California legislates for neutral displays of toys

[ErrolTheDragon]

Large stores in California must now stop arranging toys according to gender stereotypes. Let toys be toys! (now where did I hear that first?)

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/toys-in-californias-department-stores-to-be-gender-neutral-09gfc9xwd?shareToken=54a5309279b74196cc228426037eed6e

Dang! How will the trans folks perform opposite gender roles when there aren’t any?!
This is a great move, to be encouraged. A girl who likes Lego and train sets is a girl, not a transboy.

This is very good news !

I am supportive of stores not organizing in such an overly sex-oriented way, but there is such a thing as over-legislation.

@LobsterNapkin

I am supportive of stores not organizing in such an overly sex-oriented way, but there is such a thing as over-legislation.

There can be. But in this case, it doesn't exactly seem like an onerous burden to not separate toys according to arbitrary labels.

As someone who once sold toys for a living I will say that customers want to be able to find the products they want easily and retailers want to try and get them to buy more than the customer planned.
So products that are similar should be displayed near each other. Dolls should be near other dolls and relevant accessories, cars and vehicles near other cars and vehicles and their relevant accessories etc.
All toys could be boxed in plan grey boxes but a shop will always sort and display them in these logical groups.
Most toy shops in the UK got rid of aisle signs that say 'girls' or 'boys' years ago.
Errol how would you like to see toys separated in a toy shop? As a customer don't you find it easier to have similar toys near each other on the shelves?

Errol how would you like to see toys separated in a toy shop? As a customer don't you find it easier to have similar toys near each other on the shelves?

By function. Certain sorts of toy usually are anyway. All the cuddly toys together, for instance. It's the 'pink aisle' phenomenon which is the problem, and if that's largely gone from U.K. shops now then good - much better not to have to legislate for something so obvious. I have to assume that wasn't already the case in California.

When DD was small the 'pink aisle' and 'blue aisle' were very much a thing - that was before the Let Toys be Toys campaign started.

There can be. But in this case, it doesn't exactly seem like an onerous burden to not separate toys according to arbitrary labels.

No, but it i something that's appropriate to legislate, with all that entails?

Are you going to put the time of the police and courts toward enforcing it?

Do toy shop owners not have the right to display their wares in a way some people think of as mildly sexist?

When you get into passing laws about this stuff they can multiply very quickly and it largely becomes meaningless virtue signalling, because no one is going out checking on it.

I mourn the passing of the Early Learning Centre shops. Well made toys, completely gender free, and with great educational value. I got all my DDs toys from there back in the early nineties.

Babdoc Early Learning Products are sold within The Entertainer toy shops. A lot of what they sell is the same as ELC sold back in the 90s. Still good quality and still educational.

They even have a girl playing with a garage and a boy playing with dolls....how revolutionary (being sarcastic... ELC have advertised like that for years).

Although the law started out being about not having gendered sections it did not end up that way. It does NOT ban boys and girls sections. It just requires large retailers with over 500 employees to have a “gender neutral” section, to be labeled at the shop’s discretion, that has a reasonable selection of toys and some other children’s items from both sides of the aisle. It does not apply to their websites.

Well, that's a shite plan.

Having seen the debate over Legos announcement this week (to make their ranges gender neutral), I have concluded that most people believe it means having no pink whatsoever as its off putting for boys. Instead of just teaching boys they can play witho something that is pink, or purple, or turquoise...

NumberTheory but what exactly makes a toy 'gender neutral'? All toys are already. The major toy manufacturers don't put "for girls" or "for boys" on the packaging. They may have done once years ago but it never happens now. Even if a product is in a pink box it doesn't have the words "this is for girls" printed on it.
(The only exception I seem to notice is on cheap and nasty toys sold on iffy market stalls which often have badly translated Chinese on the box and are borderline in passing and health and safety rules).
As for Lego. As you can tell from my user name I am a Lego fan. Despite their announcement they have been a bit vague about what it will mean. Yes over the years they have produced themes that they specifically aimed at getting girls into Lego - Belville, Scala, Clikits, Friends and the wonderfully named 'Homemaker' range (that was the 70s though) but the clever thing about Lego is it is all compatible and always has been. You can use Clikits or Friends pieces with Technic and Bionicle. It all fits together and always has done. It will be interesting to see what Lego are actually going to do that they haven't been doing already.

