Let Toys Be Toys has fallen

[ClingFilmApplications]

'Jamie’ by @ollypike: “There certainly aren't many books for younger children about transgender identities & this one is told very gently & sensitively” For a range of children’s books with transgender themes see...
https://twitter.com/lettoysbetoys/status/1112454995000131584?s=21

it does not need to ally either with the gender critical camp or the transactivist camp it can just focus on the fact that all children have a sex, and toy manufacturers and retailers should not promote sexist stereotypes in their marketing.

Agreed.

I’m sorry this has happened to something you started. It was so good! I hope they do as you advise.

just because you perhaps feel confident in your gender doesn't mean everyone is

Gender Identity is a made-up concept.

If a doctor told me a biopsy showed I had a "ladybrain" I would not - under any circumstances - chop my cock off. Nor would I go around trying to tell women I was a lesbian.

But if my teenage youth was lived out today, I would undoubtedly be "transed" by society - because I didn't identify "with" the boys (I thought they were thuggish dickheads) and I had no interest in "boys sports" and fighting.

The New Romantic movement was heaven for people like me. It gave me permission to - in a way that felt "legitimate" - reject my peers and freak them out enough to leave me alone. I was sometimes called "gay" but I didn't really care because I didn't need the approval of those people anyway.

I would spend many nights in places like Camden Palace etc. rubbing shoulders with the likes of Boy George, Steve Strange, Marilyn, Philip Salon, bopping away with my vanilla-blonde hair*, thick black eyeliner and purple lipstick.

(* I say "vanilla blonde" but after a month it would be more accurate to say "custard")

Anyway, over time the whole New Romantic thing that gave me safe passage out of my home town into the anonymous bedsit land of London finally burnt itself out and eventually I no longer needed a fashionable crutch to justify my existence. I just wore whatever I needed to in order to create the right impression at the right time without agonising about it. Rejecting maleness ceased to be necessary.

Today - as those of you who've met me will testify - I'm visually a stonking great beast of a bloke who has to take special measures at night so as not to appear intimidating to lone women at night.

I'm glad no-one persuaded me to chop my tackle off back then, because if they had, I would not have become a dad to my wonderful daughters.

My job now is to shepherd them through school and into teenagers and beyond whilst keeping pills and the surgeon's knife away from them so that, should they choose to, they can suffer that beautiful and magical burden of commitment that we call parenthood.

(excuse accidental bolding above)

OMG @ClingFilmApplications I think I was born in the wrong era, am so envious of anyone knocking around with the great and good of The Blitz etc! Such a fan of that scene and the music is unsurpassed (sorry off topic...)

Bumped into Rusty Egan at the recent Spandau Ballet re-launch and gave him a hand-written note thanking him for changing my life.

Felt like an idiot the next day, but a week later was glad that I had done so.

I often marvel at footage of Rusty, Steve Strange et al and wonder if they'd have been 'transed' had they emerged in today's climate. Marilyn is quite GC I seem to recall.

At that age I would have stated that I would never, ever want kids.

As an adult however, the sense of something missing got stronger and stronger and it gradually dawned on me what my instincts were telling me.

So bloody disappointing

Wholly agree, @MForstater. I'm so disappointed in LTBT for promoting the trans ideology. Sexist stereotyping is damaging to all, affirming those stereotypes is what the trans movement does.

I feel really sorry for transpeople who know damn well that it is impossible for humans to change sex who are caught up in this nonsense.

I can't get over the fact that this book is written for very young children.

The children targeted aren't old enough to be aware of the idea of gender identity,let alone be old enough to be questioning theirs.

I had a phonecall from my DD's (SN) teacher today, to say that they'd had a talk on periods and 'it hadn't gone well' for DD1. She was very anxious, terrified, and said that 'she didn't want to be a girl anymore'.

I braced myself for a 'transgender chat', but instead the teacher said 'We asked DD1, if she doesn't want to be a girl, what does she want to be? She said 'a dog'. So we told her that dogs have at least 6 nipples. She said she'd stay as a girl.'

Job done. They'd recognised that she was saying she didn't want to be 'a girl', because being 'a girl' can be frightening and overwhelming at 13, with all the changes that go on in your body. Especially if you don't feel ready for it.

I know most girls wouldn't answer with 'a dog' if asked that question, but I'm pretty sure they are reacting to the same feelings, and expressing that they don't want to face this.

They have put up a new tweet in response to all the comments:

Thanks everyone for your comments, we do read them and reflect. Let Toys Be Toys has supporters with a range of views on gender, but crucially we unite behind the message that narrow stereotypes are bad for everyone. 1/2
Let Toys Be Toys
@LetToysBeToys
All children should feel free to choose the toys, books & hobbies that interest them and this remains our core message. 2/2

Datun "Perhaps an intern has control of their twitter."
I'm always thinking this lately.

