toysrus.comPosted Jun 1, 2015, 8:48 PM UTC
Frankly, I have an 18 month old boy. He has stuffed animals, the few dolls I still have, I don't want him destroying, so they're still tucked away, and his favourites? They're all either noisy or have wheels. He isn't restricted in what he can play with at all. But if it has wheels he can spin, he loves it. That even includes our wheelbarrow.
Once for a class we were assigned to go to Toys r' Us, ask an employee for help finding an items of our own, kind-of open-ended description, and see what we got. The. We were to go back later and ask for the same thing for a different gender recipient.
When I asked about toy for an 8 year old boy who likes to play outside' I was taken to the mini microscopes for science play. When I asked about the same little girl I was taken to the Barbie dream house for outside area.
It is not just an "option" we can ignore, u/HalfwySandwich; this is the way society is structured
Gosh, that's lame. I frickin' loved/love microscopes! And not a single of my friends growing up was into Barbies (apart from one whose name was Barbie and thus always received Barbie dolls as birthday presents).
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check-with-polly-curtis/2011/dec/13/women-children
I think that's a good summary of the various opinions on the topic. The actual article is just a blogger's column, but has input from many actual scientists and other professionals, and links to many of the studies and papers underscoring the different viewpoints.
The conclusion seems to be that there's no difference in color preference between girls and boys, but there are marked, albeit slight, differences in preferences in toys between boys and girls, a difference which seems to be biological because it seems to exist in newborns and in rhesus monkeys (which could hardly be the effect of socialisation).
From the article:
There is no scientific evidence that boys prefer blue and girls prefer pink.
There is some evidence that boys are in some way hardwired to express an early interest in "rough and tumble" games and toys with moving parts and girls to prefer dolls and role-play games, but this is not conclusive because the studies are often in babies and small toddlers and therefore inevitably difficult to analyse.
More relevant to Toys'R'Us:
... previous government research which found "no strong evidence that gender stereotyping in marketing or products influences children's behaviour significantly, relative to other factors" and concludes that retailers are simply responding to demand.
As a male that enjoyed stuffed animals and dolls (and yes I am straight, thank you) growing up i find this rather sexist.
There's a great story from Free To Be You and Me called William's Doll :)
That's kinda weird. The Canadian Toys 'R' us website doesn't classify it by genders. Check it out. I think it's a a much better way to go about it. Honestly when I look for a toy for my kids I go by brand or age.
This is x-posted from r/todayilearned. Also from that post, I noted that "The suggested brands are also different, offering brands like Disney Frozen, Barbie, My Little Pony, and Monster High to girls, and brands like Hot Wheels, Lego, Minecraft, Star Wars, Transformers, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to boys."
Offering an option is what? Oppressive? Hurts you? Don't sort by that, buy the toys you want, stop giving a fuck about the first worldiest of first world problems.
I totally see what you're saying, but creating an expectation for kids like this really is harmful. It would be very easy for them to make the brands more diverse, or just not sort toys by gender at all.
And to your point, how did my making this post hurt you? You could have just as easily scrolled by it but instead you took the time to comment about how ridiculous it is.
I totally understand there are bigger battles to be fought, especially in the world of gender equality, but this could be a pretty simple one, in my mind.
The suggestion that there is an easily untapped market of toys that companies can latch on to and make money off of isn't true. If it were then the companies would already be doing it. The result of gendered toy options is a profit driven force.
I don't believe it hurts kids. I think treating kids like pieces of glass makes them emotionally inept and hurts them.
No it isn't. Do you have kids? You can't possibly have kids if you think this. Harmful? In what way does it traumatize children, or even harm them, to describe action figures as a 'boy' toy, when it traditionally is, and the majority of girls don't like them??
Less than 1% of people have 'gender' identity differences in this country. 99.9% need the toys sorted by girl and boy. LESS THAN 1%. Why would you think a <1% issue, is 'harmful to the marjority?'
Do you really know what happens when your kids go with you to the store, is they run right for what they want. They don't care how its sorted, they don't care if its a 'boy' toy or a 'girl' toy. They shoot straight for it. But you don't know that, you just have a feminist agenda to push on parents where there doesn't need to be one.
And we parents buy what the kid screams for.
The buyers drive the market. If we didn't buy it, they wouldn't sell it. If we, the consumer...didn't search for boy toys expecting to find action figures they wouldn't sort them that way. WE want to be able to find toys that way.
but Im a mom. I search for boy toys when I want to find action figures. Imagine if I had to guess where the fuck they sorted them...maybe you think they should sort them by size?
oh, my kid wants a 6" toy...here is the category for 6" toys, good.
Have some kids first before you start appropriating topics you don't know anything about. sorting kids toys by the majority sex that plays with them is not harmful.
Why feminists who don't have kids think they can even talk about kid experiences, I have noooo idea. Keep your nose out of parenthood till you get there.
Regarding this as a problem in practical terms requires believing that gender expectations are still widespread in society and line roughly up with what Toys'R'Us is pushing. In other words, for this to be a problem implies that there is a market demand that Toys'R'Us is meeting (if over or undershooting a bit).
The reality is that some parents want to search by gender and want to get their daughter princess toys or movies, and in most of these cases it is not meant as some encroachment on the child's gender expression so much as getting them toys that will allow them to blend in with their peer group.
Would it be nice if Toys'R'Us stymied these parents' attempts to figure out which toys will increase their childrens' chances at fitting in?At least, as part of some long-term campaign to diminish gendered socialization? I mean sure, maybe, possibly.