Tyrannosaurs Can Be Female, Too

Despite the movements of women's suffrage and feminism, modern society still features gender-based stereotyping, and some stereotypes have at least some basis in biology. Genes aside, our kids learn gender roles as eagerly as they learn everything else in their environment. It's hard to completely eliminate gender bias—I know I tried, but I'm sure I didn't succeed.


It is interesting but not shocking that my young girls tended to talk about their cuddly stuffed animals as female, using “she” and “her” and female names, but that only a few of the plastic dinosaurs were identified as female—and that the Tyrannosaurs always seemed to be male. T-rex is often portrayed as a “vicious” and necessarily “violent” predator—and my kids had somehow picked up on the idea that males tend to be more aggressive than females (which is true of some species but not others, and nothing to do with predation!).

Naturally, when we read books about T-rex, and when we saw dinosaur exhibits at museums, I had the opportunity to point out that around half of the Tyrannosaurs were, in fact, female.


Apparently, however, from what I read in my journal entries, I did not point out every stereotype my kids referenced in play. I remember that there were times in which we discussed sexism head-on, but that was probably when the kids were a bit older. And as they matured, I imagine that the kids may have policed their own sexist assumptions in play.

(They sometimes policed others' sexism, too! I vividly remember some boys telling Lindsey that only boys could climb trees. She informed them that they were being sexist, and the boys were horrified. They ran to me to tell on her—saying, “Lindsey said a bad word!” I had to teach them what sexism means and that, although being sexist is bad, saying the word sexist isn't bad!)

Building Blocks and Toy Guns

Over the years, we had a lot of little boys over to play. Often these boys were about the same age as either Mindy or Lindsey, and usually they played well together. Here are a few of the very general tendencies I noticed (again, these tendencies could be biological or societal in origin—or, more likely, both):

• The younger girls tended to use blocks to build enclosures for dolls and stuffed animals. That meant low walls—usually only one block high—and doorways and gates and pathways. These block creations tended to spread out and out, taking up entire floors of rooms at times. And the block play tended to be just a set-up for the longer pretend play with the dolls and toy animals.

In contrast, the younger boys tended to build towers. Only one block wide, these creations went up and up until they toppled down with a tremendous crash. Sometimes the towers went up and up and then there would be pretend play—about 15 seconds' worth, ending with a gorilla attack, lightning, or bombs—anything that would bring down the towers with a crash.

• When the kids were older, both sexes tended to use and enjoy Legos more than wooden blocks. Both boys and girls tended to create enclosures that had both height and length/width—realistic buildings that could hold Lego people. Some of the boys tended to elaborate on the building part of the play and never really got around to playing with the Lego figures inside their creations, and some of the girls tended to rush through the model building but lavished a lot of time to the conversations and actions of the Lego people. Most boys and girls, however, struck a pretty good balance between model building and pretend play with figures.

• I knew mothers of boys who didn't want to buy toy guns for their sons. They often complained to me that everything became a gun—not just their sons' fingers, sticks, and blocks, but even vegetables, action figures, and dolls. I didn't have that worry. When my daughters asked for weapons—say, when they were very “into” the Laura Ingalls Wilder books and wanted a rifle for protection and hunting, or when they were enraptured by a book about Native Americans and wanted a bow, some arrows, and a knife—I gladly bought toys to fill these “needs.”

In their pretend games, my girls almost always used weapons as protection against wild beasts or as tools to hunt for food. Some boys who came and visited played along with these scenarios, but others seemed to gravitate toward the weapons as fun in and of themselves, and they would usually destroy play scenarios by randomly “shooting” everyone else. Of course, this caused bitter complaints: “You're ruining our game!”

(One little boy actually used our rather heavy wooden “rifle” as a weapon, on several occasions, and conked others in the head. After two such incidents, I decided to put the rifle away before he came over.)

I doubt if the boys who loved*loved*loved guns at age 5 and 8 are now, as young adults, any more violent or any more apt to use an actual weapon than the boys who used the guns only for hunting and protection.

From age 3 to 6, my girls tended to choose frilly dresses over more practical shorts and jeans. For weeks at a time, my girls chose their father and papa over their mother and grandma (at least for fun—boo-boos tended to be another matter altogether). Through all their preschool years, when toy boats and cars were available, my girls preferred dolls (although those dolls sometimes loved a nice boat or car ride). My daughters learned and participated in gender roles all too well—but they also participated as I discussed bending gender lines and expectations, too.

And I think it all turned out pretty well.