Do orgs not recognize the power of social media? Women's leadership passed to the young un's w/out grounding in real life.

Let Toys be Toys just went down the drain. A few days before they stood up to TRF language and we all cheered them on. Definitely feels like THAT intern got replaced. She may have dropped her filter for a sec. I'd hire that one.

it's nearly as bad as the original cinderella.
I was thinking the same thing.
This book is saying being a girl is not good, you have to cook, clean, and do the washing, things that have been seen stereotypically as a womans job.
This new, boundary breaking book is the same old gendered stereotypes, girls cook and clean, boys get to do fun stuff. Except now, you can just change into a boy! Why wouldn't Jamie want to be a boy, she sees her brothers, who bully her, don't have to do the washing, cooking or cleaning. Of course it would be easier for Jamie to be a boy.

Why wouldn't Jamie want to be a boy, she sees her brothers, who bully her, don't have to do the washing, cooking or cleaning. Of course it would be easier for Jamie to be a boy.

Strewth! It sounds absolutely hopeless.

It feels as though let us be toys have grasped only half the issue. They understand stereotypes are bad, but not why. Just that it might deprive a few kids from playing with a toy they quite like.

Not that it reinforces the hierarchy which is damaging to both boys and girls, but more for girls.

Frustrating.

*At that age I would have stated that I would never, ever want kids.

As an adult however, the sense of something missing got stronger and stronger and it gradually dawned on me what my instincts were telling me.*

This is me too. Wanted to be with the boys growing up playing football and having adventures. Being a girl was so tame and safe. As I got older I could still be with the boys as a woman so didn't need to be a tomboy anymore. Having children completed me in a way that amazed me. Still no interest in anyone else's kids really.

What was unexpected to me about becoming a parent was developing an (unasked-for) hypervigilence about other people's kids. You suddenly develop this sixth-sense for other kids safety. Was quite exhausting at holiday soft-play centres.

Now they are older it manifests itself in monitoring the motivations and actions of those trying to bring "progressive thinking@ to pre-teen children.

I watched that video of the book, and it just seemed to me to be the fairly straightforward story of a domestic slave who saw what a male life looked like, and what her own life looked like, and took the logical way out.

I mean, it's accurate for "trans boys" (caveat: I don't think there's any such thing as a trans boy) in that I completely understand why so many of them want to distance themselves from girlhood as fast as they can, but presenting it as a positive thing, ugh.

A book that was actually progressive would have Jamie handing the boys her broom and going off with the princess (if the princess wanted her) regardless.

The "author" of that book makes me rage, as they present themselves as working against homophobia when they are producing this utter homophobic tripe.

Transgender Trend has a review of it www.transgendertrend.com/challenging-heteronormativity/

"Jamie likes girls. Jamie is overwhelmingly likely to grow up to be a lesbian if left alone, but this book teaches little girls like Jamie a new way to interpret their feelings: that if you like having short hair and wearing trousers and you like girls, you must be a boy. It takes diversity and difference (gender non-conforming, same-sex attracted) and turns it into conformity (gender conforming, heterosexual). This is erasure of lesbians disguised as celebrating difference. This lesson is taught to girls before puberty, when they can have little idea of what sexual orientation really means and before they have had a chance to grow up and discover their own sexuality."

This is normally the kind of thing LTBT would call out, not celebrate.

The Twitter responses are a good illustration of the quasi-religious element of Genderism, too. You'll notice it often once you begin pointing out that every transition story is drenched in stereotypes.

You'll begin to see the phrase "Gender expression is different from Gender Identity"

Of course, the only purpose for this distinction being made is to shunt all the critiques of sexist stereotypes onto 'Gender Expression' and leave each person with their own special 'Gender Identity'.

'Gender Identity' has no specific definition. People describe it using the language of sexist stereotypes, but it's actually an inner sense of self too hard to define.

Those paying attention will realize someone is playing a shell game with them - the 'inner sense of Gender' is just a pretend-secular description of a soul, and is completely and totally meaningless without the structure of 'Gender', which is just sexist stereotypes.

There is no difference between 'Gender expression' and 'Gender Identity' at all - it is simply a lie to divert your attention from the trans-activist being caught out promoting sexist stereotypes.

That book is far worse than I had expected it to be. For the first half of the story there are only three human beings (two males and one female) and a fairy. Life for the female is doubly crap - she is not just the household drudge, cleaning, cooking, mending, but she also functions as the resident handyman. The males don't just do nothing, while she does everything, thanks to the fairy godmother they also get everything they want while she gets nothing.

