'Let Toys Be Toys' Organising Thread - Part 2

[OneHandWavingFree]

"Let Toys Be Toys - For Girls, and Boys" is a campaign started by a group of Mumsnetters, to convince retailers to categorise their toys by theme or function, rather than gender.

We're inviting everyone to 'like' us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter (@LetToysBeToys) and join us right here for discussion and collaborative decision-making about the next steps of our campaign.

Himalaya has been hard at work compiling the information gathered by our fantastic LTBT Mystery Shoppers, and we will be agreeing right here how the surveys will be ranked, which retailers we will be targetting with our message, and how we will go about it.

If you think that girls and boys should feel free to play with whatever toys that interest them most, and that they shouldn't walk into a toy store and feel pressurised to conform into archaic gender roles and stifling stereotypes, please join in the discussion!

[PassiveAgressiveQueen]

Hope i liked the correct facebook page, one had 10,000 followers one had 108

[PassiveAgressiveQueen]

Joining, i see my daughter rejecting stuff she would love, once she realises it is boys toys.

[cosypenguins]

I hope that this subject has not been forgotten.
Genderization is also bad for our boys.

I still see T shirts on boys with logos saying 'little rascal' or something similar and T shirts on girls with the 'princess' logo. Also people who speak of their daughter being a 'princess', or car stickers stating 'Princess on board' or 'little rascal on board' do make me despair. What on earth is going on? This stuff must engender / guide to some extent, the responses of others to the innocent child who is being made this garb. If it is the case that the parents who buy this stuff cannot read or are visually impaired, I could forgive them to a degree, but some of them drive cars. Very worrying.

[foodfiend]

Hi there. A bit late to the party, but really great to see other people getting angry about this. I did a talk about toys and gender stereotyping at a local event last night here in Cardiff. (It's called Ignite - people just stand up and talk about whatever they feel passionate about.)

There will, scarily, be video at some point, but here are my slides if anyone's interested: dl.dropbox.com/u/11944190/JessDay_Ignite10_copy.ppt

It includes links to the petition and @LetToysBeToys, and I've used photos from the FB page, so many thanks.

(Health warning - 16MB download)

[NCTPutneyFulhamEd]

Here, finally, is the article I wrote about toys and gender: Toying with gender. Feel free to share!

I'll post it on the Facebook wall

[DizziDoll]

Link again: NotPinkOrBlue

[DizziDoll]

just came across this site and thought that giving these kind of online boutiques some airtime could be good: www.notpinkorblue.co.uk/

[aufaniae]

We've got 999 Likes on the Let Toys Be Toys Facebook page, yay!

Does anyone fancy being the 1000th?

[WomanlyWoman]

@NCTPF Ed Thanks, that's great. Let us know if you need any more info.

[NCTPutneyFulhamEd]

Happy new year!

I've set up a new user account for this post, so I don't inadvertently out myself.

I'm the editor for the NCT newsletter for Putney and Fulham, and am planning to write an article about the campaign for our local newsletter (we have approx 800 members, so good coverage, plus I can send it to other editors across the country for inclusion, if they wish). I'd love to hear from anyone in Putney/Fulham who's interested in the campaign.

Thanks for all the info on this thread - it's really helpful for the article.

[ZeroToleranceLiz]

Hi there and happy new year from Scotland!

Loved the campaign in the run up to Christmas this year, really good timing for getting the message out.

Just to say I think international women's day is a really good idea as a date to pick for getting media coverage and boosting the campaign. At Zero Tolerance we were planning on highlighting gender inequality in early years as part of our international women's day work, and it would be great to team up and support you any way we can north of the border! The idea of relating toys to gender inequality in the workplace, and gender inequality more generally is a really good one - and perhaps a bit clearer a message than the changing attitudes idea?

Would particularly be interested to meet/have contact with people interested in this issue who are based in Scotland. You can contact me on here or my email address is liz(dot)ely(at)zerotolerance(dot)org(dot)uk

(didn't want to write it down with the ...s to avoid spam but you get what I mean)

[aufaniae]

Some dates which could make LTBT a topical news item for the media:

8 March: International Women's Day

• lots of angles for a story here, perhaps relating inequality of toys to inequality in the workplace? Or alternatively to do with changing attitudes of what it means to be a woman and the stark difference between modern society (making progress, generally) and the stereotypes shops are offering to children (straight back to the 50s!)
  