Bloodshed in the Sand Lot

(or the difference between girls and boys)

I only had daughters, so I'm no expert on this topic. Of course, I have a lot of friends and relatives who have raised sons, and I've read some stuff, and I know one thing for sure:

We all want to raise our sons and daughters so that they don't feel pressured to fulfill sexist expectations...
so that they don't feel shame if a particular ability, interest, or personality trait does not seem to mesh with others of their sex...
so that they feel no limits on who or what they can be.

Still, I've heard that there are some differences between the sexes that, while only valid as generalities and not necessarily true of particular children, do ring true to our experiences.

Here are some indications of what would seem to be differences between boys and girls:

As I read my fourth journal entry, I was struck by the dinosaur play between Mindy, Camille, and Lindsey. Their dinosaurs were pretty darned civilized! Nobody ate anybody else. Nobody even fought! There was precious little roaring. Mostly the dinosaurs talked to each other. A lot of the play was about relationships.

I have been around a lot of little boys with plastic dinosaurs, and my memories of these play sessions go something like this:

Bloodshed! Mayhem! Fighting!
Crunching and munching!
Roaring, killing and eating!

The boys themselves did not fight as they played—but those plastic dinosaur mouths grappled each other, those sturdy plastic tails thwacked each other, and lots of real-true roaring filled the air. There wasn't actual violence, but there was play-violence in abundance, resulting in armies of plastic dinosaurs laying prostrate in the sand.

It wasn't all about relationships, unless you count the predator-prey relationship.

And the dinosaurs didn't talk a whole heck of a lot.

At right is a Lego creation by Mindy, Lindsey and Camille. Their dinosaur is in a museum exhibit, complete with flowers. It's all very "nice."

I had friends who had hoped to have a no-toy-gun rule in their home. They carefully informed family and friends that no toy guns were to be given as gifts, but then their sons made almost everything in the playroom into a gun. Legos, blocks, even dolls were pointed and given appropriate powing, banging, and kwow-kwow-ow-ow-ow-ow sound effects.

I didn't form a plan or philosophy about toy guns (I did scheme about what to do about the Barbie “problem,” but that's another story), but my husband and I, and my super-generous parents, found ourselves every once in a while adding some sort of toy weapon to our home—a sword for a pirate costume, a dagger for some sort of ninja dress up set, and so forth. The girls had prairie bonnets and long dresses and aprons, and they loved to play Little House on the Prairie; at some point we got them a beautiful wooden (toy) rifle. All of a sudden, I realized that my girls had what so many of their male friends didn't—a toy gun!

When Mindy, Lindsey and Camille played with that toy rifle, its role was very much defense. It served as protection from invisible bears and non-existent mountain lions. There wasn't a whole lot of shooting at the pretend creatures, but as the girls left the safe confines of their make-believe log house, they would arm themselves with that rifle, just in case.

Some of our boy visitors loved to race to the play room to find that rifle, and not only would they shoot it, they would point it at people as they pulled the trigger! On two different occasions I had to take away the rifle because one little boy conked another over the head with the rifle—and this sucker was pretty heavy!—remember, it's made of wood!—and the next time this child came over I did a preemptive strike and put the rifle away before he even arrived.

Camille and my two girls loved to play with blocks. They would make low-walled enclosures for dolls and figures and stuffed animals, furnished inside with clunky block tables and cylinder chairs and ramp-like beds.

And of course, playing with these cool set-ups involved a lot of talking among the the plastic figures and fabric creatures who carefully moved among the blocks.

Several boy visitors routinely gravitated to the block set, for a few years, and instead of building low and large, they would always build up. Tottering towers of multicolored blocks would rise up, get kicked or knocked over with a whoop and a grin, and then be rebuilt again.

Of course I “get” that lots of girls play shoot-em-up games with guns and build and demolish towers of blocks. Lots of boys, I'm sure, have stuffed animals that talk to each other and plastic dinosaurs that outdo each other with spinning-turning-flipping dives into the sand, rather than attack each other. My sample size is WAY too low to say anything valid about the differences between boys and girls.

Not to mention the fact that I quite possibly socialized my daughters to follow the norms set out for their sex—although I fully intended to buck any such stereotyping.

Still, I can't help thinking that these observations, and others like them, hint that there is some difference that is often found between girls and boys.

What do you think?

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The illustrations at the top of this post are from Valentines published around 1930. Notice that the girl is at home and is shown in, not only a relatively still pose, but a coy / flirtatious pose. The boy is outdoors and active.