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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

John Lewis removing gendered sections in kids clothing

572 replies

moutonfou · 02/09/2017 12:46

John Lewis has announced they are no longer having 'boys' and 'girls' clothing sections. Just kids clothing. Which to me sounds fair enough. I had to buy several football shirts from the boys section as a kid and always felt like they weren't 'for me' and that someone was going to notice and call me out on it.

On some of the news outlets' Facebook posts about this, there are the most OTT comments from people who seem to have interpreted this as an attempt to make all kids be 100% gender fluid, stop calling them boys and girls at all, make all boys wear dresses, etc etc.

AIBU to be frustrated that people can't see the value of just letting kids like what they like, and that it's not all some sinister agenda??

OP posts:

Thread gallery

Rufustherenegadereindeer1 · 02/09/2017 19:16

lesprit

Its a conspiracy to get us all dressing the same,,,like Mao but the EU are doing it

I think...

nokidshere · 02/09/2017 19:16

What difference will it make really? So all t shirts will be together in one space but there will still be a rack of pink, blue, white, red, green etc they will group them together somehow because that's the most practical thing to do.

I can't be arsed with it to be honest. If parents need John Lewis to tell them it's ok for their boy to wear pink and girl to wear blue that's pretty sad in itself. I go to a shop, I buy what I want, then I leave.

What's difficult?

TheAntiBoop · 02/09/2017 19:17

No kid - my dd gets laughed at for wearing 'boys' clothes (only t shirts!) - if the other kids weren't so used to seeing the separation they probably wouldn't even notice what she wears

BossaDad · 02/09/2017 19:18

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

DoNotGoSoftly · 02/09/2017 19:21

Because I studied the subject to Degree level, I base my opinion upon what I learned. Whilst you may hold a different view, instead of just implying mine is wrong, state the reasons why yours is valid.

It doesn't mean I am right. Anyone can disagree of course. Feel free.

No I don't agree with the LH/RH line. What a silly idea

TheAntiBoop · 02/09/2017 19:21

It was making me think of the seventies - would they be cord?

VestalVirgin · 02/09/2017 19:22

I was just in the pet shop where I overheard a woman telling a man that he was an idiot for trying to buy a blue water bowl because the cat was a girl!

Oh my.

Well, in the brave new world we live in, they'd have to offer the cat a pink and a blue water bowl, and assign it a gender based on which bowl it prefers.

Chestervase1 · 02/09/2017 19:25

Donotgosoftly well I quite agree. I like buying baby and children's clothes. I was in JL recently looking for a present for a newborn baby boy and one for his big sister. I thought it all looked a bit boring and ugly to be honest. Not to mention expensive for clothes that were not very well designed. For what it's worth I hate tractors, trains, dinosaurs, fairies unicorns on clothing as I think it's naff and if I had wanted that I would have gone to Disney or similar.

conserveisposhforjam · 02/09/2017 19:26

What's difficult?

My 7 yo dd doesn't want to wear boys clothes (because, y'know, she isn't one). If the clothes aren't labelled boys and girls and aren't in boys and girls sections she'll be free to wear what she wants - and to soar, like a great feminist eagle, above the gender expectations which shackle us all.

Or something like that. I may be hoping for too much from this. But thanks anyway JL 😙

CasperGutman · 02/09/2017 19:26

*Children's clothes are separated into boys and girls at present, which is by sex.

The fact that gender conditioning dictates how that translates in terms of colour and style of clothing for each sex doesn't mean the clothes are separated by gender.*

No, you've got it backwards. The clothes are currently separated by gender, not sex. The point of gender is that the psychosocial constructs are given the same labels as the sexes (in this case "boy" and "girl".

In biological/sex terms there's nothing about a pink frill that makes it unsuitable for a person with a penis. That's entirely to do with the made up "girl" gender, and nothing to do with the sex that society says it "matches".

Chestervase1 · 02/09/2017 19:27

Funny how the William and Kate are dressing their two very traditionally though isn't it. Prince George looks like a little boy and Princess Charlotte a little girl. Not going gender neutral are they?

