Let Toys Be Toys has fallen

JHC Brighton and Hove council!

I’d really like to see how that initiative would go down with the traveller families in our school.

Does Brighton and Hove have budget they need to spend or something? Haven’t they got any problems they need to address - homelessness, kids in poverty, parks that need care? Why don’t the locals get pissed off with such a waste of money?

In ye olden days kids/teen ‘tribes’ weren’t pandered to. Unless they also have ‘punk’ ‘goth’ and ‘emo’ stickers (or whatever the equivalent is these days). Labelling people 🙄

What about thing 1, thing 2 etc. If it was food enough for dr Seuss...

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/brighton-school-pupils-pronoun-stickers-transgender-council-a8851276.html

'Schools in Brighton are to give out pronoun stickers to pupils in a bid to support transgender children.

The stickers, which are being handed out to pupils in secondary schools and colleges, are part of Brighton and Hove City Council’s pronoun badges campaign which aims to prevent “misgendering”.

The council’s badges indicate whether people would like to be addressed as “he”, “she” or “they” – and some are left blank to allow people to fill in their own pronouns.'

God knows I wish we could “abolish gender” and everyone could be free to live, dress and express themselves however they want but that is a huge social change that I don’t think can be solved on Mumsnet

Let Toys Be Toys was started on Mumsnet and has made a tangible difference to the high street. Social change happens because people make it happen.

If Let Toys Be Toys is taken over by TRAs it'll be an absolute tragedy. I really hope this is just a blip.

There is no description, no explanation of why this girl “becomes” a boy. She is treated badly by her brothers - seemingly because she is a girl. She wants short hair. To go to the ball she dresses in trousers and a jacket and her mouse friends cut her hair. So, with short hair and trousers she decides she is actually a boy. As a boy she goes to the ball and effectively falls in love with the princess.

What message does this give children?

You like wearing trousers and having short hair?
You are a boy.

Men are unpleasant to you because you are a girl.

So.
Be a boy. It’s much better. You get to make a car out of a pumpkin, and escape the nasty men.

You fancy other girls?
You must be a girl.

Honestly, it is that simple in the book. It’s appalling. It’s obviously written for very young children. They will see it in a very literal way. There is NO WAY I’d give this to a young girl - or boy to read.

God knows I wish we could “abolish gender” and everyone could be free to live, dress and express themselves however they want but that is a huge social change that I don’t think can be solved on Mumsnet.

When I was at at school the Conservative party introduced Section 28.

Last year the leader of the Scottish Conservatives announced that she and her wife were about to have a baby.

And you think we can't change how people think about clothes?

Hopefully that means the intern has been redeployed elsewhere.

I notice they have been a bit quiet today.

girls don't deserve good things and girls are an inferior type of people whose purpose is to serve males, the superior type of people.

And there you have the philosophy of TW, misogynists and abusive men, all together in a nutshell.

I remember being rather confused at the pantomime when the lead boy was played by a lead girl. I kept thinking ‘that princess is in for a shock...’

I was absolutely outraged by the Principal Boy being a girl! A woman marrying another woman wasn't my idea of a happy ending at all! (Even though I did want to marry my best friend at infant school )

Descriptions of the book are spot on.

Short version: the moment girl becomes empowered, she turns into a boy.

Some thought-provoking posts analysing the book and its messages.

The Twitter responses are a good illustration of the quasi-religious element of Genderism, too. You'll notice it often once you begin pointing out that every transition story is drenched in stereotypes.

If LTBT had any sense, they'd look at the responses to their twitter messages and weigh up who they're losing as supporters and who they're gaining. It's a very bad trade. If they had any foresight, they'd realise that with their new supporters they will have to be very on-message (gender identity is biological reality) from now on otherwise they'll be turned on.

I hate even reading the analysis. (Although grateful for it).

If this isn't entirely, calculating deliberate, it's a shocking demonstration of how sexism truly is engrained.

