I suppose I was one of the girls who didn't play much with Legos, though it's hard to say how much that was for reasons related to gender (I was a pretty gender-normative little girl, and my brother was all over that kind of toy) and how much it was because I was such a bookworm. I didn't actually play with toys very much once I learned to read. Anyway, I really just wanted to thank you for the book recommendation, because I think "the scapegoating of femininity" is a phrase I needed for a pattern I catch myself in when talking about girlhood. My go-to example of "things we say to little girls" is about playing with dolls, and how if a girl is treating a doll roughly, adults will tend to tell her "don't, you're hurting it," whereas if a boy treats a doll/action figure in a similar way, adults generally see it as just playing rough. It took me quite a while to reflect that "not hurting things" is not necessarily the negative message in that whole scenario.

Heaven only knows when I'll find room in my reading list for a book of this kind, but I'll try to get a hold of it.