We don’t have a Ross. Remember, we’re backwoods.
Thankfully, not an “inflict my toxic leftist nonsense” kind of chick, so I’ve got that going for me (which is good).
Speaking a toxic leftist daughter of toxic leftist parents, my crew of friends and I, when confronted with parents who wouldn’t let us own toy guns, would all, girl and boy alike, cheerfully use any vaguely phallic found object for the purpose of pretending to gun each other down, not to mention blowing up any army men (the small, green, plastic ones, we didn’t go Lord of the Flies on recruits on leave) we got our hands on with penny bungers, and otherwise acting out violently heroic, heroically violent, or just plain violent fantasies in our free time. There was no sending the girls off to play quietly with our dollies. That might have led to bloodshed.
I don’t see a need for a boy’s toys aisle. Kids these days with their abundance of toys. Let them use their imaginations and a stick (and whatever small explosives are even marginally available) like we had to!
Seriously, though, relabeling it the ‘Toys’ aisle sounds sensible. What’s the worst that’s going to happen? A six year old girl might have a tantrum because it’s full of GI Joes? On the other hand, by removing the gender signifier from the name, the girls might think, ‘hey, thar be toys’ and go shop, and the store might make some more sales. Because we all know girls love an excuse to shop.
There’s no more harm in calling it the “Toys” section as there is calling it the “Boys Toys” section - that’s both the point and not the point. The OP seems to take such offence at the notion that the drug store makes the presupposition of gender-specific toys that she felt it necessary to peck out a nastygram demanding gender neutrality in the toy isle.
And they cow to the demand. It’s like the world has gone mad.
Trucks are boy toys, barbies are girl toys. Kids don’t need us to tell them that, they figure it out on their own - gender-preference toys are not a ‘social construct’. We’ve got a vocal minority demanding nonsense like the OP is bragging about, and it’s going to lead to COMMUNISM! AND SOCIAL DISEASES! Ahem. Just kidding. I don’t know if it leads to anything but the wasted time corporations trying to satisfy an increasingly unreasonable public, but that’s bad enough. If that complaint letter landed on my desk, I’d be posting about it here at the SDMB, too, but my thread title would be
“PC Idiocy reaches new low - trucks are NOT ‘Boys Toys’”
and I’d post it in the Pit (where I’d be summarily lambasted, cause this is about the greatest level of outrage I’m able to raise here). I just think people that do stuff like this have too much time on their hands, and noy enough good sense. YMMV.
And hence, no need for a sign. It’s more fun to step back and let nature takes its course.
My mileage clearly does vary. My big yellow tonka cement mixer was my favourite toy, and I’ve still not grown a penis. Which is a shame, because peeing standing up would be handy.
I know, I know. Anecdote ain’t data. But among the commie pinko radical macrobiotic set I grew up in, I’m just saying the girls were not going nuts to get our hands on the forbidden barbie dolls, or, in fact, terribly interested in the girl games.
Which raises a whole other set of issues over why masculine childhood activities were privileged among children raised with a conscious effort on the part of the parents not to impose gender roles, but it sure doesn’t reinforce that left to our own devices we wandered off down the straight and narrow path to pink and frilly vs. camo print and mud.
(But I have the darlingest pink boxing gloves now.)
I’m curious about whether the store in question had another aisle labeled “girls toys” or simply “toys”. I haven’t been in my local Rite-Aid for a while, and wouldn’t have noticed the aisle labels in the “toy section” in any case.
Yes there are.
Trucks, guns, racing cars, Action Man/GI Joe figures, Wild West/Spiderman/Batman costumes, and so on are most definitely “Boy’s toys”.
If girls want to play with them too, that’s fine, but the reality is they are intended for boys and to state otherwise is touchy-feely lefty PC tree-huggery.
You know what would happen if you tried to throw a hissy about the sort of thing outlined in the OP in Australia? The store manager would ignore you, and if you tried to take it any further you’d end up being made a laughing-stock in the local paper as an example of the sort of parent who is raising kids wrapped in cotton-wool and bubble-wrap and causing the erosion of Australian Values etc etc and so on and so forth.*
I see no problem dividing toys along gender lines. That doesn’t mean that boys can’t play with Barbie dolls or girls can’t play with GI Joe if they so choose, but the reality is that if they do that here, they’ll get beaten up by the other kids for being a poofter or a dyke or something like that.
Certainly, though, if I’m buying toys for cousins and the like, I’m going to be getting my nephews Hot Wheels and Noisy Electric Guitar toys and my nieces My Little Pony and Care Bears stuff.
If you want to create a Sensitive New Age environment for your kids, great. Just don’t force it on the rest of us who are quite happy with the way things are, thank you very much.
*That’s not to say you actually are raising a kid metaphorically wrapped in cotton wool/bubble-wrap; I’m just illustrating a point here.
