It appears a little cubby hole of the Internet is roasting us like chestnuts over an open fire.

Is it over our piece about the burden on society when parents don’t teach their kids to do chores?

No.

Is it over our call to action to stop judging mothers over how much and well they cherish motherhood?

Nope.

Is it over Ellen’s commentary about the Goldieblox ad boiling down to a sort of reverse discrimination against females?

Well, there was that one commenter on the Huffington Post Parents Facebook page who called Ellen and her daughters “a bag of rocks,” but mostly the responses were positive.

Is it over Ellen’s viral post on vaccinations?

Oh yeah, that did stir the pot, but that was awhile ago.

No, our fine friends, we are currently being lambasted for OUR GIFT GUIDES.

See, our gift guides were featured on CNN.com We even got two slides! But it was our board game suggestions that made BoardGameGeek.com lash out like Munchkins with battleaxes.

We are being called antiquated sexists because Would You Rather was listed on the Teen Girl Guide and The Settlers of Catan was listed on the Teen Guy Guide. The comments are fairly vehement, but most didn’t feel strongly enough to leave anything but fake names like “Shame on you” and “Mrs. Mystery Bob.”

“Shame on you for maintaining sterotypes [sic] and suggesting that great boatdgames [sic] are for “boys only”. My daughters love Pandemic, Catan, and Munchkin. It shocks me to see such sexism on this website. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

“The boys get Catan & Pandemic, and the girls get Would you Rather? I guess my mom is more sensible than you claim to be. Did you know it’s 2014?”

“Would You Rather is a terrible choice for a board game. There is no reason why teen boys would enjoy more serious fare, while teen girls are stuck playing a game with no thinking involved. Poor, sexist choice. I expected better from this site.”

Yeah, it’s just awful when games and activities are fun. You’re right. Ellen’s daughter should definitely not have a choice to relax with some silliness after studying for AP calculus and biology all week long.

And then there was this:

“I find this list strange and a bit sad. First of all, as a mom of a young teen, I know fully well what her interests and preferences are like and can assure you that nothing on this list would interest her. I know the books and subjects she enjoys, the music and movies she prefers, and the personal care items and clothing styles she likes. What kind of parent doesn’t know their child or take the trouble to get to know them and these details? Certainly not a sensible parent.

Secondly, as an avid gamer I can assure you that “Would you rather?” is an humorous activity and not really a game and that Eat Poop You Cat or Werewolf are miles better fun activities than that title.

My daughter loves games and they include Hive, YINSH, TZAAR, Morels, The Little Prince: Make me a Planet, K2, Hoppladi Hopplada, Lakota, Dixit, and Ticket to Ride. I did buy her a boardgame for the holidays. I bought her 1911 Amundsen vs Scott (because she saw the video of it and was very interested).

This list is offense to independent females everywhere and only serves to perpetuate stereotypes of “Girls like XYZ” and Boys like ABC” and never the two shall meet.

Would you honestly rather ask lame questions of each other or sit down to race to the South Pole?

These lists do more harm than good, IMHO.

And moms, if you don’t know anything about your daughter, don’t buy a gift off of a “Best gifts for my daughter” list, chances are the gift will fail as children are not “one size fits all”. Take the opportunity to speak and share with her and discover what makes her tick, what excites her, what she fears, and what she dreams. That will be a win-win for you both. If not………buy her a gift card which is ALWAYS a welcome gift. [spelling and grammar their own]”

We are sad and doing harm. With gift guides. But the real message is either know your teens really well . . . or just get them gift cards.

And they’re serious about this. They are now tweeting the message forum thread link at us. Yeah, we know there’s a thread with over a hundred posts bashing us or discussing various gender issues. We saw it already because we know how Google and IP addresses work.

There were great comments like this on the thread:

“Really annoyed me to see this kind of sexism being perpetuated STILL. Shame on you Sensible Soccer Moms. Girls like Pandemic, Settlers of Catan, and Munchkin, too. Boo.”

Because apparently making gift guides for girls is bad, but stereotyping us as Soccer Moms and implying it is an insult is okay? So what’s the cut-off age for championing females? We’re not sure, but we’re going to assume it is way before 40.

And then there was this one:

“You know what’s not sensible? A ridiculous URL like that.”

Ouch. Ellen hasn’t encountered that brand of hate since she first started dating her to-be-husband and his ex-girlfriend told her she had an ugly name. To quote T Swift, “Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.”

So here are the six diabolical steps behind these polarizing gift guides.

1. A blogger friend told us gift guides are huge around the holidays.
2. We thought, “We have kids that like stuff. We could do gift guides.”
3. We picked things at varying, reasonable price points that were easy to order online.
4. All the gifts on the lists are things that our teens own that they have enjoyed.
5. Lists were shared with CNN.
6. And then we watched the world burn. Mwahahahaha!

So how did we decide to do two lists? Why would we do that? WHY WOULD WE DO THAT?!?!

Well, it all boils down to division of labor. There are two of us running this blog, so we made two lists. We worked on them separately, because that is how two people can get tasks done in half the time. Duh. What was REALLY important to us was that the items were things we authentically loved. We didn’t just pick random gifts off of Amazon. Ellen only has teen daughters so with this criteria, she was only qualified to recommend gifts for girls. Erin has a teen daughter and teen boys, but she took on the gift guide for boys. Because division of labor.

