I'm visiting my brother and his wife and their daughter and son. She's four.

She wants to play with her Lincoln logs. After I help her build a house with them, she knocks it down and goes for a more horizontal structure, and lays them all out flat, to make a dance floor. Then she dresses up her beanbag frog and hops him around on it in time to her music box. You'd almost think that gender wasn't an artificial social construct...

Now be nice, Rand; one shouldn't characterize an entire gender by the behavior of one little girl. I do agree that there are probably set behaviors based on gender that are rather universal, but they shouldn't be used as an excuse to assume that girls are not going to grow up to be interested in technical things. I played with dolls and stuffed toys when I was a little girl but I also designed dams in the gutter and played fighter pilot and cowboys and Indians. When I was 13, Apollo 11 landed on the moon and a few months later a dear friend (also female) and I would spend hours on the phone doing the complete transcripts of the mission, taking turns playing Neil/Buzz/Mike and Mission Control. Then we would turn around and play stupid teenage girl games and giggle about boys. I probably knew more about how Apollo worked as a junior high school student than any of my teachers. I also had crushes on boys and spent my allowance on posters of TV and rock stars (along with science fiction books and space program memorabilia).

Is there a point you're trying to make with your comments about gender? I am currently a happily-married middle-aged woman who never listened to the pundits, became a successful Aerospace engineer and still enjoy being feminine. I have heard, more times that I could count, that girls just aren't supposed to be interested in math and science, but I liked it anyway and persevered. Oh, well, I'm probably a statistical snomaly (3+ sigma case), since so many young women today have many more advantages than I had, but they still avoid technical careers and science and spend all of their time acting as stupid as they possibly can. I concede you may have a point, but don't give up on your niece.

No, I'm sure that many girls are interested in "boy" things, and vice versa. I want everyone, regardless of their sex and gender, to be able to do the things that they genuinely want to do, and I don't believe that anyone should be forced into any particular gender role.

My only point is that people who claim that there is absolutely no genetic component to gender, and that the only reason that most girls like girl things and most boys like boy things is because of societal pressure are full of beans.

I wholeheartedly agree, Rand. The gender typing works both ways and children should be allowed to follow their preferred talents without social experimentation.

I think my sister and I were both boys in our own ways. She was the tomboy and I was the intellectual boy. Maybe it's because we had no brothers, or maybe it was because my dad did all the grovery shopping and cooking. We _did_ seem to eat a lot of barbecue...

I had dolls but they all did adventure and spy stuff. (Yes: Superspy Barbie with her very own hanglider. Ken always had to be rescued, the simp.) When neighbor girls would invite me over to play I'd always try to squirm out of it, because I knew it would be hours of "Look at my dollie's new dress, ooh!" "Let's play house with Ken and Barbie! Here's Barbie in the kitchen making Ken his dinner..." Puke puke puke...

I didn't have Lincoln Logs though. We never seemed to get into them in my crowd. For us, it was Leggos. Leggos ruled.

Andrea, you are confusing Legos with that frozen waffle product. You know:

"Hey! Leggo my Eggo!"

But I'm willing to be you know better, and the typo entered your posting after you hit the post button. Lord knows it happens to me all the time - between the time my carefully crafted and meticulously proofed comments are submitted and they appear on the blog, all kinds of errors get into them. Just sloppy management on the part of Mr. Simberg. And Jeff at proteinwisdom. And Jane Galt. And that Armed Liberal guy. And the guy with the little green footballs.

Come on, bloggers, more attention to detail, please. Keep those typos out of my postings!

See what I mean? I originally wrote "I'm willing to BET..." above. I know it. I remember it distinctly.