Now 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 fittingHow 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?
Again, 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.
Yes, 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 thatYeah! 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 aislesIf Chris hasn’t seen many stupid things lately, he must not read his own Tweets before he posts them.
6. IT’S JUST SCIENCEBruce, 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, JonJon 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 ’emSuggestion: 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. ummWe 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
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.
My parents are coming for Thanksgiving. Gracious guests that they are, they will offer to help with everything: food,…
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