Boys toys, and violence or lego my lego

A few days ago, while procrastinating, I decided to watch a few youtube videos under the guise of "doing research," I decided it was time I watch the Tropes vs Women a six part vblog by Anita Sarkeesian who runs Feminist Frequency website (link in important links side bar). Lucky for me watching these videos, and many others on the channel, actually was research. The videos that struck me at the time was the two part Lego video, about the gendering of lego, which I believe she was using as an example of how toys (and other media) are gendered.

 

We can easily see as we walk down the aisle of most any store that sells toys, games (video or otherwise), clothes, etc. that their is an obvious gender divide. 

Girls toy aisle vs boys toy aisle

As we can see, from this picture example, toys are re-enforcing the hegemony that surrounds acceptable gender roles in today's society. Girls are homemakers, caregivers, princesses, the interactive and creative roles that these toys allow are things like baking, or jewelry making. While the boys toys (I would like to note that a disturbing number of pictures of women came up in my image search for boys toys, or boy toy sections/ aisle) create a space where boys are encouraged to engage in violence, or typical male roles of policing (cops and robbers/ cowboys and Indians), construction (Lego, model rockets, etc.), or something to do with automobiles.

 

All of these things are pointed out in Anita's video about lego, and it also came up in a documentary I had seen recently called La domination masculine, by writer director Patric Jean, the film touched on subjects like the gendering of toys for children as well as the power of the Phallus and penis enlargement, violence against women, in particular violence against women that have "invaded" the "male sphere," where he highlights the Montreal massacre, to outline a few of the topics he touches on. Anita herself, being a female gamer, has been the victim of internet attacks, most women and non-male gamers suffer attacks as can be seen on the website Fat, Ugly or Slutty and this is just a sample. So I've linked male dominance and violence against women to Hegemonic femininity because one, I have an uncontrollable urge to deviate from my topic, and two, I see these as ways that are used, in conjunction with the neoliberal model of gendering toys for profit, to target and re-enforce hegemonic ways of thinking and to punish people that deviate from the "normal" ways of behaving. In this case we are talking about women, but this can be applied in other cases of sexual idenification, gender, or race.