"We live in a world where girls are allowed to do boy things (play sports, wear pants, like cars, etc), but boys are simply not allowed to do girls things. When boys do girls things, they are considered sissies or fags or whathaveyou. Girlified things, then, can’t be sold on a gender-neutral website. And because girl things can’t be sold to boys, girl things must be segregrated, lest they contaminate the feminine-free space that we insist boys inhabit."

You said that right.

It sucks. When I want to find cool dinosaur stuff for my daughter, they are always in the boy's section. The same thing with "monster" stuff.

And when there is a character that is supposed to appeal to both, they make a "boy" version and a "girl" one and the girl one is always hideous with pink ruffles all over it

Tsk, because when I was a little girl who loved dinosaurs, the only thing I could have wanted more was a "Cuddlekins" plushie of one?

As someone who wanted to be a paleontologist for most of her childhood, the gendering of dinosaurs as "boy stuff" just makes me sad.

Girls get a single pink placemat? Not much of an effort there.

Bogus; I know plenty of female paleo-artists (myself being in this field) who think T. rex and velociraptor were total badasses, and like dinosaurs just as much as any man. Where would the paleo-art scene be without people like Orbyss?

I feel like paleontology may represent itself as a man's game. People remember rough-and-tumble mountaineers like Prof. Robert Bakker, Paul Sereno and Jack Horner (even if Horner's a total hack), but I can't remember a single female paleontologist who leads teams out in the field. I'm sure they're out there, waiting to be represented in dinosaur specials...

A transitional phase to freedom? Women can be as good as men and move up but men moving down to female level is a marked form so far.

You seen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2YY3Ba6Js0
Monsterpiece Theatre Guys and dolls? (guys love dolls and girls love trucks)

Long time lurker, first time commenter- I had to come out of the wood work just to say that the "Dinosaur for Boys" concept pisses me off to no end. I still love dinosaurs (In fact, I am making a dumb song by learning how to say "Dinosaurs are awesome" in every language), and I have always loved them since I was a kid. I used to draw giant dinos on the driveway of my house and collect every Jurassic Park toy. But apparently dinosaurs are for girls, so what was I thinking?

However, I did once see a kids book in a store that was like, a dinosaur version of some princess-oriented fairytale and it was the coolest thing ever. So at least there are plenty of dinosaur fans trying to subvert this dumb stereotype.

Your analysis makes sense (and indeed is the obvious one), but going into the non-girl-specific parts of the website, I see that at least some of the girl products ARE included on the "neutral" pages too. E.g. cuddlekins under the "soft toys" link and the origami and stuff under "young artist". So it doesn't seem like this website at least is so much about keeping the feminine from contaminating the rest and putting boys off as about trying to funnel girls into a specific subset of what's available.

Lisaur.

Thought you were spot on here - "We live in a world where girls are allowed to do boy things (play sports, wear pants, like cars, etc), but boys are simply not allowed to do girls things. When boys do girls things, they are considered sissies or fags or whathaveyou."

I'm writing an undergrad thesis at the moment about the one-sided view of sexism. It's kind of seen as something that only happens against women, but I think boys are given a gendered role as much as girls, and if we want true equity between the sexes we have to understand that before we can look at how it might be different... Why do women tend to do a lot more housework than men? is it because they learn at home that that's their role, or is it because men have learnt that it isn't their role because it's 'sissy'... to overgeneralise horribly! Particularly interested in the idea that this might also be applicable to childcare, that men are as much excluded by their upbringing from the domestic sphere as women are/were from the work place. Haven't quite got a handle on the topic yet (still looking for a way in) but hopefully it'll be intersting. Would love to hear any thoughts people have on it! my email is karenmeara (at) hotmail(dot) com

Fantastic site by the way. Have been visiting for a couple of weeks now, it just gets more and more interesting!

As someone who works in ecommerce, I'm positive that "Dinosaurs for Girls' is included for SEO purposes. People are searching with some sort of combination of Dinosaurs and Girls enough that it's worth including that phrase on their website for rankings / results.

I, too, agree with this:

"We live in a world where girls are allowed to do boy things (play sports, wear pants, like cars, etc), but boys are simply not allowed to do girls things. When boys do girls things, they are considered sissies or fags or whathaveyou. Girlified things, then, can’t be sold on a gender-neutral website. And because girl things can’t be sold to boys, girl things must be segregated, lest they contaminate the feminine-free space that we insist boys inhabit."

I have a son who enjoys playing with toys that are ONLY marketed to girls. They're collectible little animals... and I fail to see how they became a girl thing. I guess little boys aren't supposed to like kittens and puppies, just scaly snakes and lizards. He's always had an equal interest in toys "for girls" as he has in ones "for boys" and he has ALWAYS gotten shit from people for it. He's 9 and already he's being lumped into being gay, which is just indicative of another problem people have. Sometimes society really makes me sick.

I'm a woman and I loved dinosaurs as a kid. I used to play with dinosaur figurines and watch videos about dinosaurs. I remember going to the store and being able to just buy dinosaur toys. Maybe I just don't remember if they were exclusively marketed to boys or not. Or is it becoming more gender-segregated now for toys? I never liked dolls but anything to do with animals was cool for me. It's just sad that kids are pushed into such strict gender lines with their toys. That's an age when they should be able to try everything to develop their personalities and interests. But it's like society brainwashes them with all these gendered expectations. It's especially bad for boys who like "girl" things. If my brother was in my position but liked "girl" things instead of being a girl liking "boy" things, then that probably would not have been tolerated.

