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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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

208 replies

raltheraffe · 21/11/2014 11:33

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.

OP posts:
LittleBearPad · 21/11/2014 20:51

Yabu.

Why should books say 'for boys' / 'for girls'. It adds nothing except making it clear to children that there are certain stories they should enjoy / not enjoy purely because they're a boy/girl. Deleting two words from the front of the books is not an extreme thing to do.

Finally anyone who thinks the toys/games we play with as children don't impact our future selves isn't thinking very hard.

Devora · 21/11/2014 20:53

And as for this being a first world problem:

  1. Is there much on MN that isn't?
  1. All around the world, women are fighting to improve their lives and that of their children. Should a poor woman in Delhi count herself lucky she isn't in the DRC, and shut up about her own problems? Should we not fight for equal pay, because we're lucky to be getting paid at all? Is only the single most oppressed woman on the planet allowed to complain about her lot? Or should we all fight for the issues that affect us, as well as offering solidarity and support for women elsewhere, who undoubtedly have it tougher than us?
  1. It's easy to dismiss this as unimportant if your child isn't suffering because they have brown skin, or are a 'sissy boy', or have same-sex parents, or are teased in the playground - as my dd was a couple of weeks back - because she said she wanted to be a scientist and older girls decided this was weird and not a 'proper' job.

Count yourself lucky if your children fit in to all the social expectations and stereotypes. Mine don't, and I do get the red mist at being told this is self-indulgent first world stuff.

tobysmum77 · 21/11/2014 21:03

yabu op.

I always read on mn about how girls play with girls etc 'once they start school'. dd's best friend is a boy and she also wants to be a scientist. She's not weird and non conformist, sorry she's totally normal and 5. I would be Hmm about anyone telling her a 'proper' job is being a pop star or something considered 'girly'

LifeHuh · 21/11/2014 21:07

www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/07/coverflip-maureen-johnson_n_3231935.html - for article about gender specific adult book covers.Interesting - fun as well,if you like that sort of thing.

The problem with books and toys that are 'biased towards one gender' is that what they are biased towards is a narrow stereotype of what each gender is and prefers.
This restricts choice,and doesn't even make sense if you assume gender stereotypes are accurate - if boys like boys toys and blue and girls like girls toys and pink there is no need to label toys etc by gender as each gender will select appropriate pink/blue/girl/boy toys anyway.If not,then if you label by gender you are restricting choice.
In fact it only makes sense to me if you believe that reinforcing gender stereotypes is extremely important,and that individuals will choose books and toys outside the stereotypes unless they are clearly labelled as for boys,or for girls.And that that would be a bad thing.
Possibly overthinking a bit...

alicemalice · 21/11/2014 21:13

Read what this 9 year old boy doesn't like about the stereotypes of being a boy. Made me really sad!

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/not-suppost-to-cry-9yearold-lists-the-worst-things-about-being-a-boy-9874978.html

raltheraffe · 21/11/2014 21:19

My issue with this is I grew up with boys books, boys toys etc because those are the ones I was more interested in. I could not give a stuff when I was a child that these items were marketed at boys and I don't now.
Interestingly the re-brand only affects 6 titles, a tiny fraction of the books that they publish, so I suspect this is a commercial decision to appease whoever started the campaign.

OP posts:
Rosa · 21/11/2014 21:20

30 years ago if i remember correctly the Sindy doll was for girls and Action man was for boys. Tomboys were girls who wanted to play with action man .
My girls adore (d) princesses yet both loved Thomas . One liked dolls the other prefered the train set. One asks for pink Kinder eggs the other wants the white ones. Both have a choice of books from the famous 5 , to barbie, to horrible henry....the choices are out there its up to you to give it to them. let them decide .

LittleBearPad · 21/11/2014 22:30

But gender splits have become more entrenched since most of us were young.

Retailers have figured out that by making a girls and boys version of each toy they are likely to get parents to spend more. Have the pink version for your DD1 and when DS rocks up someone will buy him the primary coloured one. Retailer rubs hands in joy at extra unnecessary spending.

And it's entirely possible that it was only six books that specifically said 'for girls', 'for boys'. It was still six too many.

duplodon · 21/11/2014 23:31

Yes this pisses me off no end. My five year old HANKERS after princess teasets and Sophia the First but feels he 'shouldn't' since starting school. He is forever asking me to buy these toys for ME because they'd be good for ME as I'm a GIRL. There is so much wrong about that. .. that he feels his preferences are not okay, that girl stuff is lesser, that he is negotiating it this way at FIVE. He doesn't get this stuff from me or his dad... this is all a foundation for one day believing housework is for ladies and men must have status and career to count as anything in the world. All potentially ideas that increase rather than reduce psychological suffering in the world. Nope, not buying it that it's a frivolous, harmless message.

Messygirl · 22/11/2014 07:27

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

JeanneDeMontbaston · 22/11/2014 12:58

I'm really curious. I've seen a few threads lately where someone claims that, on MN, posters are dashing to 'applaud' those parents whose little boys like pink.

Now, admittedly I don't quite follow the logic here (oh no! Someone said something nice about someone else's parenting! Shock), but I don't think I have ever actually seen this.

I've seen people say reassuring stuff in response to questions about whether it's ok for a little boy to like pink.

I've not seen anyone dash up to pin a medal on the MNer whose son performs the fewest gender stereotyped activities, just for the sheer hell of it.

Anyone else?

