Read my latest story, "The All-Nighter", at 52|250.

A recent New York Times article on the psychology of gift-giving (yes, I am too old-fashioned to use gift as a verb– which isn’t to say I make I virtue of it) includes a paragraph that occludes how environment contributes even to early gender differences:

Gender differences in gift giving seem to emerge early in life. Researchers at Loyola University Chicago studied 3- and 4-year-olds at a day-care center, all of whom had attended the same birthday party. The girls typically went shopping with their mothers and helped select and wrap the gift. Boys, meanwhile, were often unaware of what the gift was. “They’d say, ‘I took a nap while my mom went shopping for it,’” said Mary Ann McGrath, the associate dean of the graduate school of business at Loyola.

These divisions don’t simply emerge like a caterpillar out of a chrysalis with no outside input.  The mothers of the girls in this study (what? no stay-at-home dads in the sample?) most likely asked their daughters to choose the gift and help with the wrapping.  It’s difficult to tell if the boys were left at home (presumably with their fathers) or simply allowed to snooze undisturbed during the shopping trips.   To simply say that such gender differences appear early without any qualification may unfortunately and inaccurately  connote to many readers that gender differences arise because of inherent genetic distinctions between boys and girls.

Equally disturbing is the profoundly non-scientific quote about adults in the paragraph previous to the one about children:

Dr. Rucker [identified as a consumer psychologist at the University of California, Davis] says she often recounts the story of a man who climbed a tree to retrieve a robin’s egg that matched his girlfriend’s blue eyes. “Women say, ‘Oh, how romantic,’” she said. “But men say, ‘That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of, and also what about the mama bird?’”

Maybe the majority of women and men she speaks with react in these ways, but when the story includes such a quote without actual quantitative numbers, it gives a false impression of universality.  My first reaction on hearing this story was one of revulsion: why would I want my sweetie to steal an egg from the bird who produced it thus, most likely, preventing it from ever hatching?

Of course, I am a vegan.  But I would also likely be excluded from samples of “normal” women for another reason: my position on the autistic spectrum.  In particular, one theory holds that Aspies have particularly “male” brains.  This is something that should trouble even neurotypical feminists as it indicates a willingness among certain scientists to ignore of those of us who might spoil their theories by calling us disordered.

Actually, I like the term dis-order.  I just consider myself disordering instead.

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