Monkey business

Girls will be girls and boys will be boys no matter how hard you try to ignore it. Not only is this as plain as the nose on your face, there has been serious research on this subject. In Cinderella Ate My Daughter, the author mentioned a study in which a group of vervet monkeys (44 male and 44 female) were given 6 toys. Two were gender neutral - picture book and stuffed animal. Two were stereotypically masculine - police car and ball, and two were stereotypically feminine - doll and cooking pot. Guess what? The male monkeys gravitated to the boys' toys, and the females gravitated to the girls' toys.  This same experiment was replicated 6 years later with rhesus monkeys with the same results.

Maybe, I have a warped sense of humor, but I find the concept of this study hilarious. You want to study children, so rather than examine your own species, let's ask the monkeys! Granted they are part of God's wonderful creation. But they aren't even remotely next of kin, and never the twain shall meet unless it's in another remake of The Planet of the Apes. 

When I mentioned this study to my daughter, she wondered if God was having a Psalm 2:4 moment with those researchers.  I imagine a monkey thinking to himself, "Well, here goes. I have no idea what this thing is. I'd rather have a banana, but God told me to pick it up and act like I'm interested in it." All the while, the scientists are frantically taking notes, thinking they have tapped into our primal psyches when in reality the monkeys are simply obeying their Creator.

We could leave the monkeys in peace and just believe what God says in His Word about men and women, but that would be a tough nut to swallow for those who choose to reject the truth for a lie.  So rather than monkey see, monkey do, it's monkey do, human believe.