I couldn't use the share link above but here's a non-paywall link to the same story on the bbc www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58879461.amp

I can't speak for their physical store layouts because I have never been to America but both Walmart and Target clearly don't sort toys by 'girls' or 'boys' on their website. Toys are sorted by type. This California Legislation is just weird. I don't see the point. If parents are still stuck in the mindset that their daughters can't have toy cars and sons have dolls then displaying cars and dolls next to each other in the same aisle really isn't going to make a difference.

@Babdoc

I mourn the passing of the Early Learning Centre shops. Well made toys, completely gender free, and with great educational value. I got all my DDs toys from there back in the early nineties.

They didn't entirely stay that way, unfortunately. I can't remember exactly when LTBT was started, somewhere in the early 2000s, but by that time ELC had a few egregiously bad items. A normal globe with the expected contrasting colours and a pink globe - the colour did matter for that item as it was hard to see what was what. Gendered doctors and nurses outfits, that sort of crap.

Well, it sounds like the California bill is of little use nor ornament, but perhaps will at least make a few more people think about what they're doing.

Errol ELC products are still good. Yes they might have two versions of something - often the pink version and the blue version - but it never says "for girls" on one, "for boys" on the other. If that's the way parents are seeing it then that's down to the the parents. Not the retailers or the toy manufacturers.
I happen to like the colour pink. When I bought my daughter an ELC pretend phone for her 1st birthday (12 years ago) I chose the pink one because I like pink and the 'other' version was green. I simply thought the pink was nicer. Not because she is a girl.
People seem to be thinking colour of toy = gender specific.

@Legoisthebest

NumberTheory but what exactly makes a toy 'gender neutral'? All toys are already. The major toy manufacturers don't put "for girls" or "for boys" on the packaging. They may have done once years ago but it never happens now. Even if a product is in a pink box it doesn't have the words "this is for girls" printed on it. (The only exception I seem to notice is on cheap and nasty toys sold on iffy market stalls which often have badly translated Chinese on the box and are borderline in passing and health and safety rules). As for Lego. As you can tell from my user name I am a Lego fan. Despite their announcement they have been a bit vague about what it will mean. Yes over the years they have produced themes that they specifically aimed at getting girls into Lego - Belville, Scala, Clikits, Friends and the wonderfully named 'Homemaker' range (that was the 70s though) but the clever thing about Lego is it is all compatible and always has been. You can use Clikits or Friends pieces with Technic and Bionicle. It all fits together and always has done. It will be interesting to see what Lego are actually going to do that they haven't been doing already.

I haven’t read the legislation, but from newspaper reports here it isn’t about the toys being “gender neutral” or not. It’s about the stores having a section that is not labeled as “for boys” or “for girls” that has a selection of (possibly quite gendered in the sense of coded pink or blue with appropriate sexed child picture red on the packaging) toys in it.

It seems to be a bit nothing really. Any department store that wants to go that route will anyway. Quite a few huge ones, like Target, have already done so. A store that doesn’t want to will put up a tiny section, maybe label it something innocuous,, but keep the majority of their store just as it was before.

Number well having never been to California I can't really comment on their toy shops but as I said up thread most major toy manufacturers and big retailers (UK and American) haven't labelled the aisles "boy" or "girl" for years now.
Well if California politics have time to come up with this (pointless) legislation well then that their choice - but in the scheme of things to worry about I think Average California Family this is probably way down their list.
It is - as you said - "a bit nothing".