Gender equality starts with kidsDECONSTRUCTING THE SOCIETAL MYTH OF BOY AND GIRL LABELS

Target removes gender signs

Parents: Just because your son wants a My Little Pony bedspread does not mean he’s gay. Just because your daughter wants a bug collecting kit doesn’t mean she’s transgender. And if your children don’t identify with the gender binary, that’s OK. Gender identity has nothing to do with signage in a store. Maybe you should consider backing off and loving the wonderful being you created whether they are homosexual, or queer, or transgender, or straight. Whether they like pink or blue or yellow or polka dots.

Some of the complaints…

Complaints? - No boy/girl distinction = chaos

- No boy/girl distinction = Target pandering to LGBTQ

- No boy/girl distinction MAKES kids LGBTQ

- No boy/girl distinction erodes masculinity. (Pussification, God made women the weaker vessel).

MEANING:

- Gay is bad.

- Transgender is bad.

- Women are bad.

Audra Williams on Gap’s new clothing line.

“I don’t want to downplay the merits of this clothing line, or the importance of advocating for little girls who were so stoked to take their Spiderman backpacks to school this week, only to come home in tears because “Spiderman is for boys.” Not every girl feels like herself when wearing ruffled dresses or head-to-toe pink and purple, and I’m really glad those girls have some other fun choices now. Like graphic tees with quotes like “And though she be but little, she is fierce” (from every little girl’s favourite writer, William Shakespeare).

But the same gender-role-wiggle-room is not available to their brothers. Where is Adam Lambert’s line for Gap Kids, promoted with an upbeat commercial of young boys playing with dolls and doing ballet while wearing shiny sparkly glam clothes and lipgloss while Diamond Rings serenades us all?”

“Lean In” and motherhood This creeps into feminism, in ways that enforce the patriarchy, accidentally, by playing within the norms of our society.

From girls playing with trucks, but boys not being able to freely play with dolls, we go to women encouraged to “act like men” at work to get ahead (being “bossy”, ambitious, negotiating and demanding fair rates), but men still being degraded for staying home, or not even realizing it’s an option.

This places the onus of gender squarely on the woman’s shoulders, giving her all sorts of rules and regulations on how to be successful, and yet never moving the societal box in which we all reside. An impossible task.

Boy and girl interests become man and woman interests, and societally, they do not intersect. Motherhood vs. working man, homemaker vs. business executive. They are not made up tropes, but in our daily lives.

It’s for boys and girls and for the future

Courtesy: Anne Theriault

To me, Target’s move is just the tip of the iceberg. We need to pressure manufacturers to get rid of the labeling on the products. We need to pressure advertisers to lose the labeling in their commercials. We need to tell ourselves that “girl” and “boy” interests do not exist. Every child is an individual, and we have a duty to find out who each and every one of them is instead of lumping children into categories before they can speak for themselves.