At one point she asks her brothers' fairy godmother to fulfil a wish. The latter rejects this saying "people like you" don't deserve anything.

The biggest and most obvious reason to imply that Jamie belongs to a different group of people from her brothers is that she is of the opposite sex, of course.

So, the not so subtle message here is that it's shit being a girl, girls don't deserve good things and girls are an inferior type of people whose purpose is to serve males, the superior type of people.

Does she protest, does she rebel? No, she's just miserable and basically a doormat. But now it gets ridiculous.

She decides to rebel. Right, great. Except in the middle of rebelling to get a vehicle and a new look for the ball to meet the princess, she refuses to use the scissors because her brothers forbade it. So she makes a whole suit by tearing the fabric with her hands and then has the mice cut off her hair so as not to touch the scissors she's forbidden from touching.

I mean WTF! Why on earth would she not use the scissors when the entire exercise is a huge fat middle finger to her brothers anyway?

Logically incoherent, as one would expect from adherents of this ideology.

So now she looks into the mirror and one suit and one haircut later, she is magically transformed into a boy.

Now there is no mention of discomfort with her female body, so this is decidedly a merely gender-non-conforming lesbian and not a transsexual female with sex dysphoria.

So at the ball apparently no one notices that Jamie is female. Interestingly while there is a great deal of on-the-nose diversity in the ball guests pictured, this is limited to the inclusion of disabled persons and persons of ethnic and religious minorities. There are no gender-non-conforming persons present. And even Jamie merely looks like a stereotypical boy.

Nothing. I repeat, there is nothing there to suggest that sex roles and sex stereotypes are wrong.

Then follows the inevitable rose-tinted happy ending. Only instead of two happy lesbians we're faced with a stereotypical straight couple - a very girly princess and a bog standard looking boy in a suit. And because they are accepted as a straight couple who are completely gender conforming and Jamie's sex is disclosed only to the princess, there is no "gender bending" here.

What there is however, is the ultimate fantasy of complete acceptance and perfectly passing as the opposite sex. As is evident from the inability of Jamie's brothers to recognise her dressed as a boy even when they come right up to her.

And oh shock horror, now that Jamie is no longer female, the next morning, none of the drudgery was taken care of. But one has to surmise that the bad behaviour of the brothers won't have any consequences because they still have their fairy godmother. There is certainly no suggestion that these males may now be doing the cleaning, cooking and mending. So, again, there is no "gender bending".

And apparently, it's not just the suit and haircut, it's that Jamie can finally be herself. Only it literally is just the suit and haircut that apparently makes Jamie the girl into Jaime, the boy, complete with a cutesy new spelling of the name of course.

Execrable bollocks in other words that teaches girls if they are oppressed by males, you don't fight the unfairness of that, you don't campaign for your rights, you don't let them all know you are equal to them, or even better than the males in your life, as Jamie really is. No, you solve the issue of your oppression by joining the oppressor class.

This could have been a great book for baby lesbians. Instead it's yet another homophobic, regressive and - if you look at it closely - anti-feminist book.

I hate even reading the analysis. (Although grateful for it).

If this isn't entirely, calculating deliberate, it's a shocking demonstration of how sexism truly is engrained.

And this piece of shit

What there is however, is the ultimate fantasy of complete acceptance and perfectly passing as the opposite sex. As is evident from the inability of Jamie's brothers to recognise her dressed as a boy even when they come right up to her.

Bashing the reader over the head with how effective superficial stereotyping is. Really, dear reader, it's all about the bloody hair.

(And something that surely children will notice. It's the sort of thing that they simply won't buy.)

There is no difference between 'Gender expression' and 'Gender Identity' at all - it is simply a lie to divert your attention from the trans-activist being caught out promoting sexist stereotypes.

Exactly. Point out the stereotyping and it gets denied. Immediately and risibly. In favour of essence/soul/junk science.

Some thought-provoking posts analysing the book and its messages.

The Twitter responses are a good illustration of the quasi-religious element of Genderism, too. You'll notice it often once you begin pointing out that every transition story is drenched in stereotypes.

If LTBT had any sense, they'd look at the responses to their twitter messages and weigh up who they're losing as supporters and who they're gaining. It's a very bad trade. If they had any foresight, they'd realise that with their new supporters they will have to be very on-message (gender identity is biological reality) from now on otherwise they'll be turned on.

Descriptions of the book are spot on.

Short version: the moment girl becomes empowered, she turns into a boy.