Uproar Over #NoGenderDecember From People Terrified Of Letting Boys Play With Dolls

nogenderdecember twitter bannerNow that NoShaveNovember and its horrific facial hair atrocities are over, the Australian Green Party is on hand with a new themed month: NoGenderDecember. The idea behind the movement is to stop forcing gender-stereotyped toys on children; as one person on Twitter put it, “Buy kids the toys they want, not the ones they’re expected to want.” Boys are allowed to play with dolls, girls are allowed to want toy trucks, children of any gender are allowed to want a swimming-pool sized bin of Lego bricks.

The Greens have a pledge you can sign, and they’re also asking the government to consider legislation to keep toy stores from labeling and marketing products as ‘girl toys’ or ‘boy toys’, instead of just ‘toys’. Sounds good, right? But of course, attachment to stereotypes runs deep, and not everyone is happy about the prospect of a NoGenderDecember. I’ve been perusing reactions to this movement this morning, and the only thing that indicates this stuff wasn’t written in the Stone Age is the fact that it was posted to Twitter.

1. How fittingnogenderdecember twitterHow fitting that Danny here made a transphobic joke to defend his moldy old views about gender stereotyping from the merciless onslaught of gender neutral Christmas shopping.

2. It’s funny because … reasons?

nogenderdecember twitter 2Again, the punchline of the joke here appears to be ‘transgender bodies! haha!’ You’re really doing a great job selling the notion that there’s nothing wrong with the status quo, Al.

3. Let’s throw in a little casual xenophobia to switch things up

nogenderdecember twitter 3Yes, stating that girls should have other options in addition to Barbie dolls, and that boys who want Barbies should also get to play with them, is essentially the same thing as calling for a complete boycott of dolls. Also, let’s play a game called ‘spot the difference between telling women they can’t dress themselves as they’d like and telling little girls they CAN play with any toys they’d like’.

4. Bollocks to thatnogenderdecember twitter 4Yeah! We shouldn’t be encouraging little boys to be nurturing, creative, or empathetic! Clearly these traits are the embodiment of everything wrong with modern masculinity.

5. And Jesus said, suffer the little children to come unto heavily gendered toy aislesnogenderdecember twitter 11If Chris hasn’t seen many stupid things lately, he must not read his own Tweets before he posts them.

6. IT’S JUST SCIENCEnogenderdecember twitter 5Bruce, who fancies himself a scientist, refers to a study in which male monkeys tended to pick ‘boy toys’ to play with and female monkeys tended to pick ‘girl toys’. Because the brain of a human child is obviously identical to that of a young monkey and because we should ignore variability in which toys children actually prefer to make sure they conform with the rest of their perceived gender. Because, you know. Science.

7. Get a hobby, Jonnogenderdecember twitter 9nogenderdecember twitter 6Jon McC appears to be trawling the #NoGenderDecember hashtag to namecall the people promoting and celebrating its use. It looks to me like Jon McC should have played with dolls more as a child.

8. That’ll show ’emnogenderdecember twitter 7Suggestion: buy toys for children based on what they like rather than on gender stereotypes. Response: buy pink dolls for your girls no matter what they actually want in order to score imaginary political points. Yup, sounds reasonable to me.

9. ummnogenderdecember twitter 8We should all thank Jack for his nuanced views on sociology. After all, it’s not as if toxic masculinity has ever caused any problems recently.

10. I think we just won Gender Neutral Toy Reaction Bingo

nogenderdecember twitter 10

I don’t know what to say about this so I’m just going to go pour some whiskey into my coffee and call it a day.

(Feature image: Twitter)

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