According to Geoffrey Lean in the Telegraph they are, and here’s why:
Why boys are turning into girls
Here’s something rather rotten from the State of Denmark. Its government yesterday unveiled official research showing that two-year-old children are at risk from a bewildering array of gender-bending chemicals in such everyday items as waterproof clothes, rubber boots, bed linen, food, nappies, sunscreen lotion and moisturising cream.
The 326-page report, published by the environment protection agency, is the latest piece in an increasingly alarming jigsaw. A picture is emerging of ubiquitous chemical contamination driving down sperm counts and feminising male children all over the developed world. And anti-pollution measures and regulations are falling far short of getting to grips with it.
Sperm counts are falling so fast that young men are less fertile than their fathers and produce only a third as much, proportionately, as hamsters. And gender-bending chemicals are increasingly being blamed for the mystery of the “lost boys”: babies who should normally be male who have been born as girls instead.
The Danish government set out to find out how much contamination from gender-bending chemicals a two-year-old child was exposed to every day. It concluded that a child could be “at critical risk” from just a few exposures to high levels of the substances, such as from rubber clogs, and imperilled by the amount it absorbed from sources ranging from food to sunscreens.
The results build on earlier studies showing that British children have higher levels of gender-bending chemicals in their blood than their parents or grandparents. Indeed WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund), which commissioned the older research, warned that the chemicals were so widespread that “there is very little, if anything, individuals can do to prevent contamination of themselves and their families.” Prominent among them are dioxins, PVC, flame retardants, phthalates (extensively used to soften plastics) and the now largely banned PCBs, one and a half million tons of which were used in countless products from paints to electrical equipment.
Young boys, like those in the Danish study, could end up producing less sperm and developing feminised behaviour. Research at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University found that boys whose mothers were exposed to PCBs and dioxins were more likely to play with dolls and tea sets and dress up in female clothes.
And it is in the womb that babies are most vulnerable; a study of umbilical cords from British mothers found that every one contained hazardous chemicals. Scientists at the University of Rochester in New York discovered that boys born to women exposed to phthalates had smaller penises and other feminisation of the genitals…….(click here for the rest of the article)
Disturbing stuff isn’t it? But I bet you can guess which bit of this article disturbed me the most….
Just in case you missed it, here it is again:
“Research at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University found that boys whose mothers were exposed to PCBs and dioxins were more likely to play with dolls and tea sets and dress up in female clothes.”
Now I’m prepared to accept that chemical contamination may well be effecting some physical/biological changes in both animals and humans, including the reduction in men’s sperm count that Lean cites here, but hello, massive and ridiculous gender stereotype alert anyone?
Even if the contamination Lean talks about is having an adverse impact on the size of men’s genitals and their levels of fertility, what the fucking fuckety fuck has any of that got to do with influencing the toys they play with or the clothes they wear? Wtf has biology got to do with socially constructed gender roles?
Well, I’ve had a couple of days now to try and absorb the implications of Lean’s assertion that boys playing with tea sets and dolls amounts to some kind of proof positive that “gender-bending” chemicals (by which he means endocrine disruptors) are actually turning boys into girls. I’ve also had a couple of days to do some research into it: and here’s what I’ve found.
One of the first mentions of the Erasmus University study linking exposure to PCBs with children’s play was in an article in the Independent on Sunday published on October 20th 2002 (no link I’m afraid as it doesn’t appear to be available online). Entitled Gender-bending risk to children, the article states:
Minute amounts of “gender bender” chemicals found in food and the environment are affecting the behaviour of pre-school children, new research shows.
The Environment minister Michael Meacher said yesterday the research was very disturbing and he would ask his officials to “urgently” examine its implications tomorrow morning.
The study – carried out by doctors and scientists at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam – is the first in the world to show that normal levels of the chemicals affect humans. It follows a host of studies showing that gender-benders can turn wildlife species, from gulls and alligators to fish and turtles, into hermaphrodites. In the case of the children in the study, the chemicals caused girls to play with guns and pretend to be soldiers, and boys to play with dolls and tea sets and dress up in female clothes.
The research, published in the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives, is part of a long-term study into the effects of PCBs and dioxins on children. The researchers measured levels of the chemicals in the blood of 207 mothers in their final month of pregnancy, in umbilical blood at birth, and in breast milk two weeks after birth, to determine exposure in the womb.
They later asked the parents of the children, now aged seven, to record their patterns of play.
The girls exposed to higher levels of PCBs were more likely to engage in masculine play, while similarly exposed boys were more likely to enjoy feminine play. Dioxins produced more feminine play in boys and girls.
And the author of the piece?
Geoffrey Lean.
A few days later the story was picked up by the U.N. Wire:
“Gender-Benders” In Small Amounts Said To Alter Child Behavior
Tuesday, October 22, 2002New research indicates even small amounts of so-called “gender bender” chemicals can cause preschool children to switch their traditional gender roles.
In a long-term study, Erasmus University Rotterdam researchers measured the levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the blood and breast milk of 207 mothers during various phases of maternity, then asked the parents involved to report on their children’s behavior seven years later. The findings indicate that girls whose mothers had higher PCB levels were more likely to play with guns and pretend to be soldiers, while boys were more likely to play with dolls and wear female clothing (Geoffrey Lean, London Independent, Oct. 20).
