There are some neat experiments on children literally days old that show statistically significant differences in males and female interaction. As well, I think almost all parents who have had both boys and girls are pretty aware that while there are some innate differences in the averages. Plenty of overlap, but the peaks don’t coincide.
However, as pointed out in the original article, what marketing, and more importantly culture do is exaggerate differences and reinforce them. If 20% of young boys might actually enjoy the sort of social play that comes from playing with dolls, you can be damn certain it’s pretty close to zero by the time social conditioning has finished with them.
It’s why it sucks to be a minority of any sort, and will always suck to be a minority no matter how. Human beings are programmed to generalize, and you’ll always be fighting up-hill. Once again, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bother fighting. After all, fighting to be better than what nature has given us is why we’re not living in the forest and dying at 30.
But it also means that assuming malice in people who incorrectly generalize is usually a mistake. The error is part of human nature, and it takes significant intellectual effort to think beyond it.
