I don’t want to speak for Duncan, but that’s not the meaning I took away from his reply. What I took away was that the received traditional wisdom often times is neither traditional, nor especially wise. Very many of our “ancient, cherished traditions”, date back to intentional attempts to create ancient cherished traditions in the roughly 1850-1950 era. These traditions were, oftentimes, not based on any actual historical research or scientific investigation. They were based on stereotypes and aesthetics.
To return to the fence analogy, it’s important to do a bit of historical research and try to determine whether the fence is actually a long-standing feature of the landscape or whether it was put up (figuratively) yesterday by someone who may not have known more about the territory than you.
EDIT: One common example is “blue for boys, red for girls”. In the past, red was the preferred color for males, because it was considered to be more “active” and “energetic”, as opposed to the “cool” “passive” energy that blue exuded. At some point this flipped, with blue becoming the color of reason and consideration (and thus associated with “rational” males) and red becoming the color of passion and emotion (and thus associated with “passionate, emotional” females). Why did it switch? Some people blame some marketing campaigns that were carried out at the turn of the 20th century, but the reason isn’t totally clear cut. What is clear to me, however, is that when people started associating blue with male-hood and red with female-hood, it wasn’t because of some careful consideration and close examination of the previous era’s choices regarding color associations. So, today, when associating colors with gender, I don’t feel any particular loyalty to “blue = boy; red = girl”, because that association wasn’t chosen via a considered process and hasn’t been in place nearly long enough to have established itself as a truly time honored tradition.
Definitely a common situation, where “our ancient traditions” are barely two generations-old. I think that was Duncan’s point, as well as yours. Sometimes there is a good reason for the tradition to exist, and sometimes there is not. And sometimes there was a good reason but not any longer, and it is impossible to tell without earnest historical research, as you say.
I don’t want to speak for Duncan, but that’s not the meaning I took away from his reply. What I took away was that the received traditional wisdom often times is neither traditional, nor especially wise. Very many of our “ancient, cherished traditions”, date back to intentional attempts to create ancient cherished traditions in the roughly 1850-1950 era. These traditions were, oftentimes, not based on any actual historical research or scientific investigation. They were based on stereotypes and aesthetics.
To return to the fence analogy, it’s important to do a bit of historical research and try to determine whether the fence is actually a long-standing feature of the landscape or whether it was put up (figuratively) yesterday by someone who may not have known more about the territory than you.
EDIT: One common example is “blue for boys, red for girls”. In the past, red was the preferred color for males, because it was considered to be more “active” and “energetic”, as opposed to the “cool” “passive” energy that blue exuded. At some point this flipped, with blue becoming the color of reason and consideration (and thus associated with “rational” males) and red becoming the color of passion and emotion (and thus associated with “passionate, emotional” females). Why did it switch? Some people blame some marketing campaigns that were carried out at the turn of the 20th century, but the reason isn’t totally clear cut. What is clear to me, however, is that when people started associating blue with male-hood and red with female-hood, it wasn’t because of some careful consideration and close examination of the previous era’s choices regarding color associations. So, today, when associating colors with gender, I don’t feel any particular loyalty to “blue = boy; red = girl”, because that association wasn’t chosen via a considered process and hasn’t been in place nearly long enough to have established itself as a truly time honored tradition.
Definitely a common situation, where “our ancient traditions” are barely two generations-old. I think that was Duncan’s point, as well as yours. Sometimes there is a good reason for the tradition to exist, and sometimes there is not. And sometimes there was a good reason but not any longer, and it is impossible to tell without earnest historical research, as you say.
I never heard “red for girls” (or “red not for boys”, for that matter), only “pink for girls”.