And once more Lean’s name crops up.
Now fast forward a couple of years. Here’s a piece that appeared in the New Zealand Herald in August 2005:
Gender-bending toxins exempt from tough new laws
Gender-bending chemicals are to be exempted from tough new Europe-wide safety controls despite increasing concern that they are causing bizarre sex changes in children and wildlife, leaked documents reveal.
Confidential proposals show that the chemicals will be treated much less strictly than other dangerous substances in a European Commission directive to be finalised in coming months. Many are likely to escape control altogether.
The proposals – drawn up by the British Government as part of its EC presidency – will create a storm of protest, not least because they fly in the face of a formal warning given by more than 125 of the leading scientists in the field three months ago.
The scientists, who had carried out research on the chemicals for the EU, said they were “concerned about the high level of male reproductive disorders” in European countries and called for urgent action.
Sperm levels have been dropping across the industrialised world, and the chemicals – found in toys, plastics, cosmetics, pesticides, flame retardants and many other common products – are thought to be responsible.
Research published in May showed that boys born to mothers exposed to phthalates, used to make plastics more pliable, had smaller penises and other signs of genital feminisation.
Three years ago, a Dutch study showed that boys exposed to other gender-bending chemicals in the womb grew up preferring to play with dolls and tea sets.
The author this time?
Why look, it’s none other than Geoffrey Lean!
Are you starting to see a pattern emerging?
Here’s an extract from an article in the Daily Mail from February 27th 2008 entitled (rather long-windedly) Singing starlings and why thousands of babies who should have been boys are being born as girls:
…..Increasingly the sperm crisis is being blamed on a whole host of chemicals, not just synthetic oestrogen, but a wide variety of substances that have become ubiquitous in daily life.
They include the common plastic PVC; dioxins, the notorious pollutants found almost everywhere; PCBs, one-and-a-half million tons of which have been used in countless products from paints to plastics; and phthalates, universally used to make plastics more flexible.
Recent tests by WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund) on 14 basic foodstuffs taken from supermarket shelves found that every single one contained PCBs, and most were contaminated by phthalates.
Both substances have been shown to have deeply worrying effects on babies and children.
Scientists at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University have found that boys born to mothers exposed to PCBs grew up wanting to play with dolls and tea-sets.
Author?
Seriously, do I even need to bother answering that?
And from the Independent, December 7th 2008:
It’s official: men really are the weaker sex
Professor Lou Gillette of Florida University, one of the most respected academics in the field, warned that the report waved “a large red flag” at humanity. He said: “If we are seeing problems in wildlife, we can be concerned that something similar is happening to a proportion of human males”
Indeed, new research at the University of Rochester in New York state shows that boys born to mothers with raised levels of phthalates were more likely to have smaller penises and undescended testicles. They also had a shorter distance between their anus and genitalia, a classic sign of feminisation. And a study at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University showed that boys whose mothers had been exposed to PCBs grew up wanting to play with dolls and tea sets rather than with traditionally male toys.
Written by? Well who do you think?
To cut a long story short, what my extensive research has revealed is that virtually any mention online or in the mainstream media of the Erasmus University study, or to be more specific, virtually any mention anywhere of a link between a mother being exposed to PCBs and her son’s subsequent desire to don a frock and play at being the hostess with the mostest, is either written by, or makes a reference back to, Geoffrey Lean.
But what about the original research study, surely that backs up his almost obsessive repetition of the fact that boys whose mothers had been exposed to PCBs grew up wanting to play with dolls and tea sets rather than with traditionally male toys?
Well no, not really.
In fact, here, here’s the study itself: Effects of Perinatal Exposure to PCBs and Dioxins on Play Behavior in Dutch Children at School Age, in which the authors conclude that “higher prenatal exposure to PCBs was associated with less masculinized play behavior in boys and with more masculinized play behavior in girls” and where they “suggest that these results may indicate behavioral effects of steroid hormone imbalances early in development related to prenatal exposure to PCBs and dioxins, their metabolites, and/or related compounds.”
And more importantly, here’s an extract from the text an interview with Dr. Nynke Weisglas-Kuperus, a developmental pediatrician at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, and one of the authors of the study:
Interviewer: What do levels of exposure mean here? In typical toxicology, you figure the more that somebody’s exposed to a particular chemical, the bigger the impact. What happened in this case?
WEISGLAS-KUPERUS: I think that is very difficult to say because these are very subtle findings and very low levels. But, of course, what I think is important to mention and to realize that it’s not–we cannot establish a causality with the kind of studies we do. You work with a population in a certain country with an environmental mixtures of PCBs and dioxins. And yeah, you find what you find.
Interviewer: Parents listening to us right now might be–well, they might become quite concerned about what their children are being exposed to. What’s the message you want to convey here?
WEISGLAS-KUPERUS: Well, I think, the first message is that what we did is an exploratory study. And we found subtle differences in play behavior. So, it’s subtle differences in the normal range of play behavior. I think that’s very important to realize for parents. And you should realize that we measured play behavior at a certain age. And that, in my opinion, we don’t suggest that it should have something to do with childhood gender non-conformity later on. I mean, it’s very subtle, we found.