And this piece of shit

What there is however, is the ultimate fantasy of complete acceptance and perfectly passing as the opposite sex. As is evident from the inability of Jamie's brothers to recognise her dressed as a boy even when they come right up to her.

Bashing the reader over the head with how effective superficial stereotyping is. Really, dear reader, it's all about the bloody hair.

(And something that surely children will notice. It's the sort of thing that they simply won't buy.)

There is no difference between 'Gender expression' and 'Gender Identity' at all - it is simply a lie to divert your attention from the trans-activist being caught out promoting sexist stereotypes.

Exactly. Point out the stereotyping and it gets denied. Immediately and risibly. In favour of essence/soul/junk science.

That book is far worse than I had expected it to be. For the first half of the story there are only three human beings (two males and one female) and a fairy. Life for the female is doubly crap - she is not just the household drudge, cleaning, cooking, mending, but she also functions as the resident handyman. The males don't just do nothing, while she does everything, thanks to the fairy godmother they also get everything they want while she gets nothing.

At one point she asks her brothers' fairy godmother to fulfil a wish. The latter rejects this saying "people like you" don't deserve anything.

The biggest and most obvious reason to imply that Jamie belongs to a different group of people from her brothers is that she is of the opposite sex, of course.

So, the not so subtle message here is that it's shit being a girl, girls don't deserve good things and girls are an inferior type of people whose purpose is to serve males, the superior type of people.

Does she protest, does she rebel? No, she's just miserable and basically a doormat. But now it gets ridiculous.

She decides to rebel. Right, great. Except in the middle of rebelling to get a vehicle and a new look for the ball to meet the princess, she refuses to use the scissors because her brothers forbade it. So she makes a whole suit by tearing the fabric with her hands and then has the mice cut off her hair so as not to touch the scissors she's forbidden from touching.

I mean WTF! Why on earth would she not use the scissors when the entire exercise is a huge fat middle finger to her brothers anyway?

Logically incoherent, as one would expect from adherents of this ideology.

So now she looks into the mirror and one suit and one haircut later, she is magically transformed into a boy.

Now there is no mention of discomfort with her female body, so this is decidedly a merely gender-non-conforming lesbian and not a transsexual female with sex dysphoria.

So at the ball apparently no one notices that Jamie is female. Interestingly while there is a great deal of on-the-nose diversity in the ball guests pictured, this is limited to the inclusion of disabled persons and persons of ethnic and religious minorities. There are no gender-non-conforming persons present. And even Jamie merely looks like a stereotypical boy.

Nothing. I repeat, there is nothing there to suggest that sex roles and sex stereotypes are wrong.

Then follows the inevitable rose-tinted happy ending. Only instead of two happy lesbians we're faced with a stereotypical straight couple - a very girly princess and a bog standard looking boy in a suit. And because they are accepted as a straight couple who are completely gender conforming and Jamie's sex is disclosed only to the princess, there is no "gender bending" here.

What there is however, is the ultimate fantasy of complete acceptance and perfectly passing as the opposite sex. As is evident from the inability of Jamie's brothers to recognise her dressed as a boy even when they come right up to her.

And oh shock horror, now that Jamie is no longer female, the next morning, none of the drudgery was taken care of. But one has to surmise that the bad behaviour of the brothers won't have any consequences because they still have their fairy godmother. There is certainly no suggestion that these males may now be doing the cleaning, cooking and mending. So, again, there is no "gender bending".

And apparently, it's not just the suit and haircut, it's that Jamie can finally be herself. Only it literally is just the suit and haircut that apparently makes Jamie the girl into Jaime, the boy, complete with a cutesy new spelling of the name of course.

Execrable bollocks in other words that teaches girls if they are oppressed by males, you don't fight the unfairness of that, you don't campaign for your rights, you don't let them all know you are equal to them, or even better than the males in your life, as Jamie really is. No, you solve the issue of your oppression by joining the oppressor class.

This could have been a great book for baby lesbians. Instead it's yet another homophobic, regressive and - if you look at it closely - anti-feminist book.

