I nearly fell of my chair when I heard this rubbish on TV the other night.
They want to change the way Aussie toy shops display their stock, they want to do away with aisles for boys toys and aisles for girls toys and mix them all up, this means if you want to buy a child a train set you will most likely find it next to the Barbie Dolls, is this political correctness gone mad or what. :help: they also want to turn our kids into cross dressers but I wont go there :no:
As long as the barby dolls are the right scale for the model railway stuff then that's ok!
Sadly a sign of the times we live in, where 'equality is all' - except to those who impose it, with George Orwells's comments about 'All animals are equal....' coming immediately to mind, closely followed by 'We will have order....'.
As long as kids are having fun what does it matter what they play with? It's adult imposed views that boys should play with trains, cars, soldiers, meccano and girls should play with dolls, prams and tea sets.
We live in a world where women are no longer expected to stay at home, keep house and look after the kids. Girls can aspire to be programmers, engineers or join the services which used to be the preserve of men? If they want to play with construction sets or trains, let them. Likewise there should be no stigma attached to boys playing with dolls and tea sets and being interested in caring professions, catering or fashion which are deemed to be feminine careers.
C. :)
I must admit I used to covet my sister's Britain's garden sets, even though they were 1/32 scale, and too big for my train set.
Best regards,
Joe
So finally the colonies have joined the 21st century, hurrah!! :claphappy: :claphappy:
I don't think esteemed members like Caz and Veronica (and others) will have any issues with this, more likely they will be disappointed at your opinion that the idea is rubbish.
My brother Nancy agrees..... :D
If my parents had taken any notice of gender stereotyping I probably wouldn't have been interested in model railways. I had a wide variety of toys: dolls, soft toys, Lego, Corgi cars, Britains farm animals and model railways.
I see no reason why girls shouldn't have train sets and play with cars, we travel in them and drive them after all! We are even allowed to fly planes!
Here's an interesting article from The Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/gender-stereotyping-why-should-boys-have-the-best-train-sets-9893216.html (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/gender-stereotyping-why-should-boys-have-the-best-train-sets-9893216.html)
I think the toys should all be all mixed up in the shop but parents do have an influence in their choice of their children's toys. Unenlightened parents will enforce gender stereotyping.
I think it would be a good idea to encourage both boys and girls to take up railway modelling if the hobby is to continue to survive.
I don't like the idea of bright pink Barbie model train sets though :-X
Quote from: longbridge on December 14, 2014, 07:50:12 PM
I nearly fell of my chair when I heard this rubbish on TV the other night.
They want to change the way Aussie toy shops display their stock, they want to do away with aisles for boys toys and aisles for girls toys and mix them all up, this means if you want to buy a child a train set you will most likely find it next to the Barbie Dolls, is this political correctness gone mad or what. :help: they also want to turn our kids into cross dressers but I wont go there :no:
I'm afraid I don't see anything wrong with this at all. The old fashioned view may be the reason that there aren't many female engineers knocking about, when the ones I have encountered have a very good aptitude towards it.
Quote from: silly moo on December 15, 2014, 02:34:09 PM
I see no reason why girls shouldn't have train sets and play with cars, we travel in them and drive them after all!
I couldnt agree more, well said, my wife had a train set when she was young and our daughter has one now as well (sadly in the wrong you-know-what for further mention in this forum ! )
QuoteWe are even allowed to fly planes!
All together now, everyone, - "But are you allowed to park them ? " b-boom. :) :)
On a serious note : I thought it would be a good wheeze to buy each of them an N train set for Xmas (which of course I would be able to play with !)
BUT where are they all, TBA, Pre-order, discontinued etc! have they missed a marketing op. for this Xmas ?
Here's another indignant little girl ....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/11254779/Girl7-forces-Tesco-to-take-down-fun-gift-for-boys-sign.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/11254779/Girl7-forces-Tesco-to-take-down-fun-gift-for-boys-sign.html)
Good for her I say.
