Why Boys Don’t Play with Dolls
•By Katha Pollitt
Building vocabulary
• A. the National Organization for Women
• B. belief in and organized activity in support of
political, economic, and social equality for
women; the “revolution” refers to the changes in
attitudes, laws, and practices resulting from
organized feminist activity dating roughly from
the late 1960s to today.
Building vocabulary
• C. a Barbie doll head with hair designed for “hair
styling”
• D. aggressively and stereotypically male values
• Refers to the popular “advice” book, Men are
from Mars and Women Are from Venus by John
Gray.
Understanding the writer’s ideas
• 1. That twenty years of women’s lib activism has
not had much effect on sex roles.
•
• 2. Thins outside of social mores, such as
genetics.
• 3. The ways we raise kids (par. 4).
Understanding the writer’s ideas
• 4. Her view is: either give Barbie as a present,
or don’t. But don’t try to have it both ways by
giving Barbie as a present and trying to negate
the gift by apologizing. It can’t be that you think
Barbie is bad (therefore the apology) but you
continue to buy the doll and give it as a gift.
Choose one or the other.
Understanding the writer’s ideas
• 5. Not very.
• 6. They let parents off the hook by sanctioning
the path of least resistance to the dominant
culture (pars. 10 and 11).
• 7. Things have changed. Women are doctors as
well as nurses. Boys skateboard and cook. (pars.
13-15).
Understanding the writer’s ideas
• 8. People have common sense: they are wellintentioned, and try to behave as well as
possible, but common sense also says that you
have to do what you have to do, and it’s not
“worth it” to buck the dominant practices. The
writer thinks diversity in sex roles is possible but
that you do have to (it’s necessary to) imposed
some view of what it means to be male and what
means to be female.
Understanding the writer’s techniques
• 1. Sources for behavior within society and
outside of it. Accepting Barbie and rejecting
Barbie. Accepting sexual conventions and
flouting them. The adult world and the child’s
world.
• 2. The way we raise kids is an index of how
unfinished the feminist revolution is and how
tentatively it is embraced even by avowed
feminists (par. 4)
Understanding the writer’s ideas
• 3. People give Barbie as a present but apologize.
Feminists who would not dream of discouraging
their sons from engaging in macho athleticism
(par. 8).
• 4. “But apologize for Barbie?” (par. 5). See the
questions that make up par. 9, and the question
that ends part. 13. “Isn’t that what adults always
do, consciously or unconsciously?” par. 16)
Understanding the writer’s ideas
• 5. Annoyed, exasperated. But in places the writer
becomes sympathetic to the plight of today’s
parents, as in pars. 10 and 11.
• 6. The ending is effective insofar as it shows that the
idea of sex roles can’t be evaded, as some feminist
thinking might at one time have suggested. But the
conclusion is ineffective insofar as it sidesteps the
issue of whether the feminist revolution can ever
hope fully to alter sexist gender distinctions, the
difficult question with which the writer opens the
essay.
Mixing Patterns
• Pollitt says we have to look no farther than how
we actually raise kids (pa4. 4).
Exploring the writer’s ideas
• 1. Pollitt’s omission of the genetic argument
raises at least a doubt in the reader’s mind
about the credibility of Pollitt’s point of view. Is
she unwilling to look at evidence that questions
her beliefs?
Exploring the writer’s ideas
• 2. She uses example and analysis. She implies
that whatever explanations there may be for sex
roles outside of society, these explanations are
complementary to social explanations, not at
odds with them. We can’t do anything about
genes, she implies, but we can do something
about society.
Exploring the writer’s ideas
• 3. Feminism is a developed set of ideas, and in that
sense can be said to be an ideology. Fexible sex roles:
the boy who skateboards and cooks. Although Pollitt
certainly implies that social explanations of behavior
take precedence over others—just because our genes
may be sexist does not, in her view, in any way mean
that we must be sexist—it’s safe to say that a lot
depends on the social implication of non-social
“sources” of behavior. Would feminists reject biological
determinism if biology demonstrated that gender roles
are not in any way “pre-determined” genetically?