VestalVirgin · 02/09/2017 19:27

The European Union wants to treat us all the same too

Why do you worry about that? Presumably you are a Brit and will be safe from that, come Brexit.

The EU has been accused of introducing standards for how crooked cucumbers are allowed to be, but I haven't heard anything about standard clothes.

What colour is it going to be?

I for one hope we're going to be conquered by the Radch and everyone will wear grey suits and use female pronouns. And have to cover up their sinful hands.

DoNotGoSoftly · 02/09/2017 19:33

I don't worry about it at all.

I was making an observation that the EU is about treating all members the same. Not equally, but politically, judicially, economically the same by devolving powers to itself.

The EU sprang from an idea - and that was my point all along. It is the slow percolation of ideas that changes societies. I think is was Keynes who wrote that and I think it is right. Even after revolutions hierarchies still form because they are natural.

notanotherNC · 02/09/2017 19:35

Who cares what Kate and Will do?

Original poster

moutonfou · 02/09/2017 19:37

I heard that William and Kate dress their kids like that for public occasions so that when they're going round day to day with their nanny in a dinosaur tshirt they won't be as recognisable.

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Chestervase1 · 02/09/2017 19:41

I can't see them in dinosaur t shirts but maybe Boden.

JKR123 · 02/09/2017 19:44

All this seems to be about blurring the lines between male and female. It appears to being pushed from all angles. I worry about my children becoming confused about their gender. To my mind boys are boys and girls are girls. Why not celebrate that? I don't mean that all girls should be made to wear pink frilly dresses but I plan to dress my daughter in feminine clothes until such time she ever tells me that she would rather wear a dinosaur t shirt. It's no wonder kids are telling their parents they want a sex change before they have even reached puberty. Like someone else has said pretty soon we won't even be allowed to use the words "boy" "girl" "he" or "she" and I bet male and female toilets won't exist.

JigglyTuff · 02/09/2017 19:45

Why would they be confused?

ArcheryAnnie · 02/09/2017 19:46

I do wonder if all these people going gender neutral with their kids' clothes wear gender neutral themselves - like never wearing feminine underwear or a pretty summery dress

I have clothes bought from the womenswear aisles and clothes bought from the menswear aisles. I like both. If there was just one "peopleswear" aisle I would have bought the same things. (Possibly the only change would be that the things now bought in the womenswear aisle would be more likely to be made with pockets.)

Gender neutral just means, in this case, that all clothes on sale are presented as available to anyone that fancies them, not that entire classes of clothes will disappear.

WinterIsComingKnitFaster · 02/09/2017 19:47

No, it's about children being able to wear whatever they fancy without being told "ooh, that's a boys'/girls' thing, you must be a boy/girl!" by simplistic children or adults.

TheAntiBoop · 02/09/2017 19:47

It worries me more that a girl who wears 'boys' clothes is told it's because she wants to be a boy. If we didn't gender the clothes it would be irrelevant.

Chestervase1 · 02/09/2017 19:47

In most hospitals in London toilets are unisex. They are in the new Cancer centre at Guy's hospital. I think it's appalling.

Chestervase1 · 02/09/2017 19:48

Will knickers and boxer shorts disappear. What will we all wear.

ArcheryAnnie · 02/09/2017 19:51

It's no wonder kids are telling their parents they want a sex change before they have even reached puberty.

You've got it backwards, JKR. One of the biggest reasons parents cite as the reason their boychild is "really a girl" or their girl "must be a boy" is that, eg, the boy liked pink boots, or the girl liked trucks. (It's nonsense, of course.)

If pink boots and trucks were available to all children, regardless of their biological sex, I'd hope that we'd get a bit less of this nonsense, as any kid putting on a pair of pink boots would then not lead everyone to shout they MUST be a girl, and children themselves would hopefully be under less pressure to consider themselves trans just because of the things they like.

Original poster

moutonfou · 02/09/2017 19:51

What's the point of segregated toilets anyway? It's not like you do your business out in the open (well men do I guess). I've seen great unisex toilets where each cubicle has the sink and hand dryer inside the cubicle itself. You go in there - whoever you are - and do your business privately.

OP posts:

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