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Gender No Longer Exists
Today I made the mistake of turning to ABC for their morning network news. After being blinded by the pastels of their dollhouse-like set, I watched several bobble-headed women and one extremely handsome fellow discuss Target stores doing away with gender signs. The giddy news “person” reported that there will be no more girls’ toys or boys’ toys — just toys. No more girls’ or boys’ clothes — just clothes. They will remove pink wall paper from the Barbie aisle and remove blue from G.I. Joe’s section. Target wants to do away with any gender signage to create “balance.”
Why? ABC explained that a pierced, hair dyed, tattooed Mother was shocked, SHOCKED!!!, when she saw the evil gender signage. Abi Bechtel is a self referred feminist who doesn’t want her kids playing with toys meant for their own gender. It’s sexist!
Don’t do this, @Target pic.twitter.com/cfh3cp5Nqa
— Abi Bechtel (@abianne) June 1, 2015
Target considers this “social media backlash” against gender signage as justification to, well, ignore gender all together.
By the way, the ABC “news” team had absolutely zero mention of anyone who may disagree with this craziness. Fair and balanced, amirite?
As a father to two sons, one a definite alpha male, and the other, well… he likes hugs, I cringed at this report. One thing I know is that kids gravitate toward what they like. Most kids like toys or clothes designed for their own gender.
What Target is doing is furthering the extremist narrative that gender in itself is exclusionary. It’s better to remove “boys” and “girls” labels as those could make the infinitesimal percentage of kids who feel different, also feel excluded.
The question is, where does this stop? When will the color blue be outlawed? When will Mattel Toys be mandated to have Barbie, Ken and Pat?
You can watch the full ABC report here.
Published in Culture
Progeny recapitulate androgyny?
So do the children that play with them.
Some more often than others.
This was masculine for its day.
Did you mean, a womyn?
True, if the new product line is geared to girls, it will direct girls into the line, since traditionally, they don’t go there much. They can buy any construction set they want.
You can’t win for losing with the Whiner Set…
In a day when one could demand satisfaction through the code duello masculinity hardly needed to be demonstrated through attire.
True, but what is really “masculine” in fashion is ultimately whatever makes men be and feel perceived as different from women.
Androgyny in fashion is always a short term fad as both men and women, more often than not, eventually want to be distinguished (and distinguishable) from each other. The above garb was manly for its day, even if foppish today.
Cant I just wear the shirt???
Anyone else notice that the children of the SJW mom featured in the ABC piece prefer gendered toys? She had to lecture her children that boys are allowed to like dolls and girls toy guns. Maybe her children’s own preferences–notwithstanding the constant harping of their prog, tatted ma–should tell her something?
For all those who think this is a market initiative, please reconsider. Responding to loudmouth criticism isn’t a market initiative, i.e. a plan designed to increase profits by responding to customer preference. It may be rational for corporations to try and avoid social media backlash by kowtowing to aggressive SJW critics, but let’s not mistake cultural pliancy with an initiative that would increase Target’s toys sales. We have zero evidence that Target made this move in response to behavior witnessed in its stores (i.e. that girls were driven away from the boy aisles or vice versa and that sales lagged as a result) or that any market-based research demonstrates that this change would increase toy sales. I am certain that the prior set-up of Target’s toy aisles was determined in large part based on making the shopping experience enjoyable and increasing sales.
In fact, all of the (little) evidence we have proves the following: Target did this because it fears tattooed progressive weirdos who demand stupid things on Twitter.
In Norfolk? When I lived there, my wife and I toured a MacArthur museum, I believe. It was fascinating. I hope I don’t have my generals mixed up.
See the sword at his side, though? I think a man of that era would still very much have found a meaningful difference between the genders. What’s pathetic is that even those men were far, far more manly than what is acceptable in today’s society.
In some ways. Remember the purpose of that wig: to hide baldness. Louis XIV was bald as a cueball (and short) so he mandated wigs and heeled riding boots to drown out his deficiencies (can’t have the king seem less manly than the courtiers). Today bald guys proudly shave their heads to advertise their virility.
Very true. And although the outfit seems like something a woman would wear today, I think it had much more practical significance when it was in fashion. If anyone hasn’t done so recently, a person should go back and pick up the Horatio Hornblower series or the Aubrey/Maturin series for a good reminder of what men used to be like. Obviously, I believe that we all still have that instinct, but it has to find other outlets… for better or worse. (I’m not complaining about my current life-expectancy or not having to risk taking a cannonball to the forehead anytime soon) Then again, go online and watch some Afghanistan engagement videos…
Amen! It’s surrendering to bullies, not a market-based decision.
Hence the name “TARGET”. They’re practically begging for it.
Yup. It certainly is. The man had a massive influence in American history. After accepting Japans surrender and then overseeing the Korea War, he could have easily become President but his campaign burned out before it really got started. Highly recommended to anyone heading to the Norfolk vicinity.
I read the sign to say that there were the real building sets and the girlie ones that weren’t real building sets. That struck me wrong. I’ve been learning from other people’s comments that it might be pretty much the truth though, and apparently what the market wants! Girlie building sets apparently prominently feature people, preferably girls, preferably princesses. That sounds a lot like not a building set to me. I like my dollhouses house-ey and my Legos brick-ey. I would hate for girls who want a real building set to feel they were weird because those are for boys. Legos used to be a pretty unisex item.
Should have gone battleship Yamato. Way bigger with 8-year old girls than the Akagi. It’s just common sense.
It only really matters if there’s no lock on the bathroom door.
There is no Kure for you guys.
Canadian urinals are weird.
George Washington powdered his hair. Wanna speculate what would have happened had someone called him a fairy?
Why, he would have forged right across the Delaware, frozen or not, and laid siege to Trenton, New Jersey with such a fury that it would remain a blighted wasteland hundreds of — oh.
Out of curiosity, I went to Target’s Facebook page to see if others were as irritated as I am, and there are an awful lot of posts signed “Former Target Shopper.” The market will speak. The separation of toys into categories is for convenience, not for any nefarious purposes. And anyway, to reiterate my own Facebook post (not on Target’s page, but elsewhere), you can give dolls to boys and give footballs to girls, and within a half hour the boys will be throwing the dolls, and the girls will be cradling the footballs and putting bonnets on them. Social Engineering? HAH. No match for biology.
Dude… that was 2(50) years ago!
RA, yes, biology trumps all. That’s the frustration, that a few hysterical SJW’s want to alter a million years of genetics, and social media then causes huge corporate entities to acquiesce to these basement dwellers.
Generally I would agree the market will speak, but I for one enjoy Targets convenience. Will this cause me to drive another 10 miles to their competition? No. Time is money. So I, like most, will just shake my head while tacitly accepting another societal infringement by extremists.