My husband finds the stuffed Utahraptor adorable. I agree.

After reading the reply from "Everything Dinosaur", it strikes me that this is really just positive discrimination -- there is a section for everyone, and then there's a subsection specifically dedicated to girls.
Is that much different from having specific resources for women in engineering, computer science, or physics?
Of course that doesn't mean that this doesn't have the unintended effect you're describing in those areas too, but I'd think in those cases we tend to be a little more prepared to say that it's a difficult and subtle debate with no simple answers?

i totally was obsessed with dinosaurs as a kid. granted my mom was really into encouraging me into sciencey things and discouraged 'lame girly stuff' (ah, the disappointment she must feel now knowing i blog mainly about -- the horror! -- fashion) -- but, like, i had a rock collection, and an ass-ton of lil' plastic dinosaurs, and a lot of books about science experiments. and a lot of art supplies. and an american girl doll, and a kitchen playset, and some sort of nontoxic nail polish set for kids. and i did ballet, and i played (co-ed until age 8 or so, when body weight/size became a difference) soccer. american girl doll got along really well with the dinosaurs, let me tell you. and the giant plastic sunny side up eggs from the kitchen set made awesome volcanoes in dinosaurland.

also, i am SO SO SO SO HAPPY to see all this discussion on the one-sided view of sexism, and am so agreed on this -- i love when people here remember to point out the double problem of the gender standard, which is that it's detrimental to BOYS too. when i made a fried egg a volcano my parents praised me for my creativity, but if a boy stole his sister's toy fried egg, his parents would probably be embarrassed and tell him not to play with girl stuff. and in the long run, this sucks for basically everyone. as an adamant feminist, i still get so angry about so much feminism being all about men-and-society-do-bad-things-to-women when in reality, it's current-system-sucks-for-all-of-us-regardless-of-gender. sigh.

You know, I think the whole "search engine" problem could be addressed without pushing girls to the bottom of the list by simply including all of the girls' products in with the rest as well, thus rendering the "girls" section just collecting all of the possibly-girlie things in one place.

I can understand the desire to pander to parents and guardians, but I think there are plenty of other ways to address it. One way would be to include "boys and girls" in the descriptions, and to throw in pictures of boys AND girls holding/playing with the toys. What's with the boy holding the "bed buddy" stegosaurus in *two* pictures? Why can't you have one picture of the boy and one picture of the girl? I think this is just a matter of not trying hard enough and just throwing up their hands and saying "Whatever! Who cares?!"

Dinosaurs were in the unisex isle at the store when I was a kid. Maybe things have changed. The only reason I didn't get to play with them before my brother is because they were hard plastic and pointy. Something I could put in my mouth. Later I inherited his toys and they were a wonderful expression of imagination for me in the sandbox.

Because I got to play with them as a child. I could imagine building one as an adult. http://www.jynja.com

Total # of "dinosaurs for girls" products: 15
# of items in the "dinos for girls" category not gendered with pink or flowers: 5
# of items that don't involve crafts or plush toys: 3 (and two are pink, one is a diary, one is a necklace)
Most Ridiculous Product Name: Cuddlekins Utahraptor

Things I would've liked to have as a kid (and, okay, maybe now):
Large Flying Reptile
T-Rex/Stegosaurus T-shirt
Dig N Play Lost Jungle Game
Dinosaur Excavation Game
Bouncy Dinosaur Balls
Cosmic Glow Dinosaur Shapes
Dinobot
Pretty much any of the models (Baby mammoth 4 lyfe)

# of things in the above list that appear in the girls' section: 0

Le sigh. You know, ED (unfortunate acronym there), if you could find a way to fool sexist parents into thinking that the Dinobot is a toy for girls, I would probably forgive you. Maybe some photos of a little girl using it as a mount for Troll Hunter Barbie? IDK.

"Because dinosaurs aren’t for girls, you see. Dinosaurs are for boys (which goes without saying), so we have to make an special space full of stuffed animals, origami, diaries, and necklaces for the girls."

They're just trying to satisfy all the freaking feminist, all of you. Or a lot of you. I thought that this site was really interesting, I read a couple pages then realized that everything is wrong. Everything, EVERYTHING is discriminatory against women. Do you or don't you want special treatment? It doesn't say Anywhere that, "Dinosaurs are for boys" and maybe they had created that girl page so this wouldn't happen. This is bothering me. Yes, lots of boys do considered, "Girl things" and the other way around. But if more boys do "Boy things", then wouldn't it make sense to advertise that way?

I just visited the Everything Dinosaur site and they revamped the whole site since this article. One section is now called 'Dinosaur Toys for Boys & Girls - Dinosaur Models', all other sections are gender neutral.

Hiya, just wondered what your opinions might be about this site:

http://shop4dinosaurs.co.uk/prodtype.asp?PT_ID=222

I run a Dinosaur website called Cretaceous Co which has a great selection of Women's and Girls Dinosaur T Shirts, Vest tops and Hoodies. It's still early days but we will be adding to our product range more and more in the coming weeks. Our site is https://cretaceousco.com if you'd like to check it out.

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