To be disappointed with Mumsnet for campaign for gender neutral books.

[raltheraffe]

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2843801/Rapunzel-definitely-not-just-girls-says-publisher-announces-plans-make-children-s-books-gender-neutral.html

Apparently this all started with a MN campaign. What is so bad about books and toys for that matter that are biased towards one gender? I do not understand it at all.

I am donning my hard hat for this one, since it was people on here who came up with this daft campaign.

I saw it mentioned on this thread that you could just buy a boy's dinosaur T-shirt for a girl that likes dinosaurs, surely you should be buying a dinosaur T-shirt for a child that likes dinosaurs!

That's the point, it's a book for a child, not a boy's book or a girl's book. (Also when has there ever been a pink or even pastel dinosaur T-shirt for a CHILD to choose).

Eustacia it's a nasty combination of misogyny and homophobia

As any child under the age of 5 will tell you

A lot of adult fiction is quite clearly marketed specifically to women or men.

I haven't really noticed the adverting to just men - though I suppose some sci-fi covers with scantily clad women in provocative pose's which seem to have nothing to do with the story could qualify I suppose. I don't think I've bought them so such covers may have put me off buying but been given copies or they've in house. I've more than once thought wtf is the cover on about.

The pink/purple covers for women's book I think must have put me off as well. I didn't read much chit/lit or romance stuff pre kindle.

The kindle I have is old and none colour so the book covers aren't really visible - it's more the verbal synopsis and the reviews that sell the books to me.

I may be unusual - I love sci-fi - and will read pretty much anything - and I buy a whole range of genres on my kindle but thinking about it not so much in shops - perhaps I am being influenced/limited in my choices by publishing PR. Though I've never encountered an adult telling me a specific type of book isn't for me as a woman- though my DC have based solely on gender.

YY nidled children shouldn't have to go against the norm for these things. Humans are social animals and conforming to norms is powerful expecially with young people. For each 7yo girl who will think I don't care I'll wear a "boys" t-shirt there will be 10 who just won't. And for a 7yo boy to wear a "girls" t-shirt - it just doesn't happen.

Narrow gender roles are limiting and damaging and there's no two ways about it.

The thing is, as an adult, you're usually better equipped to deal with the fact that you like things that are marketed at the other. I had a long chat with two of my (male) colleagues this morning about Marvel and DC comics and the films and computer games that are coming out of them.

Another colleague (female) thought it was hilarious, and said she'd never seen me as nerdy and laddish before.

I don't give a rat's arse how she sees me. I like comics. I'm happy liking comics.

Contrast that to children in KS1 being told that the things that they like are not acceptable - then you get upset and anxiety and confusion. When you back this up with this strange set of rules that dictate who should buy what things; then I think you've got the making of a big problem.

There is no problem with a girl liking princess stuff. There's a big problem when a child, boy or girl, is told that they should not like princess stuff.

There is a bit of praise for boys wearing pink or liking princesses on MN, more likely because it's turning a marketing ploy on its ear than an endorsement of the princess enterprise.

I'm pretty disturbed by the obvious attempt to target either boys or girls with a book cover. We have a pretty large library library of children's books, compliments of Amazon's library liquidations (another sad story) - more than half of them have old-school library slips in the back, dated to the 80's. They bear absolutely no resemblance to modern book store versions -

Consider Ramona. I've taken a picture of my kids' Ramona collection, and borrowed Amazon's current image. The difference is stark.

Blimey lovelyboots that really is quite shocking when you see it like that.

And while maybe in the 80s boys wouldn't have read stories with girls as the main character much anyway, at least the covers didn't scream "this is for girls and not just girls but ultrafeminine girls at that".

I suppose that's why as a not super-feminine woman I look at the things that are "for girls" - and even if they don't have it written on them it's pretty bleeding obvious" - and it's not even a range of "female" or even "feminine" the majority is really really ultra-feminine.

So it's like even for a girl the choice is restricted down to being a certain type of girl.

I don't have boys but I imagine similar applies - people on MN talk about how much boys stuff is around big muscles and saving people and violence.

My son saw Frozen (once) about 4 months ago and he quite liked it and wanted to see it again and wanted to put the DVD on his Christmas list.

He started school in September. He now says he "Hates" Frozen and that it is "for girls".