You’ve never met me. I played one mean game of marbles, I did! Drove my best friend’s cousins up the wall that they’d be beaten by two girls. Both her family and mine are heavily male.
Several of my (very few) dolls suffered the consequences of my male cousins’ playing with them. Specially that one cousin who used any toy as a hammer, be it tanks or talking dolls.
What about a department store with a “Boys’ Clothes” section. Would that be OK?
Yes, it would. In fact, several department and clothing stores here have exactly that. How could anyone have a problem with that? 
Unless I’m being whooshed, of course, in which case forget I posted this. 
I don’t have a problem with it, but it seems to me that saying “boys dress like this while girls dress like that” is playing to gender stereotypes as well.
Except that, in the eyes of the group that actually matters to small children (ie, other small children) it’s actually not fine, and kids police this sort of crap with eye-rolling persistance.
It doesn’t seem to be so much of a deal among preschoolers, but now that my daughter’s in kinder we get a constant diet of “oooh you can’t be a girl, girls aren’t supposed to have short hair, girls aren’t supposed to play with the trucks, girls aren’t supposed to have a boy as their best friend.” and so on ad nauseam.
I mean, I’m not going to have a hissy fit over it but yes, labelling toy aisles with what they actually have in them rather than who you think will want to use them is a positive change. I know there are a lot of girly-girl pink-lovers out there, but why be pointlessly obnoxious to the outliers? I’d like my girl to be able to go happily play with her meccano, blissfully ignorant of the fact that she’s not supposed to
Ooh look! There’s my point coming back the other way. Hello, point!
Is it because you guys are generally just “rough and tumble”? Does this extend to the women too? 
Clearly you did not grow up with my parents. 
Aside from spending a lot of time in the “boys” aisle of various toy stores, where the video games were still filed in the mid-80s (when they bought THEMSELVES a Nintendo, and we children were allowed to play with it), my folks were in the habit of stuffing stockings every Christmas with an assortment of small gizmos from the Edmund Scientifics mail order catalog. Neither my sister nor I had much interest in things like toy guns, but we had about equal amounts of Barbie-brand things and small objects that demonstrated laws of physics.
(My parents have not moved house in over 25 years. Someday, they are actually going to clean out the front storage closet and find about nine million magnetic marbles, a giant bin of LEGO blocks, several dozen of those little gyroscopic tops that spin when you yank the string, and my father’s prized collection of dip-ducks.)
Despite being very girly girls in many respects, my sister and I still wind up buying a lot of toys intended for “boys”. All of my large entertainment purchases are computer or console based, and my sister’s main hobby is tinkering with her large pickup truck.
Here we have “Girl’s Toys,” “Boy’s Toys,” and “Social Games.” Seems a natural progression.
no no, the natural progression is towards social diseases
[/warped and twisted]
Actually the word “toys” itself is slightly objectionable, as it implies frivolity, a lack of serious purpose or worth, and is thus demeaning to the often differently-aged people of all sexes who use them. While we’re at it, what about the even more offensively-named “health and beauty” aisle, which preys upon a person’s insecurities and fear of death in the name of commerce? Or the section marked “seasonal” in a naked slap at equatorial climates? I fear that at best, gigi has merely made a tentative beginning.
The ideal RiteAid set-up:
Aisle One: “Things”
Aisle Two: “Other Things”
Aisle Three: “Liquids, Powders and Goo”
Aisle Four: “Objects”
Aisle Five: “Items”
Aisle Six: “Articles”
Aisle Seven: “Discarded Signage”
Aisle Eight: “Hundreds of Magazines Reflecting Society’s Objectification and Stereotyping of Women, Men, the Old and the Young, in Innumerable Ways That Go Much Deeper Than A Mere Sign Recognizing Traditional BUT NOT MANDATORY AND NO ONE EVER SAID THEY WERE Gender-Associations With Certain Toys So If A Customer Wanted A Truck, A Talking Baby Doll, Or Whatever He or She Would Have A Clue Whether to Go Left or Right and Maybe Save Some Time That Could be Better Spent Playing With the Kids.”
I think that by making an issue out of the signage, you came across as someone just looking for a reason to pick a fight. There’s no reason the sign had to be changed. I’ve been in toy stores looking for aisles of toys that my young nephews would enjoy, and happy to see the “boys’ toys” sign. If I’m looking for toys for one gender, I’ll look for the aisle with that type of toy. The kids don’t care; they’re looking at the toys themselves, not at the aisle headings.
No, there’s no great harm in having a gender neutral sign “toys”, but there was equally no harm in the gender specific sign. I admire the manager for bowing to your demand rather than doing what he should have done, which is dismissing you with an eye roll and a “thanks- we’ll look into that”.