So which is it Stephanie?: Both. My statements do not contradict each other. You let your child choose what they like. Then you defend your child from anyone who would bully them into not liking that thing. The genderedness of an object is irrelevant. If your kid likes barbie or action man it is irrelevant if it brings them joy. You should be instilling the confidence in your child so that they can face a society that may not agree with their preferences. You shouldn’t stay silent and thus seem to consent to the bullying of your own son. But why take my word for it, after all I clearly have no understanding of children, right? Impossible motherhood, what a laugh. How can you call yourself a mother if are aren’t willing to mother? Society is not your child’s parent nor the problem.
And I don’t expect you to always be there to fight the battle. But if you witness such a thing you don’t just stand by and let it happen. It is a prime directive to teach your child how to survive in this world. You cannot make the whole world bend down to you. You have to help your child be confident in who they are and what they like. Unfortunately, that involves a little confrontation with strangers sometimes not just being a bystander parent. That is the only way to stop your child falling into stereotypes not that I actually have a problem with stereotypes as long as it makes the child happy.
Also nice cherry picked quote but I still stand by what I said there. I do find that women having acid thrown in there faces is a more pressing issue than bitching about male avatars in games. I’m weird like that. Video games like Minecraft are not sexist, like any leisure item or activity it is marketed towards certain demographics. This is not sexism, it is a result of basic advertising skills. Not to say that women do not get games catered to them. Women make up the vast majority of casual gamers especially on the app market but including games Minecraft, Pokemon and more. In fact if you add the mobile app market to gaming statistics it would make women 60% of gamers. So as you can see, men and women are simply drawn to different sects of gaming and just because hardcore games tend to be targetted towards more dedicated gamers usually men, does not make them sexists. Women tend to have multiple hobbies and interests where as men specialise in a few making them more fit for hardcore games.
You claim the world is hostile to femininity, but femininity is not the thing being called toxic in today’s society is it? Women may have been told to sit down and shut in the past but now as is very apparent even in the Notch article you linked; men are the ones being written off and silenced for ‘mansplaining’ or simply for being men or white because it isn’t their turn to speak. It is never one sided. This conflict always goes two ways and I’m not here to say that women never had it hard, but simply to say that they are not the only ones. You think the world is hostile to femininity? That’s laughable when you see how hostile it is to masculinity, how anything from flirting with women, being attracted to breasts, etc etc is Toxic Masculinity. How it is perfectly okay to say #Killallmen when the statement is revolting. There’s a goddamn reason that men make up the majority of suicides, but please remind me how femininity is under attack.
And you know what I love, like every pseudo-feminist you have to be so patronising because you cannot talk to someone who isn’t a feminist like a human being. I was willing to debate with you and try and help you see what the author was saying and you want to belittle me? I have probably taught and dealt with more children than you ever will. All I want is companies to actually make an effort if they plan to encourage girls. Not merely change some fonts but actually cater some courses and make it interesting to the younger generation of girls. We both want the same thing.