In other words, the study did not find that boys whose mothers were exposed to PCBs grew up wanting to play with tea sets and dolls or to dress in women’s clothes: it found that at the age of 7 there were very subtle differences in the normal range of play behaviour which might suggest a link between higher pre-natal exposure to PCBs and less masculinised behaviour. But there was nothing to prove that link definitively, and absolutely no indication or evidence to suggest that this very subtle change in behaviour would have any impact on, or continue into, the boys’ later years.
And what about the Danish study that Lean refers to in his most recent article. Does that one back up his mantra that so-called gender-bending pollutants are turning boys into cross-dressers?
Again, it’s a no.
Here’s the study: Survey and Health Assessment of the exposure of 2 year-olds to chemical substances in Consumer Products, in which the authors very helpfully list the potential risks associated with endocrine disruptors:
Endocrine disruptors are thought to be the reason for a:
- Sperm quality below the level set as normal by WHO in one in five Danish men between the ages of 18 and 20.
- Large increase in testicular cancer over the last 60 years in Denmark, and a higher incidence than any other country in Europe. Almost 1% of Danish men are at risk of developing testicular cancer.
- 9% incidence of cryptorchidism (testicles not fully descended into the scrotum) in Danish boys. This is significantly higher than in the 1960s. Cryptorchidism is associated with an increased risk of low sperm quality and testicular cancer.
- Decrease in the testosterone levels in the blood of Danish men. Men born after the 1930s-1940s have lower testosterone levels than their fathers and grandfathers had at the same age. A 30-40 year-old man today has the same level as a 70 year-old did at that time.
There is, however, no conclusive proof that the above symptoms can be attributed to endocrine disruptors in our environment. There may be many other causes, such as lifestyle, including changes in diet, smoking habits and alcohol intake.
326 pages, and not a single mention of a tea set to be found!
The numerous studies that have been done into endocrine disruptors and the chemicals and pollutants we’re constantly exposed to provide us with significant cause for concern. But the feminisation of boys, in the context of chemicals causing boys to adopt more girlified behaviour like playing with dolls and monopolising the home corner in the nursery quite clearly isn’t one of them.
Maybe that’s because the toys children play with and the clothes children wear have absolutely nothing to do with biological sex, and everything to do with socially constructed gender roles. But hey, that’s just a theory mind; I could be wrong. After all, what would I know: I’m just a girl right, and girls don’t do science do they Geoffrey Lean?
Too Much To Say For Myself 
Just asked my seven year old boys your title question – their answer was no. When they found out it was a newspaper said it I was told that newspapers lie!
I’d like Geoffrey Lean to explain the differences in play behaviour between my identical sons. One placenta but two umbilical cords – perhaps each cord attracted different chemicals? What a load of crap.
Thanks for doing the research Cath.
Thanks Cath for undertaking research on this very biaised non-research. As always spurious claims concerning yet another panic about numbers of males supposedly declining, always receives widespread media attention.
Moral of the story is never, ever believe newspaper reports or for that matter spurious scientific research because despite claims to the contrary no scientist is 100% objective and science can never be separated out from social, cultural and political contexts. This is why Lean was able to make his unfounded claims because he was promoting a patriarchal agenda.
Missing from Lean’s research is the fact male reproductive systems are still not studied to the same extent compared to female reproductive systems, because the presumption continues to be held that male reproductive bodies are inviolate and not subject to disease, age or environmental factors. This is why focus continues to be on pregnant mothers supposedly being responsible for passing on certain diseases to their children. The male sperm is viewed as inviolate – but this is proving to be a myth. See Exposing Men: The Science and Politics of Male Reproduction by Cynthia R. Daniels.
How about the innumerable missing girls wherein women in certain parts of the world have to abort a foetus because it is female not the hugely desired male. One of the central reasons why women have to abort female foetuses is because the society they live in is patriarchal and male children are viewed as way, way more important than female children. Therefore it is not about women suddenly deciding to abort but the male-centered pressure these women experience.
Is Geoffrey Lean going to claim this is due to biological and environmental factors?
As an aside at the end of the 19th century western society experienced yet another male panic wherein it was declared ‘the new woman’ was feminising men and within a few decades men would all supposedly become ‘feminine.’
Did it happen? Of course not – because patriarchy is far too resilliant to crumple under these spurious claims, but there certainly was a backlash against uppity women daring to demand and expect education, better opportunities for work and worst of all be seen and treated as human beings not inferior ones.
I love how this “feminising” effect is assumed to be something that we should all freak out about. The fact that we are increasingly exposed to these chemicals in everyday life, with mostly unknown effects is very worrying. But slightly fewer men & smaller penises is not actually the terrible social crisis that Lean makes it out to be.
Oh please, please, please let journalists discover the difference between a correlation and a causal relationship.
Well, I know the difference between a casual and a causal relationship and the former involves much less effort 🙂
The thing that really spooks me is when girls start turning into boys…..you know, when they start scribbling graffiti on walls and getting all keen on trains and model aeroplanes…
Still, I expect I’ll get over it one day!
