Kings Are Royaler Than Queens?

In 1990, Amy Sheldon did a home study on her 6 1/2 year old daughter, noticing that she referred to stuffed animals that showed no gender at all, to "he's." Sheldon pondered this reference to males, which further empowered her male-dominating society theory. Not being able to connect this to anything in her daughter's everyday interactions, she concludes that language is to blame for her daughter's label of "he," and is responsible for making females "invisible."

I, however, have a different conclusion solely based on my personal life. By no means is my amateur, non-scientific study better or more comprehensive than Sheldon's, but I, too, have a 6 1/2 year old daughter, and I couldn't resist in performing the same test with her. And while I'm at it, why don't I throw my 4 1/2 year old son in the study as well.

I simply asked my daughter and my son to bring three stuffed animals each from their rooms. I did not tell them what I was doing; I simply asked them what the name's of each animal was, and if it was a boy or a girl (according to what gender they each assigned to them). Each of my son's was a boy with a boy name, and each of my daughter's was a girl with a girl name.

All I can really conclude from this is at least two things. First, our family tries very hard to make everyone equal, and to not assign a label to anything (except where the facts don't lie, such as my son and I are males and my daughter and wife are females). And second, I believe our whole society has evolved and advanced quite well for equality since this study was constructed. Twenty years is a long time, and I would like to see a more recent study one day just to see the difference in reactions.

Taboo?

After reading the Vivian de Klerk article, "How Taboo are Taboo Words for Girls," I realize that there are different mannerisms associated with how a person responds to various key words. Let me preface by saying I did not expect that much profanity (not that I'm offended) from males or females while giving their description of the key words. I found it interesting that the age groups in question had such varying responses, primarily based on life experience, 2.) the study suggests that if the subject person knew the key word was describing a certain gender, the response might be swayed, according to what gender was believed to be portrayed, and 3.) the age of the article was much older than I expected, however still relevant to today.