LurcioAgain · 22/11/2014 13:11

I'm still waiting a decent answer on this thread on why removing the words "For Girls/Boys" could possibly be a bad thing? No-one's going to forcibly read your DS a book about ballet if that's not his thing, or make your DD play with diggers if that's not her thing. It just might make life a little bit easier for boys who do want stories about ballet dancers (my DS aged about 3.5) or girls who want to read spy stories (me aged any time from about 7 to well... 40-mummflly mummfle). Seriously, what do either individual children, individual parents or society as a whole gain from labels like "for boys/girls" and what would they lose if those labels disappeared?

grocklebox · 22/11/2014 13:40

Another thread full of people quite unable to grasp the point if it poked them in the eye.

These kinds of responses are exactly why we need campaigns like this, to educate our children better than their parents.

VashtaNerada · 22/11/2014 13:44

Agree Jeanne there's always this claim that we love boys in Princess dresses but hate girls in them, when the reality is that the vast majority of parents just want children to be themselves and make genuinely free choices away from the overwhelmingly gendered messages in children's marketing. Both my DC (one girl one boy) play with dolls, cars, robots, toy kitchen etc and I suspect that goes for most families.

RhinestoneCowgirl · 22/11/2014 13:46

This stuff does matter.

My 5yr old DD was in tears because other children in her class were saying that her Spiderman PE bag was just for boys. A bag that she was completely happy with beforehand.

Sabrinnnnnnnna · 22/11/2014 13:53

Yes, it does matter.

fuzzpig · 22/11/2014 16:48

Of course it matters. I think it's an excellent campaign.

I was always called a tomboy because of the stuff I was interested in. That label made me struggle to identify with being a girl and woman. I think if a book you love is labeled for the opposite gender, it might make you feel like you were 'wrong'.

raltheraffe · 22/11/2014 18:16

grocklebox, please do not imply I am not well educated because I am.

Disagreeing with someone does not suddenly invalidate their education.

OP posts:
Messygirl · 22/11/2014 18:41

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

raltheraffe · 22/11/2014 19:05

I would do exactly what Ladybird have done. Pick one or two titles to appease whoever campaigned for this and also generate some free publicity. A smart commercial decision, generating national newspaper coverage. Does not mean I agree with this. Business is not about personal opinions it is about money and the best free advertising anyone can get is newspaper coverage.
As someone who IS educated in biological sciences, especially neuroscience, it is a fact, no matter how distasteful (to certain people) that boys and girls are genetically and biologically different. Does not mean one is inferior to the other, merely there is a scientifically proven difference.

OP posts:
Sabrinnnnnnnna · 22/11/2014 19:06

I'd like to know what harm it does to remove the 'for boys' or 'for girls' label. They are just 'for children'.

TarkaTheOtter · 22/11/2014 19:15

OP if you read their statement ladybird our committed to not labelling any books as for boys or for girls anymore.

TheLovelyBoots · 22/11/2014 19:20

As someone who IS educated in biological sciences, especially neuroscience, it is a fact, no matter how distasteful (to certain people) that boys and girls are genetically and biologically different.

As they ever have been. Gender specific toys and books, however, are a modern invention (even clothes, really, to a lesser extent). Were we really getting it so wrong for all those years?

LurcioAgain · 22/11/2014 19:21

Okay Ralf, let's talk neuroscience. From what I understand (admittedly I am a theoretical physicist rather than a biologist, so this is from reading people like Cordelia Fine and Lise Elliot, not from reading the original research papers - I don't have a subscription to pub med sci), where there are measurable differences in population means between men and women (a) it still doesn't answer the nature versus nurture question because the brain is incredibly plastic in the first five years of development, and there are numerous psychological studies showing that adults treat even very small babies differently depending on what they believe to be the baby's sex (in these experiments the colour of the baby grow is deliberately chosen not to give the adult any reliable indication of the child's sex); and (b) even where there are differences in the means, the d values for the populations are incredibly small.

What the small d values (difference in means divided by square root of product of standard deviations) indicate is that, for instance if you have a small difference between the average performance on a maths test at age 8, say, you might well still have 45% of girls out performing the average boy. The two distributions overlap more than they differ. Now think about the sciences that depend on doing maths - physics and engineering (and biology and neuroscience for that matter - you need to understand stats well enough to understand the difference between population statistics and sample statistics for a start, something that a lot of pop science article writers clearly don't). Do you want a publisher saying "I know, let's publish 'The big bumper book of science for boys'?" Because I don't!

Going back to the question I and others have asked: who will be harmed if those labels are taken away? I can tell you who does get harmed by the presence of those labels: women like me and Fuzzpig who go through our whole childhood, adolescence and adult years being told by a substantial proportion of adults who should damn well know better that we can't be proper girls/women because we like the wrong things. And equally (in fact, probably for once more seriously) boys/men who like the wrong things. Because our society is much more forgiving of non-gender-conforming women than it is of non-gender-conforming men (pace usual experiences whereby you have to struggle every fucking inch of the way to do something society doesn't approve of you doing, like mechanical engineering).

There are publishers out there doing excellent work. I've just persuaded a friend of mine to get into climbing (and by extension her DS, who is the same age as mine). She got a book out of the library with probably equal numbers of women and men climbers, including an Indonesian woman speed climbing champion who climbs in a hijab.

Itsfab · 22/11/2014 19:22

Bollocks.

If my son wants to read a book entitled Stories for Girls I will buy it for him. Shock horror. Smiths haven't yet employed security guards to stop you buying pink stuff for blue children Hmm.

Something labelled for boys doesn't mean you will break the law if you buy it for a girl Hmm.

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