No it’s when they start growing penises you need to worry Gulfstream5. Because that’s the difference (or one of them at least) between boys and girls. Now who’s going to break it to Geoffrey Lean?
I used to think the same as you before I looked into it, but the relationship between toy preferences and biological gender is actually a large and robust effect. Like the relationship between sex and gender, it’s not a perfect correlation, but it is a sizeable and very significant one, at very very early ages. The relationship is certainly not random, and it’s quite wrong to say that biological sex has nothing to do with toy choices. It demonstrably does.
Rather than deny what the evidence shows, I feel it would be more constructive, and more…feminist to attack the negative value-judgements surrounding “feminine” toy choices per se, as well as the enforcement of the stereotype on those who don’t conform to it (which lack of conformity must be determined by the same causal factors as the stereotype itself).
That said, it does strike me that the notion of “feminisation” strikes terror into the hearts of some men. Note the mass exodus of males from previously male-dominated professions which admit significant numbers of females.
I think a person is on very shaky ground when a large part of his identity is defined by what he is not. A large part of masculinity is defined by opposition to, and denigration of, the female or “feminine”. This is where misogyny comes from. It’s an inherent and implicit part of a masculine identity, which is why it is so ubiquitous. Until we realise this, we’ll never redress it.
So you don’t think it’s possible then Dan, that a relationship between toy preferences and gender is created by a child’s carers? Have you ever seen someone run to snatch a doll off a boy for instance?
Can you cite a study which backs up your point of view? Because my own (admittedly anecdotal) evidence and real life experience of young children suggests the exact opposite.
Ditto misogyny. Created, not inborn.
I didn’t actually say that, polly.
I wasn’t making any claim about *why* biological sex is related to toy choice, any more than I was offering a view on why biological sex is related to gender identity.
Only a fule would suggest that carers have no influence on children, but the presence of a socio-cultural influence does not refute, or even speak to the possibility of a biological one. So your point about adults enforcing the gender stereotype, while I don’t deny it, simply isn’t relevant.
There is some evidence from studies of CAH girls for a biological component in terms of causality of toy-choice. In addition, you may be interested to know that the observed sex-difference in children’s toy choices is stronger at one year of age than at three and five years, with both boys and girls reducing their interest in “feminine” toys over this time period. If you need the actual ref. for that, I’d have to dig it out and get back to you.
It is not so much a question of citing a study to back up my point of view (that would be a very biased way of going about things), rather my point of view is based on a broad knowledge of the literature on the subject derived from graduate seminars, and talking to (and being taught by) researchers in the field, enough to know that this point is pretty non-contraversial.
I’m sure you’re perfectly proficient at Googling, if you’re interested in empirical findings as opposed to anecdote. As a start though, off the top of my head, I’d suggest the well-known Maccoby & Jacklin (1974) and go from there. More recently, Melissa Hines has done a fair bit of work on this, among others.
And just for the record, I never said that misogyny is innate either. If it were, we’d all be screwed 🙂
Yes you did
I used to think the same as you before I looked into it, but the relationship between toy preferences and biological gender is actually a large and robust effect. Like the relationship between sex and gender, it’s not a perfect correlation, but it is a sizeable and very significant one, at very very early ages. The relationship is certainly not random, and it’s quite wrong to say that biological sex has nothing to do with toy choices. It demonstrably does
There. I’m proficient at googling, but I’d prefer a link, cos I’m also lazy. And I’d like proof that toy choice, gender or anything else is free of social influences please.
Only a fule would suggest that carers have no influence on children, but the presence of a socio-cultural influence does not refute, or even speak to the possibility of a biological one
No, and it doesn’t prove the presence of one either.
“Does not refute” is not the same as proves.
Um… no, I didn’t.
What I said was that, in general, children of a biologically male gender are more likely to choose “masculine” toys, children of a biologically female gender are more likely to choose “feminine” ones. That is a robust and well-replicated finding, so it’s quite wrong to say that biological sex has nothing to do with toy choice, since it predicts it pretty damn well, in study after study, in culture after culture, in 40 years’ worth of literature. Ditto for gender identity. You’re a hell of a lot more likely to have a female identity if your sex is biologically female than if it isn’t.
No-one is saying that toy choice, or gender identity, or gender-role conformity are free from social influence, certainly not me.
The point I am making (which you seem to have missed) is that the role of social influence does not speak to that of biology ie demonstrating social influence neither supports or refutes a biological influence.
The article implied that biological sex has nothing whatsoever to do with toy choices, and I was just making the point that that assertion is somewhat undermined by existing empirical evidence. I don’t need to deny the role of social influence to make that point, and your reference to social influences does not undermine the evidence for either a biological relationship, or influence. Sorry, but that’s logic for you.
Dan, you obviously consider yourself to be something of an academic, my advice to you is the same as the journalists.
Learn the difference between CORRELATION and CAUSATION.
The article didn’t say that “biological sex had nothing to do with toy choices”. It didn’t say it did either mind you. It didn’t comment on that at all.
