Gendered Toys

[JunebuginDecember]

So on another thread, that has thankfully been deleted, regarding teens that identify as trans somebody made a comment about gendered toys being 'left in the seventies'. Am I alone in thinking that this is not the case at all?

I think parents have certainly gotten better at educating kids that toys have no gender but I'm still seeing toy aisles that are certainly separated by gender as well as tv advertisements that always have little girls playing with the barbies, my little ponies etc and the little boys playing with the hot wheels etc

I was curious about others' thoughts on this. Do you think we have made much progress there?

It's worse than in the 70s. I played with the same Lego as my brother. Now there's Lego Friends. Vile crap.

I actually think it’s gotten worse over time. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I'm only 22 but I honestly don't remember a time where I thought that certain toys weren't needlessly gendered 🙄

Speaking of Lego I have a very clear memory of being presented with an off-brand girly princess version of Lego one Christmas while my brothers got the real stuff and being bitterly disappointed 😂

There were 'toys' in the 1970s. Some parents would police the toys use by sex. Dolls and prams for girls, etc.

The sexed toy aisles were more a feature of the 1990s when shops realised they could sell 2 of everything if they marketed it as for boys and for girls. That was more 'in your face' as you shopped.

Which is worse? I don't know.

I was a child of the seventies (born in 1970) and I don't remember toys being gendered much. I played with the same Lego, farm animals, fisher price people, playmobil, weebles as my friends and my siblings (1f 1m). That said, I also wore corduroy brown dungarees, climbed trees and rode around on my bike. Life was simple!

It was a huge effort to try to get gender-neutral toys for my own children (eldest born in 2000). They were all happy playing with my old toys when they were with my parents.

The 1970s adverts for LEGO were sexless and brown...as was the fashion at the time...wallpaper, clothes, etc. I think every outfit I was dressed in was brown in some way!

It's worse now than in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Despite the lobbying to get labels changed in shops so they don't explicitly segregate toys by labelling them boy/girl. But it's done now with acres of pink/purple/glitter opposite blue/Dino/robot stuff. Even though things aren't explicitly labeled it's clear who they are marketing towards.

Toy shops in the 80s just had stuff in themed sections, things weren't duplicated eg the same toy in pink and in blue. Just one toy in whatever colour it came in. I remember choosing roller boots for Christmas and they came in red or blue. Now they'd be in pink or camouflage probably.

www.lettoysbetoys.org.uk

I’m 23, and same. I grew up watching milkshake- the adverts…!

I played with my brothers lego, macarno, plasticine and cars, I rode bikes, we all had stuffed toys. They couldn't play with my dolls/pram but I couldn't have the airfix models including the moon landing ones

All in all I had a pretty amazing childhood with access to most toys and I tried very hard to keep it the same for my children. I still hate Bratz with their sexulised dolls with a passion though.

It's SO much worse. Shops now sell pink globes ffs.

It's all very well with this "let toys be toys", but a lot of people who practice it then send their son down to the gender identity clinic as soon as he plays with a Barbie doll.

The 70s were much better from a boys v girls things perspective. I had the same toys, clothes and haircut as my brothers and sisters (and cousins and friends of both sexes). We were just kids. The obsession with pink for girls didn't exist really. My roller boots were blue and yellow, and my walkman was red. Lego and matchbox cars and train sets were for everyone. I had some dolls but so did my husband when he was a boy. My brother was soft about his teddies.

This boys toys /girls toys thing is just marketing. Brilliant from a sales perspective, but also I think rather damaging.

(I guess the roller boots and walkman were in the 80, but I was born in 76).

another thread, that has thankfully been deleted

You mean the support thread for a poster who had been bereaved and was struggling to help her son, that got attacked & insulted repeatedly? That one?

Not wrong at all - my recollection is as per a pp, that toys were organised by type in shops, and the only real restriction was that 'only girls play with dolls'.

Similarly with clothes - the little girl in the advert above being typical in that the same clothes could have been worn by a boy.

Loathe how it's all so stereotyped now, with the only concession being boys tshirts sometimes having sequins on the dinosaurs.

No - it's parents who haven't absorbed the idea that 'toys are toys' and still see them as boys toys and girls toys who are liable to do that.

Sadly some people seem to have misunderstood the premise!

Let Toys be Toys was cofounded by Maya Forstater (way before the Forstater Ruling became a thing).

hiyamaya.net/2012/12/05/let-toys-be-toys/

It is dead weird how a small group of people looked at our argument ‘don’t gender toys’ and decided to interpret that as ‘pretend your child doesn’t have a sexed body until they choose to label themselves’ and then get really excited when the child picks the opposite to the one they actually are.

Oh God bratz dolls...Why my mum allowed me to play with those monstrosities I'll never know 😂...

It's the pinkifacation of toys that is the issue. Toys were toys as in not colour coded in the 70s but even then there was stereotyping. I wasn't allowed scalextric because 'it's for boys' , my brother had a huge train set. I did have a football game though, not subbuteo though, a cheaper static player game, the players were on springs. It's weird though, my brother ended up with a shopping type bike and I had the same but a different colour. Probably because they knew I would be livid if he had a 'boys' bike and me a 'girls' style.

Yes, @ArabellaScott I think the OP means that one. Someone was being pretty vile to the mother of the bereaved child, who may have also been grieving.

Anyway, not to derail, ten-ish years ago I remember buying gifts for my kids friends and struggling to not buy something stereotyped. Nowadays, the stakes can seem higher, some poor child plays with the 'wrong' toys and mermaids are circling like sharks.

Lots of toys now also seem to have a website or even a game and a linked website. Often with a SM element. I'd be dubious about encouraging that with a child. The most innocuous SM, if poorly regulated, can be quite dangerous. Particularly, if it's aimed at children.

• even then there was stereotyping."

This is true- certainly my brothers got to do more things with my dad and he taught them to play golf which I was furious about. And they never had to cook dinner, which I could do from about 10 years old.

I was always allowed to play with whatever but I remember my dad making fun of my brother for playing with 'girly' toys. Which I think came from a place of good old sexism. The whole "no son of mine will play with that pink crap" thing.

Also I think the other thread got taken down because the op was trolling. Standard for the feminism boards.

My son was born in 1990. I don't recall sexed toys aisles then. Types of toys were grouped together but they weren't marked "girls" or "boys"