One thing that does dismay me apart from the segregated boys and girls areas in the toy shops is the general quality of toys these days (I must be getting old) but everything seems to be very cheap and plasticky.
:NGaugersRule:
Might be because (almost) everything is made of very cheap plastic ... ::)
Quote from: silly moo on December 15, 2014, 02:34:09 PM
Here's an interesting article from The Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/gender-stereotyping-why-should-boys-have-the-best-train-sets-9893216.html (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/gender-stereotyping-why-should-boys-have-the-best-train-sets-9893216.html)
From that link :
"But when she asked her mother, Kim Carnell, to put the "For girls" filter on "
I wonder why she asked that ?
It was a choice offered not forced ?
I may have missed something, just speed-read it :)
If anyone is worried about me making that parking joke, watch out else I will bore you all with tales of how I stayed home to do the home and family thing whilst my wife continued working , , , :)
I've just looked on the Toys R Us website. You can filter by age range and then there is the option to filter by boys, girls and unisex. What is interesting is that looking at the 12-14 year old age range is that there are 4679 toys for boys, 4382 for girls and only 50 unisex.
It's not just with toys, I'm a Cub Scout Leader and I have girls in my Cub Pack. In fact we've had girls in Scouting for about 10 years now, not that I'm completely comfortable with it, but can understand the rationale behind it, although quite how a boy would go on if he wanted to join the Guide movement, I don't know.
I do think that there should be somewhere where boys can be boys and girls can be girls, now I'm not saying that as a sexist comment, but there are occasions when I get comments from my male Cubs of "Do the girls have to come with us", now I don't think it's a sexist type comment being made, because at 8-10 years old I don't think they even realise that girls are different, certainly the girls in my pack give as good as they get, but I do think that the boys would like at least one evening where they can just be, well, boys!!!
Although, the a lot of Leaders in Scouting are female, go figure that one!!
Regards
Neal.
Sorry if you misunderstood my original post, I have nothing against girls playing trains in fact I think its great when they do, neither do I have anything against boys playing with GI Joe or Ken dolls :thumbsup:
I am more than happy for women doing men's work or men doing women's work, :thumbsup: not so keen on the unisex toilets though, :thumbsdown: the other day we had a debate with women and men about the idea of changing the the way the toy aisles are set out, all thought it was unnecessary to change from separate boys and girls aisles, if you want to buy a girl toy for a boy or visa versa it was easier to find in the respective aisles, some said when you buy your clothes you go to the men's or women's departments so why treat kids differently :doh:
In my original post I only mentioned the toy aisles not who should play with what :D
If you think about it, it is nothing more than a 'sales ploy'.
Normally if you wanted something for little 'David' you would look in the boys toys aisle and
if you wanted something for little 'Mary' you'd look in the girls toys aisle.
By mixing them up, the toy store is forcing you to look at every section and shelf hoping you
will buy more :hmmm:
Roger
Oh ! You removed the bit about
Quotefrankly I am surprised that my fellow Brits have become so touchy over this subject :confused2: if you read my original post all I was commenting on was I thought it was strange that people mix the toy aisles up,
Which I thought was most interesting and made me think !
perhaps we are just old fogies with too much time on our hands and like a good discussion / disputation / argument ? ! heheee :)
So yes, you have a good point and in that vein let me comment (comment on , not argue with :) :) ) upon your precise topic :-
Quote from: longbridge on December 15, 2014, 07:00:36 PM
if you want to buy a girl toy for a boy or visa versa it was easier to find in the respective aisles,
If you are a lone parent (or sole parent for the day ) and you take your boy and your girl into ye olde toy shopee and let them run , , ,
which do you keep an eye on and follow,
the boy down the 'boys toys' section [to make sure he doesnt get up to mischief] or the girl down the girlish section [to make sure she doesnt get lost] ?
Or better, a new wave shop with mixed toy section where you can keep an eye on them both and maybe find a toy for you as well lol!