It said that the idea that ‘gender bending chemicals’ made boys play with tea sets is absurd. Because it is. It also doesn’t mean that “boys are turning into girls.” Because believe me I have seen plenty of boys playing with tea sets, all of whom have grown up to be adult males, not females. Similarly my ownership of a chemistry set and lack of interest in dolls has not caused me to change sex to male.
And WTF do you mean by ‘gender identity’ anyway?
polly dear, I am a statistician. A correlation between two variables represents a relationship between them. I never said it was a causal relationship.
Also, maybe you might want to re-read the article as well. Final paragraph:
“Maybe that’s because the toys children play with and the clothes children wear have absolutely nothing to do with biological sex…”
My advice to you is READ WHAT IS WRITTEN.
Oh, and gender identity? Why doesn’t it suprise me that someone too lazy to even Google would be so breath-takingly ignorant and ill-informed?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity
Dan dear, you keep saying that there’s tons of evidence/research/whatever to back up your claims, and that we should look it up if we want to understand the subject better.
But when I was researching this piece the only study I could find on biological sex impacting on children’s toy choices is the one I cited, the Erasmus university one.
So if you know of others could you please post some links, ‘cos I’m buggered if I can find them.
No I’m not ill informed Dan (and I am also the official queen of google as well as most evol woman on the internetz). I just believe in the Humpty Dumpty principle, which is “a word means whatever I want it to mean”.
Gender is a word which is used to mean a whole host of things. For instance it is used on official forms when they mean ‘biological sex’. It is used elsewhere to mean a certain set of characteristics, such as loving frocks and high heels. If you were as much of an academic as you claim, you’d know that plenty of books have been written on the latter subject by e.g. Judith Butler. So when you start throwing around terms like ‘gender identity’ it is reasonable to ask what you, Dan, mean by that. Because it does not have a fixed meaning.
And please don’t expect me to be impressed by your postgraduate education, because (like a lot of people posting on here I’d venture) I’ve got a postgraduate education too.
You may well be a statistician Dan, but you’re not understanding the point that’s being made.
Geoffrey Lean is saying chemicals that disrupt hormone balance cause children to alter their behaviour, and that the toys children play with are dictated by their hormone balance. Cath is saying that’s a load of nonsense.
Now if toy choice is dictated by socialisation, there’s no reason why endocrine disruptors should make any difference is there?
Do keep up.
Maybe that’s because the toys children play with and the clothes children wear have absolutely nothing to do with biological sex, and everything to do with socially constructed gender roles.
And my advice to you is read the whole sentence, and learn to understand context.
Hi Cath
These are not my claims. I’m just reporting what I’ve read, and what I’ve heard from experts in the field.
I’m very surprised you couldn’t find anything on Google – what search terms were you using? I found this, which I think is the same study I referred to about 1,3 and 5 year olds:
Click to access toychoice.pdf
Or there’s chapter 6 in this book, Brain Gender (see especially page 114):
http://tr.im/DHKJ
Google also gives me this, which you may also find interesting – more recent results about monkey’s toy choices:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-12/tau-tca121002.php
and this: http://laurafreberg.com/blog/?p=591
Of course, what can be found for free on google is going to be limited, because most peer-reviewed stuff is closely guarded by the publishers and you have to pay for it. But lack of access for lay research doesn’t mean that these articles don’t exist.
In case you didn’t know, for people without access to Athens or Web of Science or ScienceDirect or whatever, you can usually get a pdf of any study you read about by emailing the author. There’s also Google Scholar and Google Books, which are also very useful if you’re researching something.
Hope helpful.
Yes, Polly, gender has a fluid meaning. But gender identity has a well-known meaning, hence my surprise that you didn’t know what it meant. And yes, I’ve read Judith Butler, Lynne Segal et al.
If toy choice is dictated ONLY by socialisation then no, there’s no reason to suppose any biological influence. But there is evidence that socialisation is NOT the only influence on toy choice. As I have said before, the effect of socialisation on toy choice (which I haven’t disputed) says nothing about whether biology also is involved. Based upon the evidence, children’s toy choices are multi-factorial, that’s the only point I was wishing to make.
I made no comment as to whether Geoffrey Lean is talking rubbish or not. I was just saying it’s quite incorrect to say that biological sex has nothing to do with toy choices when it demonstrably does, in that it predicts toy choices pretty well. I also made no comment as to why that might be. Correlations don’t imply causality, but they don’t rule it out, and where significant (allowing for the particular vagaries of the distribution of the product-moment correlation coefficient) they do imply a relationship that warrants further investigation.
I don’t see how the remainder of the sentence I referred to changes the fact that it is incorrect. The second half is as incorrect as the first:
Maybe that’s because the toys children play with and the clothes children wear have absolutely nothing to do with biological sex, and everything to do with socially constructed gender roles.
Wrong on both counts, I’m afraid.
Because you have not read it in CONTEXT Dan.”Have absolutely nothing to do with” in the CONTEXT of both that sentence and the rest of the piece, clearly means “a causal relationship”.
Although you are clearly a genius at everything else, you appear to be struggling with English comprehension.
Context is all. And all observation is theory laden.
Even so, polly, whether talking about a correlation or a causal link, the evidence would suggest that her claim is incorrect either way.
