California will require large retailers to provide gender neutral toy sections | Hacker News Reader

California will require large retailers to provide gender neutral toy sections

latimes.com

17 pointsxqcgrek236 comments

What happened to just voting with your dollar? If a store doesn't present the items in the way you prefer, go to a store that does. If enough people feel the same way the store will either change or go out of business. The government doesn't need to be forcing businesses to do stuff like this, IMHO.

> Kids learn spatial skills from construction toys, for example, which can help later on when they learn math in school.

But wait, don't girls do better at maths in school, despite construction toys being a "boy's toy"?

This is why we need gender-neutral toy sections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CU040Hqbas

What counts as a "section"? Is one shelf section with some token toys (eg. legos, magnets) enough?

The law is pretty vague on this point.

"in which a reasonable selection of the items and toys for children that it sells shall be displayed"

I'd expect a single tiny shelf to be deemed unreasonable, but where exactly the line lies doesn't seem to be defined.

Why not just forbid the use of store imposed gender labels? Wouldn't that be easier, and more in keeping with thr historical interpretation of civil rights law?

>Why not just forbid the use of store imposed gender labels?

Entirely? Or only for the "probably shouldn't be gendered toys"? Going with "entirely" doesn't seem right because like it or not, people have a certain kind of toy in mind when shopping, and they want easily know where the barbies are.

So have the Barbie section. The car section, etc. Like supermarket signage. It’s been a while since I’ve been to a toy store though so I don’t know what it’s like these days.

Right, but they're not going to be placed randomly. The barbie shelves will still be next to the dollhouse shelves. You see the same thing in supermarkets. The fruit area is next to the vegetables. Under this proposal, there will still be boy's/girl's sections, they'll just be unlabeled.

In the same vein that we would not brook "white people's toys" or "Handicapped people's toys". I.e., even a shopkeeper may not stop people from buying cross section in those examples, but we recognize that it conveys an intimidating hostility and don't allow it.

But are "men's" section in clothing stores fine, even though many pieces of garment can plausibly be worn by both genders?

That's a good point. The clothing itself is alreay labeled that way though, and its literally part of the sizing. I guess I'd say the manufacturers are the better target for legislative changes on that. The shopkeeper is simply conveying the information he's given in the vast majority of the products.

Old Navy and Target both have gender-neutral sections now.

W T F ?

Why?

The reasons are included in the article.

I read them, and I still don't get them.

From the article:

> “Part of it is to make sure if you’re a young girl that you can find a police car, fire truck, a periodic table or a dinosaur,” Low said. “And then similarly, if you’re a boy, if you’re more artistic and want to play with glitter, why not? Why should you feel the stigma of saying, ‘Oh, this should be shamed’ and going to a different location?”

> Low said the daughter of one of his staff members inspired the bill when the girl questioned why she had to go to the boys section to find certain toys.

Actually most of the article is dedicated to answering this question.

You can also look at the bill: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

> The Legislature finds and declares both of the following:

> (a) Unjustified differences in similar products that are traditionally marketed either for girls or for boys can be more easily identified by the consumer if similar items are displayed closer to one another in one, undivided area of the retail sales floor.

> (b) Keeping similar items that are traditionally marketed either for girls or for boys separated makes it more difficult for the consumer to compare the products and incorrectly implies that their use by one gender is inappropriate.

Yes, what's the point of this?

To mitigate the negative effects mentioned?

> Leaper said boys and girls section also create a stigma for children who are gender non-conforming or exploring other gender identities.

> “But even for kids that identify with their birth-assigned gender there may be some children who want to play with some of these toys, but then end up avoiding them because they don’t want to be considered abnormal somehow,” Leaper said.

What a mental gymnastics indeed. I could've never figured out such a contrived line of thought.

I agree. There are much bigger issues the government is causing: proliferous waste of public funds, water crisis, incarceration rates, extremely homeless/vagrant populations among many others.

But those are actually hard problems, whereas this is a feel-good bill to placate a certain segment of your voter base.

All the more reason to pass this and move on to focusing on bigger issues!

Instilling implicit conformance to stereotypes is an affront to curiosity.

Curiosity matters.

Its ironic someone would invoke free thinking in defense of law like this.

A key tenet of progressive belief is that one can manipulate the thoughts of a populace by:

1) banning or altering the words they are allowed to use 2) introducing new words to soften concepts which were previously seen as weird, unusual, or deviant.

For example, the replacement of "prostitute" with "sex worker", or "undocumented immigrant" with "illegal aliens". The new terms obfuscate the plain meaning of the prior terms, thereby softening the subject in the minds of the populace one is trying to manipulate.

Finally. The over-gendering of simple toys has always perplexed me. I'm not sure government is the right place for such a move, but it's a long-overdue move regardless.

If you feel this way (I have no opinion either way) that's cool, you can buy toys for your kids and give gifts in a way that matches your values.

The state compelling stores to present toys in a certain way does not seem like a useful answer to the perceived problem.

You don’t have kids, do you? You can say it’s a social construct all you want, but most kids engage in kinds of ply and have preferences based on their biological sex. Doesn’t mean some don’t, just means that this isn’t some made up evil thing.

I've got kids, and witnessed my son get bullied/criticized/teased for painting his nails until he stopped.

Some preferences may come in part from biological sex (although I'd wager it's frequently two very closely overlapping bell curves), but some absolutely come from societal pressures that don't have to be present.

Right, so it's bullying that's the problem, not the fact that the vast majority of kids have sex-based preferences for play and no amount of legislation will fix that. I'm not saying there shouldn't be gender neutral stuff. Heck, as a parent, I tried to get as much of that kind of thing as possible both because I didn't want to force anything and because it makes hand-me-downs easier. But the point is, the vast majority of kids do have sex-based preferences for play and other things. Yes, we can accommodate those that don't, but the notion that all that stuff is merely a social construct flies in the face of lived experience and mountains of research. Boys and girls also have different socialization tendencies. We can just pretend they aren't real, but that won't do any good and it won't help non-conforming kids not get bullied.

Kids will play with whatever toys you'll give them.

Sure, but if you aren't an asshole and give them a choice, the majority of boys prefer certain kinds of toys and play. Is all of the developmental literature part of some cis conspiracy?

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