Some stereotypes in [] above just for fun :)
Good topic, thanks for raising it, I'll now shut up and continue wondering where all the N train sets went :( , from behind this parapet ;)
:smiley-laughing: :smiley-laughing: I loved your last comment Malcolm, so long as we know where to find our N gauge stuff who gives a hoot :smiley-laughing: :smiley-laughing:
why not as our local large toy multi national does ,dolls in the dolls ailses ,electronics in the electronics ailses ,games in the games ailses babies section , toddler section ect,that way no gender specific ailses
and you can find what you want. only has Brio raiilways though
You'll probably find that stores will continue to segregate toys in this manner. They break down stock into categories and put away stock (whether in warehouse racking or on the shelves in the stores) of similar categories together. It aids productivity - instead of a staff member wandering around (where the hell does this go?), they will know roughly where in the store to take particular items.
Quote from: javlinfaw7 on December 16, 2014, 01:15:46 AM
dolls in the dolls ailses ,electronics in the electronics ailses ,games in the games ailses babies section , toddler section ect,that way no gender specific ailses
and you can find what you want. only has Brio raiilways though
Exactly! No reason to classify on the basis of sex. Why make a kid feel like they are 'wrong' for wanting a toy from the other section? The toys can stay exactly where they are, just don't label them by sex. Action toys, dolls, board games, whatever.
My daughter, now a rather wonderful and impressive 25 year old, was brought up with dolls and cars and fire engines and a little shop... her favourite was putting Dolly in the highchair and playing hair dressers. It didn't matter what you bought in her shop of tiny 'trial size' goodies, the total always seemed to come to "seventy twenty pence".
But she had the options to express herself without any feeling of any stigma attached to playing with trains or dinosaurs if she wanted to. She turned out to be very feminine and loves shoes and having a pedicure, but that's her... No one made her feel like that's how she should be. She surprised us though... She works in child education and isn't a hair dresser!
Couldn't agree more Mustermark. Perfectly fine to arrange toys by theme or type. If, on average, girls go one way and boys go another then that's fine but it's not OK to classify them by sex or gender and imply a 'wrong' choice. The sooner society makes it's way out of the dark ages the better in my opinion.
It's not about 'political correctness' it's about creating the sort of society that we want our children to live in, one little change at a time. Do you want your children to be free to make their own choices about who they want to be? Or do you want important aspects of their personality to be decided by society's inability to get past anachronistic Victorian attitudes?
Not that I'd put toys on the top of my list of things to change. Pay equality between men and women and the false assumption in our legal system that mothers should be the primary parent are much more important, I believe.
Quote from: silly moo on December 15, 2014, 02:34:09 PM
We are even allowed to fly planes!
You'll be wanting the vote next! :D
Quote from: Mustermark on December 16, 2014, 02:10:58 AM
It didn't matter what you bought in her shop of tiny 'trial size' goodies, the total always seemed to come to "seventy twenty pence".
I love that Mark, brings back memories of my own wee one growing up :thumbsup:
Quote from: JonHarbour on December 16, 2014, 01:53:26 AM
You'll probably find that stores will continue to segregate toys in this manner. They break down stock into categories and put away stock (whether in warehouse racking or on the shelves in the stores) of similar categories together. It aids productivity - instead of a staff member wandering around (where the hell does this go?), they will know roughly where in the store to take particular items.
Surely there's nothing wrong with this; just don't label them boys' or girls' toys.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with alowing children (or adults!) of both sexes to play with whatever toys they choose and develop their own tastes without stereotyping or criticising.
What is wrong is dictating to retailers how they should arrange their stock.
Yet another example of do-gooders with a perfectly reasonable intent, going about it in the wrong way and persuing the wrong target, leaving themselves open to media redicule...
I think this topic is going towards " Who gives a monkey's ? "
Regarding the OP, I saw all that when it appeared in the Aus media some time ago, and they've moved on to other things as happens all the time.
Let's face it, it's a non-issue. There are a lot more things to concern oneself about.
I think this topic has run its course so it is now :locked:
Thanks to everyone for their views - we all seem broadly in agreement :)