And even if one is ONLY talking about causality, the presence of a pretty strong and reliable correlation itself requires a causal explanation. Which you don’t seem very interested in thinking about. Why is that?
And gender identity may have a ‘well known meaning’, as far as you’re concerned, the point is that not everyone uses it the same way.
Example 1. A biologically male person (XY chromosomes, external genitals penis, testes etc) says their ‘gender identity’ is woman. They mean that they feel their physical sex should be female and they wish to take hormones and have surgery to alter their external genitalia.
Example 2. A biologically male person says their gender identity is “woman”. They mean they wish to wear ‘feminine’ clothes and adopt a typically ‘feminine’ appearance and ‘pass’ in society as a biologically female person. However they do not wish to alter their physical body in any way.
Example 3. A biologically male person says their gender identity is ‘woman’. They are genderqueer and have no issues about being perceived as physically male, as they feel their gender identity is a matter of their own internal consciousness.
D’you see the problem? All three are talking about ‘gender identity’. All three mean something completely different.
Dan. Thanks for the links.
The monkey one’s interesting/challenging I have to say, but I wasn’t persuaded by any of the others.
I don’t see how it’s possible to come to any conclusion re biology v socialisation in what influences toy selection in children even as young as 12 months, unless those children have been raised up to that point in complete isolation and without access to either toys or other people. Something that’s obviously ethically impossible to do.
Even by the age of 12 months a child has picked up a hell of a lot from its surroundings and the people it interacts with, so I remain unconvinced/sceptical about any causal link between biological sex and play choices.
And yes, I realise that that’s not exactly what you’re claiming anyway…
The ‘evidence’ you have cited doesn’t prove anything Dan, it certainly doesn’t suggest that Cath’s claim is ‘incorrect either way’.
The studies of CAH girls ignore the fact that presumably, the parents/carers of these children knew that they have CAH and may therefore have – consciously or subconsciously – encouraged them to have ‘masculine’ interests.
The only way you could prove anything would be to rear children free of any outside social influences at all and observe their behaviour.
And even if one is ONLY talking about causality, the presence of a pretty strong and reliable correlation itself requires a causal explanation
Why Dan? a)there is not a ‘strong and reliable’ correlation from the data you have provided anyway, there is SOME correlation.
and b)if there is only SOME correlation there could be a multitude of causal factors. Or none, it could be coincidence.
Now if you had provided me with data that showed girls and boys played 100% of the time with gender appropriate toys, that would be a ‘strong and reliable correlation’.
Learn some scientific method for the love of dawg. If you are going to show a causal relationship, you need to show that factor A CAUSES factor B consistently. Not just that they sometimes occur together.
Lol Polly. Snap!
If we are studying what happens when you heat water Dan, and every time the experiment is repeated, lets say 500 times, water turns to steam at 100 degrees celsius, it’s reasonable to conclude that the boiling point of water is 100 degrees celsius.
If the water turns to steam at fifty degrees celsius half the time, and half the time at a hundred degrees celsius, you’ve not proved the boiling point of water is 100 degrees celsius.
Which is one good reason why I’m not interested in studying what toys children prefer to play with. Why would someone wish to study what toys children play with? Presumably because they wish to prove there is such a thing as ‘brain gender’ or ‘brain sex’. So their theory affects how they interpret the results.
It’s like the notorious claims of James Watson about the “IQ” of different races. He interpreted it to mean certain races were less intelligent. You could equally interpret it to mean that our ways of measuring intelligence are racist and culturally biased.
Now let’s go back to what you initially said:
I used to think the same as you before I looked into it, but the relationship between toy preferences and biological gender is actually a large and robust effect. Like the relationship between sex and gender, it’s not a perfect correlation, but it is a sizeable and very significant one, at very very early ages. The relationship is certainly not random, and it’s quite wrong to say that biological sex has nothing to do with toy choices. It demonstrably does.
Rather than deny what the evidence shows, I feel it would be more constructive, and more…feminist to attack the negative value-judgements surrounding “feminine” toy choices per se, as well as the enforcement of the stereotype on those who don’t conform to it (which lack of conformity must be determined by the same causal factors as the stereotype itself).
Now apart from the fact that the last bit doesn’t make any sense, – how can a causal factor cause two entirely different effects? – you quite clearly say that there IS a correlation between children’s toy choices and biological sex, and you suggest it can’t be altered. Which suggests that you think it is caused by physical factors, since social influences can be altered.
Oh and my friends got a PhD in maths, and she can prove 1 = 0.
Thorry.
Do either of you actually know what a correlation is?
The typically used parametric coefficient, Pearson’s r, takes a value between -1 and +1, with zero indicating no relationship between the variables, -1 indicates a perfect negative correlation and +1 indicates a perfect positive. That would be the situation you describe, for instance, where EVERY child played only with “gender-appropriate” toys EVERY TIME.
The extreme values of r (ie -1 or +1) are the mathematically theoretical extremes. In practice, taking into account random sampling error, and other variables (known or unknown), you never get a value of 1 when researching something you didn’t already know the answer to, or something which is influenced by more than one thing (as most things are).
The standard of proof you are demanding is not only unrealistic, but also betrays a lack of understanding of basic statistics/research method.
