This is a Real Thing in the Wal-Mart

And, one fears, wherever games are sold.


The Major Yawn Stereotype Enforcement Game Battle of the Sexes card game, by Imagination Games. Imagination, eh? More like, "we don't need imagination--we have cliche!"

I got an email from my sister TheLadyEve last night, an edited version of which appears here with her permission:

I was at Wal-Mart today [...] and I came across a card game called "Battle of the Sexes," packaged for kids, labeled "for kids ages 8 and up."

The package reads as follows:

The card game that will determine who is the superior sex!
Does she know what an odometer is? Could he tell you how to stop a hole in your panythose from getting bigger?
Test your knowledge of the opposite sex through a series of gender-based questions. The first 'player' or 'team' to earn five cards wins the game!
Includes: 1 Player Guide, 39 Question Cards and 10 Wild Cards

See, it's just a fun card game. You know--for kids! Like Uno, only...totally sexist and cis-supremacist!

TheLadyEve continues:

Okay, first of all, eight-year-olds don't really wear pantyhose (at least not often), and in my experience, they don't care about runs in their stockings. But they should. Because they're GIRLZ!!! And silly girls, they SHOULD know how to stop a run in the pantyhose, but they couldn't possibly know what an odometer is. I was tempted to rip the thing open just to see the rest of the "gender-based questions." Second of all, I just cringe at the use of the term "superior," as if one group is fundamentally less-than. And it's for children eight and up. Yes, [our nephew's] age.

This game is a major example of not only sexism but cis-superiority. It's bad enough when you look at games that are "meant for girls," like "Mystery Date" or "Girl Talk." But when you see a game that seeks to divide all players into black and white gender categories and then reinforce stereotypes while encouraging animosity between the groups, it's one of the most depressing games I've seen since "The Game of Life."

Note added later: the deck pictured above has a 12-and-up age rating and is not the same one my sister saw. But it is the same game from the same company. I suppose they have ideas about which gender stereotypes are "age-appropriate". Sneer.

I notice that the "skills" attributed to girls are not nearly as useful as those attributed to boys. Pantyhose maintenance versus automobile maintenance pretty much says it all.

I won't link to Amazon, but they also offer Imagination Games "Battle of the Sexes" quiz books, desk calendars, and a "Battle of the Sexes--The Battle Continues" board game. The board game is "recommended for ages 14 and up". Fourteen is an especially bad age to be pushing gender stereotypes. Many women have told me that puberty is when they started to lose confidence in themselves.

If one is tempted to protest that "it's just a joke", "just for fun" and we're so post-gender that everyone obviously knows this is a send-up of outmoded stereotypes that don't apply anymore, stop and think. This is marketed for kids. It is in the kids section at Wal-Mart. Our niece and nephew are aged five and eight. Even without brainwashing from games, they have picked up messages about gender roles from the culture at large already. My niece recently informed me that "only men can be mayors". When I asked her who told her that, she replied, "nobody told me--I just know it already!"* My nephew and I had a discussion after he told his sister that only men can be doctors, and so she had to be the nurse in their surgery game. He had this idea in spite of the fact that his pediatrician at the time was a woman.

So no, we're not past it. Not by a long chalk.


*This event led to quite the Google session where we showed her pictures of female mayors from all over the country. And now we have another to add to her collection.

H/T, of course, to TheLadyEve