of women who could be considered professional and social successes. Like you, I’m not sure how much 1920s and 1930s models of womens labor continue to affect children’s gender socialization, I do think the balance of some of the models have changed. The virtual mommy wars point to a continued presumption that women, unlike men, will be unable to balance personal and professional lives. But, I hope that girls today at least have more models of adult women for whom professional lives are a presumption rather than a tenuous proposition.
August 27, 2010 at 1:47 pm
JPool
CaliFury,
I really like you research proposal, but fear it will get hung up on flower choking prevention protocols.
August 27, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Vance
bcsi, have you seen Language Log on Brizendine? (Here and elsewhere.) They don’t love Sax either.
I’m getting the Eliot from the library this afternoon, and looking forward to it.
[Edited to add: I see Mark Liberman gave Eliot a blurb — all in the family.]
August 27, 2010 at 5:11 pm
ac
JPool – I suppose I think it’s useful to keep in mind that there are some anomalies in women’s employment. Teaching or nursing are, for example, somewhat insulated from the effects of recession, at least compared to manufacturing or construction. That may be one reason women stay in more traditional jobs, for the stabilizing effect. And in the past few decades some of the gap in wages has been closing, in part because of gains in (heavily female) areas like healthcare, the decline of (male) union labor, and so on.
It’s rather ironic to me that the whole mommy wars discussion took place during a decade of incredibly poor job growth. But that’s another story.
August 27, 2010 at 5:45 pm
matt w
On the subject of rehashed arguments from old philosophers, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this argument from Hume gussied up with evolutionary language, but otherwise almost unaltered.
August 28, 2010 at 9:49 am
Vance
It’s endearing how Hume introduces the topic saying, “I doubt not but these virtues will be found to be still more conspicuous instances of the operation of those principles, which I have insisted on.” Would that all perpetrators of just-so stories were so honest.
[Pink Brain, Blue Brain] could be called either an extremely well written 300 page review article or a slightly dry and pedantic book for a lay audience.
The weakness of the writing, I think, is Eliot’s attempts to reach out to the lay audience — awkward pop-culture allusions, coy winks, setting of familiar scenes, etc. She seems to have tried to lighten a natively “dry” academic style by stirring in selected fun ingredients, rather than establishing a solid “middle” voice flexible enough to summarize a study or recount personal experience without a lurch. Still, good material, well organized.
August 28, 2010 at 10:32 am
Herbert Browne
It’s fascinating to see the interpretations of ‘color’ through the filter of other cultures. There was a puzzling spike in post-Christmas sales of cans of Almond-Roca (some years ago) that was resolved when it was discovered that gifts in pink were especially prized at Chinese New Year by those who observed this moon-related moveable feast… (and the gold foil wrap on individual candies didn’t hurt, either).
^..^
August 28, 2010 at 10:51 am
Herbert Browne
My thanks to matt w for the Hume link… which was worth reading (if for no other reason) for the phrase “.. and that their natural instinct is not directed to a wrong object, when they give a loose to love and tenderness.”
^..^
August 29, 2010 at 10:04 am
Kaleberg
The color coding for babies and toddlers flipped in the late 1920s and early 1930s. It was before then pink for boys and blue for girls. There was some confusion for shoppers since not all stores flipped at the same time. Color preference is far from innate.
If anything, ultrasound has made it even worse. It lets the gender indoctrination via merchandise start at birth, rather than letting the kid outgrow a few singlets before getting color stereotyped.