What constitutes a strong and reliable correlation varies somewhat depending on your sample size, but the type of values that tend to be obtained in research on this particular question have a probability of occuring by chance of less than 5%, and often less than 1%, or even 0.1%. The standard required for something to be statistically signifcant in the social sciences is a probability of less than 5%.
This standard of proof is consistently the one demanded across all the social sciences. If you knew anything at all about research methods, you would already know this.
The same logic applies with experimental (as opposed to correlational) designs. The ability of a study to test causality has to do with the design of the study, not the effect size, or the result obtained.
But don’t take my word for it. Your friend with the PhD in maths will verify all of this.
A causal factor can very easily cause more than one thing. Smoking, for instance, can cause lung disease, AND heart disease, though both of these are also influenced by other factors as well.
Oh, and I never said that the relationship between toy choices and biological sex cannot be altered.
Hi Cath
Just saw your post at 5.09
Cheers
Dan, you are funny.
Dan’s first post is very confusing to start with: “[T]he relationship between toy preferences and biological gender is actually a large and robust effect. Like the relationship between sex and gender … ”
Hang on, surely that first sentence is using “biological gender” as a synonym for “sex” i.e. physical characteristics, then in the next sentence he distinguishes between “sex and gender”.
Dan, what is your own working definition of gender identity please? Genuine question, to help get a fix on where you’re coming from. As Polly has pointed out, it can mean different things. The fluidity of meaning is inescapable – the very idea that sex & gender are not the same things, that the symbolic, outward differentiations that we humans make based on physical differences are learned, socialised, and not innately linked to those physical differences, is an idea that is still very much in process, and our thinking and language around these things are very much in flux. (Which is why I think it helps in any discussion about sex/gender if people start by clarifying how they are using the terms). Right now there is NO consensus on what “gender identity” means.
Plus the notion of physical sex versus socially-constructed gender (which I think is the working distinction that most feminists would make) is not actually remotely mainstream at all either – so to imply that it’s “breath-takingly ignorant and ill-informed” to ask for clarification about what “gender identity” is stinkingly pompous. (And then to link to Wikipedia …. sheesh).
(This part also makes my head hurt a lot: “It is not so much a question of citing a study to back up my point of view (that would be a very biased way of going about things) … ” – wtf? Could you not have just cited stuff to start off with instead of saying that the biological link is demonstrable, and expecting us to take it at your say-so.)
“I feel it would be more constructive, and more…feminist to attack the negative value-judgements surrounding “feminine” toy choices per se, as well as the enforcement of the stereotype on those who don’t conform to it (which lack of conformity must be determined by the same causal factors as the stereotype itself).”
No, I can’t parse that last bit for the life of me either. Anyway, ignoring the “feminism – ur doing it wrong”, I would contend that there is no innate attribute of things associated with feminine choices that causes them to be treated as lesser choices – it’s their association with women/girls that provokes the negative value judgement. As you say, professions become feminine when women enter them and men flee them. The social imperative driving that kind of phenomenon is, I would suggest, a strong need to preserve the significance of gender difference. If it’s a free for all, and we all accept there’s no meaningful difference between male people and female people, and they can all dress & decorate themselves how they like, and make whatever work/leisure choices they like, and so forth, – if that differentiation is gone then men as a class lose social status and power. As you say, masculinity is defined by desperately avoiding femininity.
Then, you say that people who don’t conform to the gender stereotype have it forced on them, and that we should be challenging that – I could not agree more. But how can you talk of stereotypes and conformity if you think that gendered choices have a demonstrable biological basis? This makes no sense.
Yes, we know that not all male and female people embody the conventional gender attributes and preferences. To cling to the idea that these conventions are caused by something innate and to insist on the meaningfulness of those conventions, that can’t help but hurt those people who don’t conform. They measure themselves and are measured by other people as failing to to meet the norm, and struggle to fit themselves to the norm or are punished for not doing so. What we need is to get rid of the construct around which these things are measured, gender: the very notion that people must be correctly categorised into male or female.
When I was about four I distinctly remember telling my mother I used to be a boy. She said no, I had never been a boy, but I was quite insistent. Past life memory? Who knows.
Then I read about a four year old being treated for ‘gender identity disorder’ and despair.
http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=PSC.050.0079A
Yes I know what a correlation is Dan, I just don’t accept that you can prove with a correlation such as ‘more boys like playing with construction sets’ that there is this innate thing called gender.
And given how many variables there are in human behaviour, why are you so determined to conclude that a correlation shows biological determination?
And my friend with the PhD in maths avoided statistics. For a good reason.
Oh and while googling around for something else I found this:
Mothers often deny treating boys and girls differently,
but studies show they do. The parents know the gender
of the child and from then on treat him or her as a member of that sex – often unconsciously. Boys’ limbs are
exercised and stretched far more, and the vocal babblings of girls are imitated far more. Later in infancy,
boys are allowed less physical contact and less verbal and eye contact than girls. Boys are more likely to be
held facing away from the mother (and father) than toward. The parents are more likely to point something
out to a boy than a girl. The mother tends to yield more often to the boy’s demand to feed, whereas the girl
is more readily denied and given direction. She has to yield to her mother’s ideas of how much to take and
when. When this sort of different behavior is repeated hundreds of times, it is bound to have an effect. “By
the age of thirteen months, there are clear differences between male and female children,” says LaTorre.6
“There is apparently an attempt to “develop independence, adventure and mastery
in the boy…. The males
show much more exploratory
and autonomous behavior.”
