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Comment by waisbrot | Hacker News Reader

She's not wrong, but to say "she just is [interested in things that are traditionally gendered]" seems a little incurious. Princesses, pink ponies, and frilly dresses did not exist when modern humans came into being. So liking or disliking those things is almost entirely a matter of socialization and not some kind of biotruth.

While you may have tried to socialize her away from "girly" stuff, peers are often a stronger influence than parents.

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This is unnecessarily simplifying. Legos did not exist when we were monkeys, but social groups did.

It's entirely possible that there is an individually-varying biological urge to attach to socially-informed norms, whatever they are at the time.

This comes up a lot with attraction. No, testicles can't possibly be born with an image of Kate Upton imprinted on them, but they certainly can be born with a directive to find and be attracted to socially_valuable_person_of_era

She didn't really have any friends who were girls when she was small. She was just interested in that stuff. Additionally, I have a three year old daughter who is very not interested in dolls and princesses. You would think if it was a matter of socialization, then her little sister would be a prime candidate to be socialized into those preferences. Her little sister is much more interested in building puzzles than playing with dolls. It's actually astounding how much kids preferences seem to materialize on their own. They are these little people, and we think of them as being blank slates, but they are actually not blank slates at all.

I would really like to know why this was dovnvoted. Horses used to be boy toys when men worked with horses and now are exclusively girl toys.

Because girls usually loved shiny-but-useless objects. Meanwhile boys preferred work tools. Horse happened to move from work tool to shiny-but-useless thing.

Girls liked toys that resembled female work: sewing, cooking, babies. Funny thing is, it was women who fought to be allowed into work, not men.

I can play the game too. Meanwhile boys liked thinks that make noise and are "cool" which is usually useless and often nothing but aggressive.

So yes, girls like girly things - home making, looking after family and making nice things they need to get male attention. Meanwhile boys like toys about jobs to provide to family. Or aggressive toys imitating tools to fend off aggressors or attract females.

Checks out, no?

Princess-like societal figures existed since forever. Nice clothes too. So did blingy-but-useless impractical things like pink ponies.

let’s play a game - since you’re asserting a massively complicated social mechanism that instills these preferences, give us some evidence of its existence rather than just baldly assert it the way its taught in gender studies. elaborate it somehow. show us evidence that it works.

> give us some evidence of its existence rather than just baldly assert it the way its taught in gender studies.

Wait, wait... what? So go out and do a bunch of scientific studies - but don't refer to any of the existing scientific studies because ... reasons. Yeah, that's a really useful way to have a discussion.

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