6-yr-old writes to Hasbro for lack of girls in Guess Who game

Male-normative thinking usually gets pointed out these days, but it's not very often that you have such a slam-dunk argument like in the following story:

A 6-yr-old wrote to Hasbro to complain that there are only 5 female characters in their Guess Who? game, vs. 19 guys.

Dear Hasbro,

My name is R______. I am six years old. I think it's not fair to only have 5 girls in Guess Who and 19 boys. It is not only boys who are important, girls are important too. If grown ups get into thinking that girls are not important they won't give little girls much care.

Also if girls want to be a girl in Guess Who they'll always lose against a boy, and it will be harder for them to win. I am cross about that and if you don't fix it soon, my mum could throw Guess Who out.

My mum typed this message but I told her what to say.

Feminism has never been so adorable.

Of course, big companies being big companies, they offered the following flat explanation:

Guess Who? is a guessing game based on a numerical equation. If you take a look at the characters in the game, you will notice that there are five of any given characteristics. The idea of the game is, that by process of elimination, you narrow down who it isn't, thus determining who it is. The game is not weighted in favour of any particular character, male or female. Another aspect of the game is to draw attention away from using gender or ethnicity as the focal point, and to concentrate on those things that we all have in common, rather than focus on our differences.

Well, that's not patronizing at all, is it? I mean, seriously? Do you even hear yourselves? The whole point of the game is to point out the differences in order to discover the character, dammit!

The girl's mom was obviously not impressed, and I think she really hits the nail on the head when she asks:

Why is female gender regarded as a "characteristic", while male gender is not?

Via Jezebel.