Most other people also reflect their gender expectations
toward the child. In some experiments,
researchers took young babies and pinned opposite-sex names on them: girls names on boys and vice
versa. Without knowledge
of the experiment, people who were strangers to the babies were brought in
to see them. Predictably, they cooed over the “girl” babies saying “Isn’t she pretty?”, and over the “boys”
said things like, “Looks like he’ll be a good cricket player when he grows up.” A father, watching
his young
son tear into a steak with unsteady knife and fork, remarked approvingly, “That’ll give you big muscles!”
Presumably he would never have said it to his young daughter. If a little boy drops his trousers and piddles in
the back garden, mother laughs tolerantly, but if her daughter takes off her underwear and throws it over the
neighbor’s fence, she is probably scolded. Studies again show that the boy is given much more freedom and
allowed to do many things the girl is not. His dirtiness and untidiness is tolerated far more than a girl’s.
Click to access Ch3.pdf
And Dan to prove causation, you need a causative factor, not just a correlation, weak or otherwise.
Now in the case of smoking for instance (I am not an expert, so this is a laypersons summary) tar builds up in the lungs and causes a tumour.
It doesn’t always happen, but approxmately 4 times as many smokers as non smokers contract the disease among women and it’s 9 -1 among men.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8893051
Reason:there are other things that cause lung cancer.
So we can say, ok there is a very strong correlation between lung cancer and smoking. And we’ve showed the way that can happen by experiments. (Again laypersons summary, just take the experiments on beagles or whatever as having happened). So ONE factor that can cause lung cancer is smoking.
Now you are saying that children play with certain toys according to their biological sex, but wait a minute, their toy choice can also be influenced socially too.
Fine. Except the social conditioning (see the study above) mostly goes the same way as the supposed ‘innate’ biological preference. So how do ANY children defy the stereotypes?
And what exactly is the mechanism by which the effect of hormones in (pre pubertal ) children is to make them play with tea sets?
And how do we prove any of this? Since there are so many variables and we can’t control them?
A correlation on its own proves sweet FA. Sorry statistics lovers, but them’s the facts.
cath says:
I don’t see how it’s possible to come to any conclusion re biology v socialisation in what influences toy selection in children even as young as 12 months, unless those children have been raised up to that point in complete isolation and without access to either toys or other people. Something that’s obviously ethically impossible to do.
i completely agree. you only have to look at the amount of pink and blue crap in mothercare to know that barely at any point in its life is a child free from gender stereotypes.
i am always curious in these debates about how “developed world” and western they are. what about in countries where children can’t get barbie dolls and action man? is their gender identity/biological sex in flux? this i think is where the biological propensity argument falls down. children haven’t played with gendered toys since cavepeople times, neither do in every corner of the world. it is a remakably recent thing. when children played with spillikins and jacks, for example, what statement were they making about their biological sex?
just a thought anyhow.
I don’t see how it’s possible to come to any conclusion re biology v socialisation in what influences toy selection in children
This was precisely my point. In the same way that one cannot eliminate the potential influence of social factors, neither can we eliminate biology from the mix of potential confounds.
What counts as a gendered toy can perfectly well have cross-cultural equivalents – amazingly enough, the researchers have actually thought of that.
I’m not particularly an apologist for this type of research, but if it’s going to be rubbished, at least let it be rubbished on proper, logical grounds, and not from a stand-point of entirely misunderstanding the method.
(That last point was not at you, sianushka)
OK, logic, logic … I think that some other commenters said this, but I’m getting frustrated reading this thread.
Look. If you have two babies, a boy and a girl, and you give them a choice of pink or blue toys to play with, and the boy chooses blue and the girl chooses pink (bear with me), and if this happens every single time in every repetition of the experiment, this would still prove NOTHING whatsoever about the innate or biological relationship between sex and gender, because guess what? THERE IS NO RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SEX AND GENDER!
Gender is a social construct. ‘Pink for girls’ is a social construct. As is ‘tea sets for girls’ or ‘tractors for boys’.
So, whilst if the above experiment actually took place with the results described, it would almost certainly indicate something about the relationship between sex and colour preferences, or contrast preferences, but it would reveal nothing whatsoever about gender.
Plus, as Polly points out, we begin to inflict gender on babies from even before they are born. The first thing we ask is the child’s sex, and from that moment we start to initiate them into their gender role.
I’m not a scientist but it’s just logic, innit?
Seems logical to me beardedlady.
Perhaps we should ban finding out the sex of the baby before birth. Would save a lot of gendering – or more likely the idiots would buy a blue and pink set of everything just in case. In case I haven’t posted this here before – this is my most hated gendered item that I have ever seen. I have to resist kicking each and every one to bits when I see them: https://www.annsprams.co.uk/shop/item.asp?itemid=339