Good comment, Yohami. The Goldieblox toy here isn’t so much a stepping stone to teaching about society’s grand engineering marvels such as dams, bridges, or integrated circuits. After all, dams, bridges, and integrated circuits don’t tickle the synapses of very many little girls. The toy is teaching girls that engineering is about weaving lavender lace through pink cogs and pastel pulleys.

I remember passing a construction site with my young son (about age 3 at the time). He was fascinated with the bulldozers and shovels moving dirt. He could’ve stood there watching for hours. As for my daughter’s interest at the same construction site? Not so much. And I don’t think it’s because I failed to provide her with pink Lincoln Logs.

Girls are indeed “so much more than a princess.” I agree with that point in the video. But in the end, the designer here has simply replaced one false gender assumption (that all girls are princesses) with another false gender assumption (that girls are naturally prone to anything that boys are). She’s gone from one false extreme to the other. Note her comment at 0:45 that the only reason she herself didn’t get interested in engineering earlier is because it didn’t occur to her parents to provide her with engineering toys. If only her environment had been filled with more Legos, K’Nex, or Lincoln Logs why then she’d be different. The designer is probably just not aware that she herself is on the right side of female-engineering-interest bell curve. It’s not at all impossible for women to have this interest (and hats-off to the designer for persevering); it’s just not as common to find among women as it is among men–regardless of whether the Lincoln Logs in the home are made brown vs. pink.

I foresee doting parents buying this toy with great expectations for their daughters only to see it gather so much dust. This toy will be valued much more by female journalists and bloggers (who ironically chose verbal expression as their natural career path) than it will be valued by little girls and their gender-duped parents.

“boys like to build stuff (and I would add, to smash stuff)”

important addition.

I assume she had to pass math, physics, logic exams? or…

In regards to what Stingray’s saying, I think the logic of the sciences depends on how they’re taught.

If they’re taught both the rules and why the rules work – to also test the rules to assure oneself they work. Then you have logic and you turn your mind into the best tool humanity has ever known.

If you’re just handed the rules and memorize them there’s no logical thought involved. You just turn your mind into an inefficient calculator.

I did six months of engineering early on my 20s… the main course was “logic”, pure abstract logic stuff, before we went into programming

“I foresee doting parents buying this toy with great expectations for their daughters only to see it gather so much dust. This toy will be valued much more by female journalists and bloggers (who ironically chose verbal expression as their natural career path) than it will be valued by little girls and their gender-duped parents.”

+1

The fact that the comments (majority women) who STILL insist the only reason boys and girls are different is due to how they are raised, societal expectations, etc (environment) in spite of all the evidence that indicates genes are a major factor, shows that women in general (and feminists in particular) are simply unaware of any other possible explanation (can only be ‘environment’ or ‘discrimination’).

Extraordinary ignorance.

Even the twit commenting about ‘matriarchy vs patriarchy’ is unaware that there are no actual matriarchies…even so-called ‘egalitarian’ societies (modern Western societies) are propped up with affirmative action, female-only scholarships, legislation, useless jobs (govt, HR, etc) and women STILL can’t compete in jobs where it actually matters.

Hopeless.