My contention is more that the association of certain actions with gender is a self-reinforcing effect; we describe certain actions as “manly” and make it more comfortable for “men” to do them and less comfortable for “women”, which – not unreasonably – strengthens the case for saying that we’re just using “manly” as a descriptor for actions commonly performed by men. But the thing is that this language use is part of what perpetuates the tendency for people to act in gendered ways.
That’s a more difficult question. I’m hesitant about unilaterally foisting ethical responsibilities on, as you say “public entities”, not least of all because it raises the question of what exactly constitutes a public entity – a blog? A blog with more than one author? Et cetera…
I’d say only that I found this specifically galling from BB because as a platform BB presents itself as being – as I said – very feminist and queer friendly, and thus nominally in favour of deconstructing gender stereotypes which are particularly harmful to both women and trans people, and to me that makes reblogging this sort of thing seem thoughtless.
Pretty sure there was a lot of thought, almost entirely composed of “look at my baby! Look at it! How do I get them to look at my baby, they are not looking at my baby fast enough! Make them look at the baby, please.”
Because parents
It’s probably my general puzzlement over strict gender roles that has me objecting to the idea that reinforcement is particularly important here, since when you said that I remembered that pink used to be for boys.
Also my sister who talks a good game on this balking when I told my then young nephew that when he grows up he might have a girlfriend or boyfriend.
Or telling my nephew that it wasn’t his mom’s JOB to do dishes.
Yeah, Ive just been especially confused ever since
