Sunday, September 08, 2013

What starts in Sweden...

In 2009 Toys R Us got into trouble in Sweden for "sexism." They were charged with producing brochures showing girls playing with girls' toys and boys with boys' toys.

Here we are a few years later and Toys R Us have declared that they will not market toys by gender in the UK either:
Toys R Us today bowed to anti-sexist marketing demands and pledged to drop gender labelling for its products.

The retailer declared that it would be more “inclusive” when marketing toys for girls and boys, and said it would draw up plans in the long term to remove “explicit references” to gender in its store.

The move follows pressure from a group called Let Toys be Toys. A spokeswoman for the group gave a classic liberal justification for their demands:
Megan Perryman, Let Toys Be Toys campaigner, said: “Even in 2013, boys and girls are still growing up being told that certain toys are for them, while others are not. This is not only confusing but extremely limiting as it strongly shapes their ideas about who they are and who they can go on to become.”

This is liberal autonomy theory, the idea that we should be self-determining individuals and that therefore predetermined qualities like our sex are "limiting" and should be made not to matter.

It's a key difference in the outlook of liberals and traditionalists. A traditionalist would not describe sex distinctions as "limiting." For us being a man or a woman is a core aspect of identity, one that connects us to a larger good or life principle of masculinity or femininity that we then seek to fulfil in our own lives.

Nor is the liberal position as open-ended as Megan Perryman suggests. Her group, Let Toys be Toys, is a member of an international movement, The Brave Girls Movement. This movement encourages girls to cultivate the following qualities:
independence, ambition, adventurousness, courage, healthy risk-taking, strength, intellect, conflict resolution, self-knowledge, creativity, athleticism, leadership, critical thinking skills, generosity, activism, camaraderie and kindness.

It's a list that, with just a couple of exceptions, focuses on getting girls to adopt more traditionally masculine qualities. It's as if the group is suggesting that there is something wrong or inferior with girls being feminine.

Why would they have this focus? One way to see the answer is that feminists have assumed that men set up a patriarchy in order gain an unearned privilege over oppressed women. Therefore, the theory goes, the gold standard in life has been enjoyed by men - so women therefore have to chase after what men have and do.

The other way to see the answer is that liberals are not as neutral about the aims of life as they claim. Liberalism has evolved to treat careers as the ultimate end in life and therefore it is believed that women should be oriented to competing with men in the workplace. Hence the emphasis on ambition, risk-taking, leadership and so on.

Anyway, we trads will continue to celebrate the differences between men and women; perhaps one day it will be a selling point in promoting traditionalist communities.

9 comments:

  1. 'Sorry mom, I'm STRAIGHT': Oversharing mother who blogs about her pride in her 'rainbow boy' reveals how other son finally plucked up courage to come out to her as heterosexual.

    Serenity: "We're meddlesome."

    The Who: I'm A Boy.

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  2. I think there is a movement in Sweden to embarrass their country and the native Swedish. From a belief that destroying national pride will somehow embarrass Swedes into submission as people from around the world laugh at them.
    Sometimes I think if young Swedish men are coping with this. I hope they are.
    The UK is under a similar attack. The answer is to boycott the business.

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  3. ... also not to forget support products that traditionally associated with the proper gender.

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  4. "It's as if the group is suggesting that there is something wrong or inferior with girls being feminine."

    That's the single biggest problem with feminism. It is controlled by women who hate themselves for being women. They despise women and they despise everything about being female. They have produced a situation in which girls are taught to hate themselves for being female.

    These are women who look at themselves in the mirror and hate everything they see. Each time they look in the mirror they hope they will have turned into men.

    The entire leftist mindset is based on massive amounts of self-loathing. White liberals hate themselves for not being black. Heterosexual liberals hate themselves for not being homosexual. It's all about hate, but mostly it's about self-hatred.

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  5. >>Anonymous said...

    ... also not to forget support products that traditionally associated with the proper gender.<<

    Telling them that you're doing that would help. But anyway the reality is that girls will play tea party with GI Joe, and boys will storm the beachheads with Barbie; sex distinctions are far too innate to be affected by marketing.

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  6. But anyway the reality is that girls will play tea party with GI Joe, and boys will storm the beachheads with Barbie;

    I had a strong aversion to anything feminine as a kid. Especially Barbies. Still revolted by them. Of course liberals would mock my behaviour as being "homophobic" or something like that.
    I just don't like feminine things. With the exception of a woman's touch to home decorating because it's pleasant.
    Ohhh I'm so misogynist haha.

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  7. In the 80s when my daughters were young, dolls and toys and clothing for girls started becoming very unappealing -- the highly sexualized Barbies were in, but also dolls like Chatty Cathy which played dumb recorded messages. Toys and clothing also became exaggeratedly "girlish" -- pink ponies with long pink tails, pink and purple and puffy, flowers all over, pink chairs, pink playhouses, etc. Much of it was really gross. That's when toys like Legos, wooden toys and blocks, Playmobile and toy animals became the best choice. "Gender-neutral" was less aesthetically offensive.

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  8. @Anon

    Yes, there is a certain garishness to many children's toys of that type. It begs the question, though. Why are firms making them this way if they aren't going to sell well?. I don't know if it's the parents preconceptions, or what little girls in general desire, that make these toys appealing.

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  9. Political correctness gone mad? Nope.

    A calculated attack on Western civilization? Yes indeed!

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