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Comment by tlb | Hacker News Reader

Not to defend any of this, but it's true that you can make more total advertising revenue from two shows if one gets all boys and the other gets all girls, rather than them being split 50-50. Each commands a higher ad revenue by being more targeted.

It's an unfortunate fact of human nature that many boys find toys less desirable if they see girls playing with them too. Toy marketers would prefer to advertise on a show with 10M boys and ~0 girls, than a show with 10M boys and 2M girls at the same price, because those 2M girls might buy their toys, the boys might see them and write off the toy as "for girls".

With a few exceptions, toy marketing is an exploitative business. Don't let your kids watch TV or buy them action figures.

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That's not a fact of human nature. That is nurture/culture at its finest. Do you think young chimpansee boys and girls play with different 'toys'?

Capitalism didn't create this culture, but it certainly isn't going to make it go away. Blaming managers for capitalist comsiderations is like blaming the wind for uprooting a tree.

> Do you think young chimpansee boys and girls play with different 'toys'?

Yes, they do, and their preferences are largely similar to those of human children.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982210...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18452921

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513802...

One more proof of impact of the human male misogyny. The patriarchy is so deeply rooted, that even the chimpanzees are affected! We should start a fund that will fight for equal opportunity for female chimpanzees! /s

The difference between us and chimps is that we have a choice in the matter.

If there really are inborn sex differences in play behavior, isn't this like saying we have a really have a "choice" in handedness?

An idea that didn't work out too well for left-handed people when this was believed by society

As a southpaw I feel you, but correcting left-handedness has no real social impact on anybody, gender equality issues have much further reaching positive social implications.

Thanks for those links. I was convinced otherwise.

Thank you very much for providing actual evidence as opposed to speculation. However, there is room for interpretation here, and I am not sure the evidence is quite as conclusive as you seem to suggest. Its not strange at all for published articles on the bleeding edge of science to be shown later to be incorrect. And there are some things that hit me when looking at the abstracts.

For example, in that first study observing behavior from six females and two males seems enough to suggest that there is a "greater female interest in infant care, with stick-carrying being a form of play-mothering". Unfortunately, I don't think that is quite enough conclusive evidence to make any conclusions about chimpanzee behavior beyond those particular individuals, let alone that of the entire family of great apes.

In that third study, I seriously question the gendered objects. A toy pot might be a girl toy in human society, but I question whether the same is true in vervet monkey society. Do vervet monkeys hold a sterotype for female vervet monkeys cooking with a pot in the kitchen, before they invent cooking, pots or kitchens? And I don't understand how it is that a plush toy is female, but a stuffed dog is ungendered.

I'd be interested in reading the full papers if anyone can pass on links to the full papers. I'm sure I remember coming across these same studies previously.

I suspect that negative results are not actually published and there is a lot of existing pressure to confirm existing cultural beliefs in order to actually get published. Look at what happened to the Harvard President Lawrence Summers when he questioned whether women have less aptitude for science. There is a lot of emotion behind this (and I won't deny being very biased myself). Though I have to admit that the evidence does point towards a gendered difference in toy preference, I just felt the need to question its conclusiveness.

1. Yes, there are differences between sexes/genders.

2. No, they are not of stereotypical delineation/clarity/scale. If anything, we now know more than ever that while people vary, there is no reason to generalize against any social group ability in any matter.

3a. First study: female apes are more interested in tool-like sticks than male apes.

3b. Second study: female apes are equally interested in "feminine" and "masculine" toys.

3c. Third study: a doll attracts 20% of female vs 8% of male ape attention.

.pdfs of mentioned papers are easily findable on Google Scholar.

> First study: female apes are more interested in tool-like sticks than male apes.

The study reported that juvenile female chimps were much more likely to use sticks for doll-like behaviors. Using sticks for other things such as as tools or as weapons were not reported.

It has been reported elsewhere the female chimps have a greater propensity to use tools including sticks for food-gathering purposes: http://www.eva.mpg.de/primat/staff/boesch/pdf/fol_prim_tool_...

> 3b. Second study: female apes are equally interested in "feminine" and "masculine" toys.

Male monkeys showed a strong preference for wheeled toys over plush dolls, and the preference of female monkeys was smaller, and human children show roughly the same pattern for these toys.