So if the Geeks had bothered to read Erin’s intro, she states:

“With four sons between the ages of 7 and 17, my house is a living laboratory of the modern American young man. With the holidays looming, people ask me often what might make a great gift for their favorite nephew/cousin/brother/godson. Of course, I have a teen daughter too and she loves a lot of this stuff too.”

So here are five truths, and three confessions that might further put this all in perspective. Perspective is so important . . . or so we’ve been told.

The Truths:

1. These are gift guides, not shopping lists. We are not commanding you to go out to the store and buy, Buy, BUY! If you find one item you like, SUCCESS! If you think the items are stupid, move onto the next gift guide. We wish you luck!

2.  Ellen was pretty psyched about Erin’s list because it introduced her to “Pandemic.” It truly made her geeky M.D. senses tingle . Plus, she had the added smug satisfaction of picking it off of the boys list and smashing stereotypes! Winning!

3. Our kids have other things and interests beyond what is on those lists. In fact, they have such varied and expansive interests that no gift guide can contain them! Go figure.

For example, Ellen’s STEM track, robotics competing, fiction writing, Science Olympiad participating, Destination Imagination winning, musician daughters build Star Wars Legos, play basketball, volleyball, and tennis, and have a Nerf gun arsenal. Erin’s honor roll daughter is a story spinning, cross country running, marching band maestro who enjoys camping, Comic Con, and Settlers of Catan.

And to the person who left this comment:

“Why are there no books listed for teenage boys?
Is it “sensible” for moms to want their boys to grow up to be uneducated and illiterate?
According to this list, all mom’s should strive to have dumb jocks for sons.”

Erins’s sons are busy being Boy Scouts, achieving the honor of Eagle Scout, serving as legislative pages, putting on plays for elementary school kids, performing in band . . . and reading.

All of our kids have read books from this list. But calm down because these are not the only books they have read. By far.

4. This was not a gift guide for younger children, it was for teens. Much of the ranting was how wrong it is that toys for young kids are separated by gender. We agree. But please note, Ellen is still going to stand by her choice that, in general, the curling iron she recommended is going to please a teenage girl–who likes that sort of thing–more than a fifteen year old guy.

5. This was not a comprehensive gift guide for board games. Not all games owned and loved were represented. Board Game Geek flaming us for not including all the games on our general gift guides is like us criticizing a board game guide for not including Nike Elite Socks.

Which leads us to The Confessions:

1. When Ellen first saw the comments coming in, she thought, “Huh, well this is silly because we have an ENTIRE cabinet full of games. I’ll just post  a couple more “serious” games  that we all enjoy. Well, apparently those choices weren’t good enough either. There must be secret, extra-judgy criteria for having fun that we don’t know about. But as a side note, if you wanted to brandish pitchforks for Chutes and Ladders, future generations might thank you.

“Was there a change in the matrix? Because right now the list also includes clue and risk.”

“Apparently there was. Since those definitely weren’t there to begin with. Although I think they’ve just gone for a bit of a cop out from the feedback and threw two of the most obvious ones there with some filler text and called it a day. Doesn’t address the original premise of the questions raised here, but I guess it’s a start.”

And as far as “ethics in journalism” being violated, we are constantly updating the guides as new gifts and items come into our lives. And once again, they are only GIFT GUIDES, not Congressional transcripts. But it’s a great idea to let people know we are periodically updating them so that they can come back. Thanks!

 2. Ellen doesn’t really like games that take over 20 minutes to play. Gasp! Her favorites that violate this time limit are Clue and Parcheesi, but NEVER ask her how she feels about Monopoly. Trust us. Her personal preferences may have influenced how many games she included on her list. (How dare she!)

3. Erin makes up for Ellen’s ambivalence with her complete and utter LOVE of games! When she has to shoe horn seven people into a van for a seven hour drive to a week long vacation in the Outer Banks, she enthusiastically dedicates precious packing real estate to ALL of these.

Ellen’s daughter, who is currently reading The Crucible, put all this in perspective: “At least you aren’t being falsely accused of and persecuted for witchcraft.” Good point. With a tip of our hats to a  famously maligned magical ice queen, we were going to just “Let it go” . . . but it didn’t feel right. Ellen is a strong believer that if you accept praise, you also have to accept criticism. We just did not want to publish the comments under the gift guides because they seemed unbalanced–with a non sequitur vibe– from people who did not read the text of the posts.

But there was something that really struck the match to our Bunsen burner. THIS:

“Oh dear. No matter which gender you are there appears to be socks on the list. What teen wants socks?!? (Yes, I’m being a bit of an age-ist… but as a teen and as an adult I never have had a more disappointing gift than a pair of sock – even my mom’s usual gift of a sock filled with fruit and nuts was more appreciated and desired.)”

Them’s fightin’ words! Someone clearly doesn’t know any adolescents well. We have teens. Who have teenage friends. And teens love socks.  THE. END.

So what do you think??

 -Ellen and Erin

 

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