:(

My DS used to like One Direction. Channel 4 showed a trailer with little boys saying One Direction were for girls. He instantly stopped liking them.

Gender stereotyping matters. It affects girls and boys choices and it is the cumulative effect of a million little pieces of information saying Boys Like This and Girls Like This. It has real outcomes and impact on education, life choices, career and earning.

Lovely boots. Wow. That's quite shocking. I wonder if other MNers have old versions of books?

A lot of adult fiction is quite clearly marketed specifically to women or men.

I think it possibly depends on which "brow" it is? I don't think high-brow modern literature has a target audience. Low-brow, yes.

It is strange, isn't it? I should try to round up the Judy Blume ones - that would be interesting, because certainly that's been deemed "Girls' Fiction" by the Marketing Department.

Yabvu, for starters it's not a mnet campaign, lettoysbetoys is a grass roots campaign that started when some posters on mnet started talking about the genderfication of the toy market and the damage these stereotypes do.

It's a grass roots campaign run by volunteers who have done a lot, they are in Fb and twitter and it is not affiliated with mnet in any way.

The gender stereotyping of toys matters, toys are toys, for everyone regardless of gender and children DO pick up on the marketing and stereotypes.

Lettoysbetoys want all children to be able to have a choice without those stereotypes being forced on them.

It's about creating choice not limiting it!

I think it possibly depends on which "brow" it is? I don't think high-brow modern literature has a target audience. Low-brow, yes.

I'm in marketing, used to work in publishing, and yes, there definitely is gendered target audiences for upmarket literary fiction. It's just less obvious and, as mentioned, most men don't really read fiction anyway.

OP's not returned.

I'm really interested in hearing her/his reasoning for being so pro-gendered toys & books.

It seems trivial but it's really not. Boys or girls get thousands of messages about what's for them.

By the time they reach secondary, ideas are so engrained it's really hard to challenge them and it affects career choices,

It's interesting that there are quite a few people determined not to challenge or even to defend the gender stereotyping of toys. Who insist that it's not an issue - because they apparently don't care about it, in their eyes it doesn't exist or isn't important (although they are interested enough to post).

Doesn't that rather prove the point? It's so ingrained that some people don't even realise it exists, or are determined that it should continue. They can't all be manufacturers of globes that come in pink or blue.

Fucking hell that globe! So depressing that it comes from ELC as well.

I have no problem with pink. I wear quite a lot of it. I grew up in a time when everything was orange and brown, though and toy shops weren't divided into pink and everything else versions of the same toy. I had the choice.

DS1 chose some sparkly pink wellies as a toddler. He thought all the others were dull (and didn't give the ones with princesses on a second look). He even liked playing with them after he'd outgrown them because they were nice to look at. As soon as he started nursery, he disowned them because that's when he learnt that pink is a girl's colour.

The most ridiculous obstacle we hit was when we were running up to a Christmas and I wanted some inspiration from him to stock up on art and craft stuff, as most of his was running out or worn out. So we picked up the Argos catalogue. We eventually found what we were looking for - in the "girls' toys" section. That was it, he refused to even look at it. We ended up having to put that Christmas idea on hold because he'd been told, quite plainly, by a retailer, that the new coloured pencils and craft kits he would have enjoyed using weren't actually for him because he's a boy.

The majority of globes don't come in pink or blue. In fact I've never seen such things.

I don't see how a pink globe is wrong. If a child likes pink then he/she has a pink globe option.

Middleton, Early Learning Centre were sellling pink globes in the 'for girls' section and blue globes in the 'for boys' section. Having those sections in the first place was bad enough... It is thanks to Let Toys Be Toys that this has changed.

Oh I noticed something good the other day... what was it.

#Oh yes - in my local Clarks they have removed the sharp deliniation between girls and boys stuff, and the awful posters about how boys shoes are "tested to desctruction" for active kids while the girls ones are super stylish or whatever it was that used to make me nash my teeth.

So they have got the message a bit.

That's encouraging, seven.

Middleton, what puzzles me is when people who think there isn't a problem insist that their own personal experience must be universal. Just because you haven't seen globes for children divided into pink and blue doesn't mean those things don't exist! (And a pink globe is very odd, those pictures from space do NOT show a pink planet. Nor do they show an entirely blue planet, just blue oceans.)