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Comment by mahouse | Hacker News Reader

You are understanding me well. I think gender roles are a very important part of what makes us human. (Or animalic.)

I get what you're saying, but there is a vast gulf between:

- gender is not just a social construct, men and women in aggregate don't have the exact same strengths, and that diversity is beautiful rather than something we need to suppress

and

- boys should play football and girls should play with dolls and wear frilly dresses

I think people who agree with the former, but not the latter, should overall feel good about Amazon not gratuitously dividing all sorts of categories of toys into "his" and "hers."

> should

Amazons categorization probably does not imply a normative belief. I doubt Amazon cares if you order an Iron Man toy for a female.

I can't see how you'd interpret "Boys' Toys" and "Girls' Toys" in a non-normative way (unless we're talking about the set of toys that are actually in the possession of those groups right now, which is plainly not the case here). Surely the meaning is something like "Toys that it is normal for boys to play with."

Sorry, I meant "normative" in the philosophical sense, as in normative ethics.

My non-normative interpretation is "toys marketed to and widely considered to be intended primarily for boys" and "toys marketed to and widely considered to be intended primarily for girls."

Gender identity and agency are a different than prescribed gender roles.

All of which is separate from "what kind of toys do you like to play with".

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