An Elementary Class Studied 600 LEGO Sets, What They Found Has Gotten

[GregoryBrick]

Please show me the research that is determining what this "majority view" you are referring to is?

In particular, I suspect that girls playing with minifigures tend to make more of the minifigures girls than boys who play with minifigures. So if your experience is mostly as a boy who played with their guy friends, then you are going to run into lots of people assuming most of the minifigures are boys.

But if you are a girl playing with their girl friends, experience will show more of these minifigures being treated as girls as well as boys.

In which case, the research would show its the user that sets the gender on the pieces. As more boys played with Lego after it specialized towards boys (end of the 1980s? early 1990s?) then yes there is going to be a greater perception of the minifigures being boys

But before minifigures there were Homemaker figures (all of my first Lego people were Homemaker figures), and those were definitely made as both male and female so I don't see any "of course" about all the indeterminate Lego figures being meant to be male.

The general perception in North America and Europe is that anything which is not explicitly marked as 'female' is assumed to be male. People often don't even realize they are doing this, but we see it in all kinds of everyday examples - look at washroom icons: the default icon is male, but a skirt is added to specify 'female'. Pac-Man is simply a circle, but Ms. Pac-man has a bow to indicate 'female', as well as the prefix 'Ms.' (Why isn't it the reverse? The plain circle could be the lady and then there could be Mr. Pac-Man with a bowtie). It's the same with language in many cases, such as 'hero' and 'heroine' (the default is assumed to be male, and receives the suffix to indicate female). You can also look at the history of anatomy textbooks, which long assumed that the male body is the default case, and female bodies are deviations from that (which of course is incorrect).

This isn't to argue whether it's right or wrong, and of course it's not absolute. Children will not ascribe gender to their toys in a universal fashion. But again, the default assumption (inside and outside of LEGO) is that if gender is not specified, it's usually taken to be male. Why, I remember a recent comment on these boards assuming that the Mixels were all male unless there was some specific indication in the cartoon clips about which ones were female. Look also at Gail the Construction Worker in the LEGO Movie figures: she gets lipstick and a special ponytail mold. If gender could be ascribed as easily as you suggest, why not just give the character a regular smiley face and hard hat? In such a case, most people would assume it to be a male minifigure.

[RoboKnight]

(Why isn't it the reverse? The plain circle could be the lady and then there could be Mr. Pac-Man with a bowtie).

*Mr. Pac-Woman

[Gnac]

I hope that no children get to read this thread - they may grow up paranoid.

[Sarah]

If people have that perception, especially in America, then it can't be Lego's fault that "people" have that perception

Personally, I prefer the smiley face heads you can decide for yourself who they are to an overbearance of large-lipstick heads. I don't wear lipstick. Few of my friends wear lipstick (esp for working outside) and I find that stereotype overbearing. I'm really annoyed this new Research Institute set ALL the minifigs have really thick lipstick as if to say "SEE. They have to be LADIES. MEN don't wear lipstick"

Guess what. A lot of us ladies don't either.

[TheLegoDr]

Well, to use Pac-man as an example, the original does have "man" in the last name basically. And since she is Ms. Pac-man she isn't married to him, so maybe Pac-man is their surname and she just happens to be a single lady, so goes by Ms. It is no different than a Ms. Smith and brother Mr. Smith, in which a lot of his buddies may call him just Smith, as in Pac-man. Way off topic, but it makes sense to me.

As for LEGO, that is disappointing that basically all females have to have lipstick to stand outagainst the men heads. There are some beardless heads that can work with either depending on the hair. But there are people in this world where gender is questionable by appearance anyway. So I guess that just gets transferred to LEGO.

Not all women wear lipstick (and in fact, some men do wear make-up), so not sure how to handle this. I think it is a slippery slope. Most people playing with LEGO (read: children) won't notice or care if the females have long hair and make-up and the men have beards and short hair.

[Faefrost]

The general perception in North America and Europe is that anything which is not explicitly marked as 'female' is assumed to be male. People often don't even realize they are doing this, but we see it in all kinds of everyday examples - look at washroom icons: the default icon is male, but a skirt is added to specify 'female'. Pac-Man is simply a circle, but Ms. Pac-man has a bow to indicate 'female', as well as the prefix 'Ms.' (Why isn't it the reverse? The plain circle could be the lady and then there could be Mr. Pac-Man with a bowtie). It's the same with language in many cases, such as 'hero' and 'heroine' (the default is assumed to be male, and receives the suffix to indicate female). You can also look at the history of anatomy textbooks, which long assumed that the male body is the default case, and female bodies are deviations from that (which of course is incorrect).

This isn't to argue whether it's right or wrong, and of course it's not absolute. Children will not ascribe gender to their toys in a universal fashion. But again, the default assumption (inside and outside of LEGO) is that if gender is not specified, it's usually taken to be male. Why, I remember a recent comment on these boards assuming that the Mixels were all male unless there was some specific indication in the cartoon clips about which ones were female. Look also at Gail the Construction Worker in the LEGO Movie figures: she gets lipstick and a special ponytail mold. If gender could be ascribed as easily as you suggest, why not just give the character a regular smiley face and hard hat? In such a case, most people would assume it to be a male minifigure.