10 March: Mothering Sunday

15-24 March: National Science and Engineering Week

• focusing on the lack of women in STEM jobs and bring people's attention to shops putting all science toys in the boys section.)
  

2 April: International Children's Book Day
1 June: International Children's Day
July ? : Royal baby

Can you think of any more?

[aufaniae]

Happy New Year everyone!

I'm after some help - I need your brains!

We've had such an amazing start to the campaign. Now the dust of Christmas has settled - what next?!

We're having a think about campaign ideas, and also about future events which could make LTBT a topical news item.

I'm going to compile a list of campaign ideas for LTBT to draw on, so if any of you have any suggestions please let me know! Also suggestions for events which might make us media friendly would be great (like the royal baby for example).

We'll use the list to chose some ideas to focus on in the next few months, and save all of them in a bank of ideas for the future.

Campaign ideas already include:

• Survey
  
• Letter / email writing campaign (with official / template letters)
  
• Targeting specific stores (more on this soon)
  
• Petition

[nickelbabylyinginamanger]

i love the fb idea of having an official letter.

is someone onto that?
I am no good at writing anymore. DD has frazzled my brain.

[Thisisaeuphemism]

Great, it was Zoe Williams and Judith o Reilly tweets that made me think it.

Gawd, I am nosey.

[ashesgirl]

Not sure. Off to have a look in the Standard

[Thisisaeuphemism]

Just read the survey report on the web page - brilliant. The way the info was presented was excellent. Really impressed.

[Thisisaeuphemism]

Is there something in the evening standard tonight about girls toys - saw some stuff on twitter but can't make out what has been said....

[nickelbabylyinginamanger]

I was the only girl in Design and Realization in the whole of my year group for GCSE.

my friend and I wanted to do it and we agreed that we'd both do it if the other one did.
so we did.
then my friend got pregnant and left halfway through the first year of it.

thankfully the boys in the class weren't twats, and the teacher was pretty cool about discipline anyway, so i didn't feel like I stuck out.
and the teacher was very fair - didn't notice if you were male or female and treated everyone the same.

[GrimmaTheNome]

Thanks - yes, that shows that this affects boys too, its not just girls being directed away from science/construction toys. Maybe you FB/twitter literati could hook up with this US campaign - while our initial focus is on UK/Eire toy retailers, the multinational designers are much of the underlying problem.

Of course the colour scheme of the Easy-bake oven doesn't deter some boys:

Missy: So anyway, we?re eight years old, and Sheldon converts my easy-bake oven to some kind of high-powered furnace.

Sheldon: I needed a place to fire ceramic semi-conductor substrates for home-made integrated circuits.

[TakingTheStairs]

Good morning,
I saw this on twitter this morning and thought it might be of interest to some of you

Pleas For Gender-Neutral Easy-Bake Oven

[GrimmaTheNome]

I was the only girl in the whole school doing physics A level my year - only one other even did O-level with me. I was the only girl in my chemistry set (there were some in the other set, the ones who did biology). One other girl doing double maths. I didn't get any sexist shit myself, probably helped Dad was a chemistry teacher. It didn't really occur to me then to question the imbalance.

DDs goes to a girls school with a science specialism where they all to triple science and theres good numbers going on to A level. The school actively promotes women in science/eng - the other week they had a day when they did techie activities (eg building model cars to race) and had ex-pupils come in to talk about their engineering careers. Incuding an actual mechanic, who made the distinction clear but said it was great. Its an odd thing, in some ways it seems wrong to have separate schooling but it does seem to better enable girls be girls - the girls they want to be, not some stereotype of what they should be.

Oh well, at least we're not saddled with such a sexist language - I remember being gobsmacked and arguing with the French teacher that it couldn't be right that a solitary male in a roomful of females would convert 'elles' to 'ils'

[qumquat]

In all Latin languages the masculine form of the word is used when a group is mixed gender. So yes, the words for boys and children are the same.

[baremadness]

Just had to check out your profile nickel as there were 3 girls in my class of 14 doing a'level physics. You were in a different year to me -just- so it wasn't you.