Hacker News Reader

Comment by ptaipale | Hacker News Reader

Well, if the toddlers can pick, the gendered products were there first.

But it is true that kids even make gendered toys out of practically nothing. For instance, a local kindergarten here: three-year-old boys were forbidden to have toy guns. So the kids took some flat crispbread at the midday meal and chewed edges off to make it gun-shaped, and then started playing cops and robbers. Bang bang.

View on HN

A child-made toy gun is not a gendered toy.

A gendered toy would be a toy gun packaged in a blue box with only images of boys on the packaging.

What makes blue more boy-specific than guns are, objectively? For whatever reasons, whether through child instincts or society, both are generally preferred by boys over girls.

The pictures of only boys on the blue boxes and the pictures of only girls on the pink boxes is something that needs to be considered.

I don't care if more boys buy guns and more girls buy toy horses. I do care if those toys are packaged in rigidly gendered packaging and stocked in gendered sections of the toy store.

I recently saw Nerf guns for girls in the store. While my children are not yet of Nerf gun age, I think the Nerf gun for girls might significantly increase the odds that one day I'll be able to have Nerf battles with her. So yay for that.

I would probably first try with a "normal" Nerf gun, but if that doesn't stick, why not try the girl variant.

Nerf guns, or Nerf bows? I've seen a lot of girl-gendered bows lately, thanks to The Hunger Games, I guess.

I wonder how did they pick that "cops and robbers" game in the first place...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com