The Twitter responses are a good illustration of the quasi-religious element of Genderism, too. You'll notice it often once you begin pointing out that every transition story is drenched in stereotypes.

You'll begin to see the phrase "Gender expression is different from Gender Identity"

Of course, the only purpose for this distinction being made is to shunt all the critiques of sexist stereotypes onto 'Gender Expression' and leave each person with their own special 'Gender Identity'.

'Gender Identity' has no specific definition. People describe it using the language of sexist stereotypes, but it's actually an inner sense of self too hard to define.

Those paying attention will realize someone is playing a shell game with them - the 'inner sense of Gender' is just a pretend-secular description of a soul, and is completely and totally meaningless without the structure of 'Gender', which is just sexist stereotypes.

There is no difference between 'Gender expression' and 'Gender Identity' at all - it is simply a lie to divert your attention from the trans-activist being caught out promoting sexist stereotypes.

Transgender Trend has a review of it www.transgendertrend.com/challenging-heteronormativity/

"Jamie likes girls. Jamie is overwhelmingly likely to grow up to be a lesbian if left alone, but this book teaches little girls like Jamie a new way to interpret their feelings: that if you like having short hair and wearing trousers and you like girls, you must be a boy. It takes diversity and difference (gender non-conforming, same-sex attracted) and turns it into conformity (gender conforming, heterosexual). This is erasure of lesbians disguised as celebrating difference. This lesson is taught to girls before puberty, when they can have little idea of what sexual orientation really means and before they have had a chance to grow up and discover their own sexuality."

This is normally the kind of thing LTBT would call out, not celebrate.

I watched that video of the book, and it just seemed to me to be the fairly straightforward story of a domestic slave who saw what a male life looked like, and what her own life looked like, and took the logical way out.

I mean, it's accurate for "trans boys" (caveat: I don't think there's any such thing as a trans boy) in that I completely understand why so many of them want to distance themselves from girlhood as fast as they can, but presenting it as a positive thing, ugh.

A book that was actually progressive would have Jamie handing the boys her broom and going off with the princess (if the princess wanted her) regardless.

The "author" of that book makes me rage, as they present themselves as working against homophobia when they are producing this utter homophobic tripe.

*At that age I would have stated that I would never, ever want kids.

As an adult however, the sense of something missing got stronger and stronger and it gradually dawned on me what my instincts were telling me.*

This is me too. Wanted to be with the boys growing up playing football and having adventures. Being a girl was so tame and safe. As I got older I could still be with the boys as a woman so didn't need to be a tomboy anymore. Having children completed me in a way that amazed me. Still no interest in anyone else's kids really.

Why wouldn't Jamie want to be a boy, she sees her brothers, who bully her, don't have to do the washing, cooking or cleaning. Of course it would be easier for Jamie to be a boy.

Strewth! It sounds absolutely hopeless.

It feels as though let us be toys have grasped only half the issue. They understand stereotypes are bad, but not why. Just that it might deprive a few kids from playing with a toy they quite like.

Not that it reinforces the hierarchy which is damaging to both boys and girls, but more for girls.

Frustrating.

it's nearly as bad as the original cinderella.
I was thinking the same thing.
This book is saying being a girl is not good, you have to cook, clean, and do the washing, things that have been seen stereotypically as a womans job.
This new, boundary breaking book is the same old gendered stereotypes, girls cook and clean, boys get to do fun stuff. Except now, you can just change into a boy! Why wouldn't Jamie want to be a boy, she sees her brothers, who bully her, don't have to do the washing, cooking or cleaning. Of course it would be easier for Jamie to be a boy.

Datun "Perhaps an intern has control of their twitter."
I'm always thinking this lately.

Do orgs not recognize the power of social media? Women's leadership passed to the young un's w/out grounding in real life.

Let Toys be Toys just went down the drain. A few days before they stood up to TRF language and we all cheered them on. Definitely feels like THAT intern got replaced. She may have dropped her filter for a sec. I'd hire that one.