Just in time for the holiday season, Jill over at Lady Laid Bare has guest posted for Purrversatility on the issues of gendering and toys! It's something I think a lot about, as someone who was equally brought up with My Little Pony as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I respect parents who try to fight the tide, but damn, it's tough! @genderdiary is another good account to follow on Twitter for some day to day experiences on just that. 

From Sociological Images, discussing boy vs girl toys in kids meals

I identify as a lot of things. Writer, sex blogger, queer/bisexual and foodie are amongst them. But I’m also a woman. And in my life, I’ve come across lots of statements about women, and gender in general, that have pissed me off to no end. But actually standing up to those people who made the statements has proven hard for me.

So when Ms Kitty Stryker asked me (after I quite brazenly asked her) to do a guest post on this site, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to talk about. I touched on this subject in a recent blog post of mine.
The thing that irks me the most is something that becomes blatantly visible during the holiday season. You can call it “the pink and blue divide”.

Pink is girly, fluffy and princess. So, in the toy catalogues that inevitably hit my doorstep this time of year, girls have their own section of girly, fluffy and princess toys. These include baby dolls, play kitchens and craftsy things (“Make your own bracelets” comes to mind).

Blue, meanwhile, is manly, tough and gritty. Hence the toys in the boys section. Anything goes there. Cars, videogames, action figures… anything fit for the man.

It also seems that this divide is there to remind us how to treat our children. Girls are delicate, need to be handled carefully like the future princesses we want them to be. We don’t let them play with boys, because boys are callous and hard and grrrr. We treat them like that too, because boys need to be toughened up for the big bad world out there.

We fit the toys according to this way of thinking too. It seems that girls are not allowed to play with Tonka trucks and similar things. It might change them, make them into tomboys, and god forbid that happens.
And boys, oh boys are definitely not allowed to play with dolls and dress up as princesses. This is for an even more insane reasoning, because… what if it “makes them gay” and stuff? Because according to them, gay means bad things. Gossip, exclusion from the community and every single horrible thing you can imagine.

Sadly, this is the way we reason.

It hurts me to think that we’re conditioning our children to stick to the norms of their gender so early on in life. Because I thought this whole thing of “girls in the kitchen, boys at work” had been thrown out the window together with the start of feminism.

I can see the difference between growing up now, and back in the nineties when I was just a wee nipper. The crooked stares I got for hanging out with the boys because they loved Pokemon as much as me were killer. As a girl, you weren’t supposed to like Pokemon, except for the pretty ones. The “girl” ones, like Jigglypuff and Chansey. Actually playing the game, whether trading card or Gameboy… no, that wasn’t for girls. Girls were supposed to read teen magazines, and fawn over hunks. Not spend ridiculous amounts of money on a rare Japanese Pokemon card like I once did.

It changed countless times over the years, and I stayed on the cusp of tomboy/girl, balancing both hanging with the lads and drooling over the likes of Orlando Bloom. I’m happy to see change. I hope my nieces and nephews will grow up to be strong adults, who can form their own opinions, aside from what the media makes them think.

Because the media is powerful.

A major example of this takes place on my television every day. I can go on for hours about shows like America’s Next Top Model and how they take the utter piss out of everything women stand for; I’ll leave that for another blog. But every time the idea that women only like shopping and shoes is re-enforced in such shows, I find myself crying obscenities at my television.

Sex and The City is a prime example of this- I hate it when, in a world of truly brilliant sexual educators like Tristan Taormino and Courtney Trouble, the only one singled out for example is the very fictional character of Carrie Bradshaw.

But that’s a story for another day.

Today, the news hit that Hamleys (the famous London toy shop) will end the separation of girls and boys toys, thanks to the campaign of one blogger.

I hope that this is a step in the right direction.