As a girl from the late 1970s, I played with a lot of gender-neutral toys like lego. I had dolls as well as cars. Now the world has changed. Toy shops are divided into distinctly girl and boy areas. They can be easily distinguished by their color code: pink-colored areas with some pastel colors for the girls, and areas with lots of other colors (mainly blue, black, and green, and some dashes of red and orange) for the boys. And not only toys are gendered, but also items for adults, such as laptops, phones, and now - via feminist philosophers - even the Bic for her.
A brief selection of reviews for this item "The days of confusion over unisex pens are finally over. I was sick and tired of my naïve and, quite frankly, deluded girlfriend believing that she had the right to use my male products.", "For years I've been working as a science and technology writer and wondering why so many of my colleagues are differently anatomically-configured than I am.", "Where are the "For Him" pens? How can I embrace my masculinity, when there is no pen for me?", "How can I extol these miraculous gifts to Womankind enough? All of my writing experiences up until now have consisted of trying to wrap my dainty lady hands around robust, manly pens and failing miserably. Their harsh, heavy colors blinded my delicate lady eyes, and their mighty weight was too tremendous for my weak lady constitution. At times, I was able to practice my literacy on my small pink laptop, but only for short periods before I was overwhelmed by the complexity of the technology." etc.
Now the following is just a qualitative and perhaps incorrect observation: there seems to be more opposition to female-gendered products than to male-gendered ones. Male-gendered products are fun, exciting and interesting (I'm thinking of a shop devoted exclusively to male novelty items and toys for grown men, such as a tie with a functional piano, or miniature-remoted controlled helicopters, and the clientele there: everybody likes the toys (many of which you can try out) and never have I heard anyone say they are demeaning to men. By contrast, judging from the Amazon reviews female-gendered products are perceived as demeaning and an insult to women.
I tried testing this hypothesis, by looking under Amazon's category "stationery and office" (the same category as for the bic for her) to find a product "for men". The closest I came to was this novelty item: a 1970s style laptop "for men" (a notebook, as you may have guessed). No comments about gendered products in the reviews of this project. To test the hypothesis seriously, we'd have to have an equivalent pen for men, and see the reviews.
The hypothesis that female-gendered products are somehow perceived as more offensive is also supported by observations of my 8-y-old daughter and her friends. Whereas both boys and girls like to play with the boy-marketed toys, none of the boys (except one or two) and a substantial number of the girls do not like the girl-marketed toys. The girl-marketed toys are "stupid" and "lame", and (according to the boys) just "girly" (this is enough to disqualify them). Many girls - including my daughter - don't wear pink. I've talked to parents who say: my daughter wore pink until she was about 5, 6 years old, and then she vehemently opposed all pink. Keeping in mind Riley's comments about gendered toys, these children might not be exceptional. (some girls do play with all the pink stuff, of course, otherwise toy companies would have to change their strategy. I just happen to know several who don't, and who don't like the marketing). So, if my hypothesis that female-marketed gendered products are perceived as more offensive than male-marketed ones is correct, why would that be so?
One reason might be that products for men (at least adults) do a bit more effort to appeal, whereas marketers seem to believe it suffices to make women's items attractive to women by making them pink. To be fair to bic, they boast a slimmer barrel to "fit more comfortably into women's hands".
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