Not to burst your bubble, but you are making the common fallacy of mixing cultural references without acknowledging it. You talk about iconagraphy in Europe and North America, and then pull out a specifically Japanese reference to prove it. (Yeah, PAC Man is not Western). Anita Sarkeesian is particularly good at this trick to. She routinely pulls out Japanese games from the 80's to prove modern issues of North American sexism.

as far as Lego. People are failing to appreciate oneof the most basic elements of the whole equation. Lego most certainly did not seek to promote boys over girls. But they are a corporation and a merchant. They go where the customers are. We talk about it as if all things are in fact equal. But remember, Lego originally was very very gender neutral. If anything many early sets may have even been slightly more weighted towards girls. But it was market forces that moved them more and more towards boys. Boys tended to be more interested in their product. by an order of magnitude. So as time went on that is where their focus drifted. And I hate to break it to you, but yeah young boys do self segregate by sex and go through a "girls are icky" phase. And generally it corresponds with the primary ages where they seek out Lego.

as a counterpoint, does the other largest toy line on toy shelves get castigated for its lack of equal gender representation? Does Mattel get crusades for not including enough male representation in their Barbie lines? People talk of default assumptions, but I tend to suspect that that is more myth than reality. Take a closer look at the aisles in Target or Walmart the next time you go through them. I just looked at my Target. 3 aisles that I would consider "boy" focused toys. Action Figures, Cars, and Lego. 3 aisles of stuff that, no, is not in fact boy focused but rather is non gender specific. Board Games, Loud electronic toys to annoy parents, Puzzles, general activities, Water toys etc. 5 aisles of girl focused toys, and 2 aimed at infants. Did you note the Five aisles? This in spite of the fact that girls tend to graduate from "toy based play" to less age specific general merchandise such as clothes music etc, at a younger age than boys.

I still question many of the assumptions that girls and boys are "equal". Girls and boys are more than a bit different. Not simply because of society, but because of biology. Testosterone has a somewhat different impact on a human than Estrogen. Just ask any 2nd Grade teacher what it is like riding heard on the girls vs the boys. This is not purely cultural or upbringing. Now the trick is we do not want to pigeon hole kids, or treat one group as lesser than the other. And we certainly should encourage things like girls taking an interest in building toys and math. But just assuming they are the same. I think somebody failed to read the correct instruction manual on becoming a parent.

[GregoryBrick]

If people have that perception, especially in America, then it can't be Lego's fault that "people" have that perception

And I certainly never said it was LEGO's fault. It just means that LEGO occupies a tricky space (as most of us do) - to what extent are they compelled to reproduce ideas about gender? Whether they intend to or not, it's reasonable to get kids and adults thinking about how LEGO might be inadvertently reproducing those ideas.

Not to burst your bubble, but you are making the common fallacy of mixing cultural references without acknowledging it. You talk about iconagraphy in Europe and North America, and then pull out a specifically Japanese reference to prove it. (Yeah, PAC Man is not Western). Anita Sarkeesian is particularly good at this trick to. She routinely pulls out Japanese games from the 80's to prove modern issues of North American sexism.

[snip]

No bubble bursted, because Pac-Man is the name used in North America regardless of origins; if gendered assumptions about male=neutral or male=default also exist in Japan, it only buttresses my argument; Pac-Man was only one example I used; and I'm not Anita Sarkeesian so I'm not responsible for her arguments about video games.

I remain convinced by the evidence that In many cases when gender is unspecified, the assumption is that it is male. I can give even more examples: bicycle manufacturers divide their products into "bicycles" and "women's bicycles"; helmet and hiking pack manufacturers have historically done the same; Bic produced a product called "Pens for her" (and no "Pens for him")¹; and the suffix "man-" as in 'mankind" or the pronoun "he" have long been used to stand in for a gender-neutral individual. In each of these examples and the others I've listed above, the 'neutral' case and the 'male' case are treated as interchangeable, whereas if something is to be recognized as 'feminine' it has to be explicitly marked as such. These examples are in flux and change with history, but they aren't myths; they are the facts.

The toy aisles are a good example of this. It's quite clear which aisles are for girls, because of the overwhelming preponderance of pink. Why is this the case? If something is directed towards girls, it has to be marked as such, whereas if something is unmarked, it is read as neutral or for boys (which often amounts to the same thing). Why is this done? It's not because girls have an inherent preference for pink. It's because of post-WWII marketing efforts by North American department stores. If girls now prefer pink, that's specific to our current historical moment.

Biology doesn't tell us much, considering firstly that the bulk of sex-based traits are distributed on significantly overlapping curves and secondly that the role such traits play in everyday practice is hard to measure and not in any simple relationship.

I don't what you mean about parents and instruction manuals, is this just a smear or something?

¹And got roundly criticized for it, I should add.

[Dewey Cheatum 1011 Western]

Can I be the first to say who cares?

[CrazyDalton777]

I actually really like the Friends line. For example, I bought the school to put in my CITY and I love some of the vehicle designs. Friends gets a lot of buildings that CITY should have got years ago.