Change the words “for boys” to “for whites” or “for straights” and see how outraged people get.
Sexism is just as bad as racism and homophobia.
Really I cannot believe we are still having this conversation. This is fucking 2014. Do we ever get to be people and not “girls”???
Ohh brother.:dubious:
This straw man was inevitable.
It’s a stupid sentence in the directions for a toy. Nobody repealed the 13th Amendment.
This example of vile and horrible sexism is too much for me. Our culture is too backwards for me.
That’s it. I’m moving to Saudi Arabia.
I don’t mean to piss anyone off by saying this, but I wonder if we encourage kids to be gender dysphormic by genderizing everything so much. Want a kid who feels comfortable being a boy or a girl? Stop with the stupid pigeonholding. A little girl who wants to play Star Wars and doesn’t give a shit about a “friends” Lego set shouldn’t have to wonder if she’s really a boy locked in a girl’s body.
Imagine how outraged people would get if it said “for easily outraged batshit insane bag ladies”?
Well LEGO is headquartered and made in Denmark, sooooooo…
Amen. I wonder why this is so hard for people to understand.
Gender dysphoria is about a lot more than the toys kids play with. It’s about feeling like they have the wrong brain and genitals. Gender roles are reinforced by the toys a child is presented with, but they aren’t *defined *by those toys.
I grew up in the 70s and Lego at that time wasn’t divided between “girl” and “boy” sets; it was just Lego. My only outrage came when my neighbor built her truck with the bricks upside down so the flats faced up. Totally the wrong way to build! Of course, now when I think about it her truck looked better that way than mine did.
Seems a shame the marketing maroons have gotten a hold of this…
Somewhat related: http://www.brickwiki.info/wiki/SNOT_techniques
Brian
I think my nephews have a couple of the super-costly Star Wars sets; one has the giant Death Star model, and the other has the lifesize R2-D2. My SiL’s mother bought them. And I’ve gotten them a few of the cooler pricy sets, too. 'Cause I’m the cool uncle, and we can play with them together.
My niece has several of the “girly” sets. She farms out the construction to her brothers, then plays with them herself by making up stories about what the minifigs are doing. Her brothers will only touch the “girly” sets to build them; after that, they are anathema. The boys play with their lego sets by having smash-up battles which require everything to be rebuilt. My niece has no interest in the Star Wars (or Marvel, or Harry Potter) sets; “those are for boys”.
Whether or not they’ve all been conformed to gender roles by marketing, it is certainly the case that Lego has made more sales by genderizing. And I’ve been unsuccessful in enticing my niece into interest in Star Wars (even if Leia is now a Disney Princess).
I’ve worked around alot of kids.
Yes, its mostly boys who play with them. Usually at a ratio of around 10:1. Even when the girls do play I see them mostly build stationary objects while boys build things to race, fly, or smash.
Reminds me of a Roseanne episode.
I’ve never believed in ‘these are a girls things and these are boys things’.
As a father of two girls, this is something I’ve wrestled with, and as much as it pains me to say it, boys and girls are different. :eek: Can girls do anything boys can do and vice versa? Sure. Will they? often no. Whether it’s societal influence and peer pressure, or brains just wired differently, studies show that boys and girls play differently. Are there outliers? yes, of course, but the generalizations are there because they are, statistically speaking, usually correct. And I see it with my kids, and others.
I have more Star Wars lego sets than is really sane. For a while there, when I was single and foolish, I was collecting every one as they came out. We have a room in the basement where all those legos are available to play with. Do my girls build spaceships and robots and superheros? No, they build houses and schools and princesses. (We deliberately bought a bunch of female minifigures for them so they wouldn’t be stuck with the handful of Leia’s and Padme’s. (For some reason, they don’t like the alien girls like Aayla Secura, etc.))
you can scoff at the Lego Friends sets if you like, but they aren’t just pink legos. They did a lot of research into how girls play with legos and what they wanted from them: Girls' Legos Are A Hit, But Why Do Girls Need Special Legos? : NPR
And it worked. My girls adore them, and they are a big success.
Now, are there girls and women who’ve bought or requested a sandcrawler lego set for themselves? sure… but I don’t think it’s anywhere near 50/50.
Bottom line: lego could’ve left off the words “for boys”. They probably should have. It doesn’t need to be said. It doesn’t add anything, and only looks bad. But the number of little girls who like Star Wars Lego better than other Lego sets is probably about as big as the number of little boys who prefer Lego Friends.
You don’t belive girls and boys can own things?
They do, and they usually own different things. There’s nothing wrong with that.
We were at Burger King this past weekend and the father of a family came up to the counter with his Gaby Janglin toy from the movie Rio 2. He scolded the cashier while waving it in her face and said “we ASKED for a BOY’S toy. PLEASE give me a BOY’S toy”.
She replied “That’s all we have, Sir”. Her teeth gritted the whole time.
It was such a weird stand-off that we had walked into and wondered if there might have been a previous row with this family before because it was quite hostile to begin with. That said, the whole thing seemed silly because:
- the toy is genderless
- The kid played with the toy anyway when the dejected father returned with it
- After that family left, I saw the cashier give a different toy to another family.
Eh, gendered toys. Girls can too play with “boys’ toys”. 
I wouldnt mock the Lego Friends sets.
They can teach some useful skills like architecture, layout, and interior design.