Also note that chimps are apes, and vervets and rhesus monkeys are not.

> 3c. Third study: a doll attracts 20% of female vs 8% of male ape attention.

Six toy types were studied, not just dolls.

not making any claims about its conclusiveness, the poster to which I was replying made an argument to incredulity to which there is actually contradicting evidence.

Since chimpanzees are relatively sexually dimorphic perhaps they are not a good way to argue against human sex differences. Also since chimps and monkeys have less sophisticated use of objects it shouldn't be surprising that the evidence has some degree of muddling but we know that there are sex differences in play behavior, such as male juveniles monkeys preferring rough-and-tumble play, or females showing more interest in the infants in their group (which the studies I cited earlier reference).

If I were to make a more general case, however, this wouldn't be the only evidence that I would rely on.

You might look at studies of very young children, younger than it is believed they would be aware of their gender:

http://jbd.sagepub.com/content/25/1/7.abstract

If you're disinclined to belief update from that, you could still say they were still influenced by culture somehow.

Going further you could look at even eye-tracking studies of infants:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19016318

If you were still disinclined, you could say there's still social influence in there, maybe, it can't be ruled out...

But then look at evidence of prenatal hormone exposure, such as digit ratio (marker of androgen):

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886909...

Or those with hormonal disorders:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12414881

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/3/3/203.short

http://people.uncw.edu/hungerforda/Infancy/PDF/Prenatal%20ho...

If toy preferences are socially constructed, why would an obscure endocrine disorder predict toy preference according to the hormones that boys or girls were more typically exposed to? The latter study suggests that those with atypical hormone exposure face increased socialization pressure to conform, yet which apparently shows the least influence on their preference.

I don't know whether what you're saying is true but is it backed by evidence or just an assumption?

I remember working for an online retailer several years ago. Their marketing department made it clear that targeting by demographic was outdated and they felt that grouping people by their behavior was a more modern and accurate way of keeping track of people and future habits. Maybe one day media companies will enter the 21st century of metrics when most major media transitions to the internet.

Yup, while the misoginy is more than evident, I agree with you that the root of evil there is their desire to make their shows as profitable as possible.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say "make their shows as profitable as possible in ways they already understand"?

The piece mentions Harry Potter and while the lead character may be a boy, the smartest character is a girl and as a franchise that did OK. Sure not everything is going to be Harry Potter but it, Hunger Games, Buffy and so on show it's more than possible to have a franchise that has a mixed audience and still works.

It feels more of a "we know how this works and we're comfortable with it" thing than an absolute profit maximisation.

How many little boys do you think are asking their parents for hunger games toys this Christmas?

I was like...why would they even produce such a thing...oh...wait. http://www.toysrus.com/family/index.jsp?categoryId=12656761 Made as a Barbie toy no less....

They're called 'action figures' because "boys don't want to play with dolls".

Some bits of the toy industry are deeply unpleasant.

Reminds me of that great flow chart for determining whether a toy is meant for boys or girls:

Q1: Is the toy operated using the child's genitals:

Yes - it is suitable for neither boys nor girls.

No - it is suitable for either boys or girls.

What about the Harry Potter Nimbus 2000 Broomstick?

And if you don't know what I'm talking about google it a bit.

I'm aware of it.

I'm not sure "operated" was the right word but still possibly not suitable for kids...

Only the $1 toys left over from the previous movie are action figures, the toys for the new movie are most definitely Barbie...

I don't know why I messed that!

Yes. It's very weird seeing action figures (realistic body shape) next to Barbie (FREAK OF NATURE).

Looking on Amazon I can see action figures (not just the Barbie ones), stationary sets, board games, card games, jewelry (including some leather stuff which boys might like), bookmarks and if someone isn't doing a bow and arrow then the merchandising people are idiots.

Plus there are books and DVDs. Sure, some of it is going to be bought by girls but if you look at the action figures, they don't look like they're being marketed at girls.

Anecdotally, the kids down the road from me love Hunger Games and chief among them is the 14 year old boy. (He and I talk a lot about books and films - he's my cover for going to see rubbish superhero movies).

Yeah I am just pointing out that the movie itself was clearly marketed for the female audience, and the toys available reflect that strategy.

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