Would anyone like to join in an effort to convince retailers to stop categorizing toys by gender?

[OneHandWavingFree]

Following on from this thread and similar ones, a few of us are interested in discussing ways to send a message to retailers that it is not acceptable to designate 'boys' and 'girls' toy aisles which reinforce the message that science and adventure are "boys stuff", while girls should be primarily occupied with looking 'sexy' or practicing for domestic drudgery.

The first steps might be to draft a letter and identify a few retailers to target for an email campaign. Other ideas of how to get the message across are very welcome too, though.

Would anyone like to join in?

Ooh I love a bit of activism me! Can you PM me? I'm up for that.

i .going to.have to set up a twitter acvount arent i? i waste enough time on fb without a twitter account as well.

that's the problem isn't it?
i only eat cadbury's.
i would be cutting off my nose to spite my face.
:(

it's because they're owned by kraft now.
one one hand they give us chocolate philadelphia, on the other blatant sexism.

Twitter is great!

I don't understand twitter :(

It takes a bit of time to appreciate it to be honest.

You follow people who tweet stuff you're interested in. Other people can follow you.

It means that people who have something to say but previously never had the means of broadcasting or publishing can building up larging followings of thousands of people.

I tend to get all my news delivered to me via Twitter by following certain papers or journalists.

Then you can follow celebs, friends, companies - it's a good way to try and have a dialogue with companies actually.

I was going to suggest we tweet @mumsnet next week and ask for a retweet. If they agreed, it would get the Let Toys Be Toys message in front of thousands of others - including journalists.

We could also ask for a #ff or Friday Follow which is a Twitter tradition where people suggest others follow a certain person or cause. If you get someone like Mumsnet doing an #ff for you, again you tend to pick up loads more followers.

Thanks Ashes! I'm feeling a bit challenged socia media wise at the moment! I don't really use twitter that much and don't really understand how it's going to work. In fact, I'm feeling a bit and

Are we going to increase our profile by following people that we think will be interested in our page, in the hope that they will follow us? Or do we blatantly tweet people inviting them to look at our facebook page?

Sorry are those really silly questions?! I feel like I need a twitter lesson!!

Yes one way is to seek out individuals to follow and try and get them to follow back. You have to do that one by one though.

The best way in my opinion is to ask influential people or groups who might be interested for a retweet.

Am thinking of @everydaysexism and groups like that.

Over time, maybe we can think of an angle, a hook, a statistic or something to offer as a story to tweeters and journalists.

Anything we can do to make journalists' lives easier by presenting them with a ready-made story is more likely to succeed. No need to do it straightaway. That Swedish story was very interesting to journalists because it had a very powerful image to run with. Something quite startling or surprising would be good.

And while we're talking social media, Everyday Sexism are talking about gendered toys right now on FB. It's the third post down

www.facebook.com/#!/groups/391256930892127/

Could one of the admins post a link to the LTBT page on that thread? I would hope Everyday Sexism would be fine with that.

Anyway anyone got logo designing skills?

Thanks Ashes. I've made a tentative tweet!

ashesgirl, good find :) they've definitely got a lot of common ground with this campaign.

The only people who can comment / share on their group atre group members however. I've asked to join. We can't join as "Let Toys be Toys" though as that's a page and pages can't join groups IYSWIM.

Are you a member already? Could you comment on that post and point them in the direction of our campaign maybe?

Himalaya, I have been trying to design something, but sadly I have a crappy 7 year old laptop with no memory or decent picture-editing software.

Didn't MurderofGoths say that she was a graphics whizz ?

Nothing from MNHQ yet. They must be discussing it!

I've been having a play with logo designs, though DS is refusing to go down for naps and screaming if I dare to ignore him so it's taking a little longer than usual.

Ok, MrsMushroom says this is not barking and should be ok to share on this thread...

My activism type idea also requires someone with graphics skills. It is a cross between those little "staff picks" book reviews you see on the shelf edges in Waterstones and other bookshops, and a recent thing I saw where people put stickers on London Underground with subversive messages like "it's ok to make eye contact sometimes!" in 'mind the gap' typeface.

I am thinking of shelf labels to add beside price/offer ones, in the right colourway and font for the biggest or worst offending shops, saying "hey look behind you, there's a load of realistic coloured dinosaurs!" Or short reviews/recommendations of toys written from the POV of the 'wrong' gender. Or maybe even something appealing to parents' pockets, like "the primary colours Vtech walker typically goes on ebay for 70% of the original purchase price, the pink one only gets you 50% back." A long as that is at least partly true, of course!

TenTon I love the idea, it's not to dissimilar to a suggestion that MrsDevere made a few pages back, about leaving pre-printed cards on the shelves saying that you won't be shopping there until they 'let toys be toys' and stop sorting them by gender.

Maybe we should brainstorm a bit (sorry for icky work term at least I didn't say let's blue sky it ) around the cards idea, maybe with a variety of messages, ranging from the straightforward to the catchy, from the practical (like your suggestion re: resale value) to the ideological...

Not ignoring you, Himalaya - I am useless with graphics :)

Been racking my brains to think up a good logo but can't :(

I think something straightforward for the logo might work - two cartoonish kids, smiling boy and a girl, side by side, and arm slung over each other's shoulder, boy holding doll and girl holding dinosaur?

Something like that?

Yes...a nice clean image like the ones on toilet doors type thing?

TenTon - or 'if you have a son later, he'll just love this pink one'

Which you can read whichever way you want.