Quote:
Originally Posted by EnderD_503
The problem is that the child does not always choose the toy. In most cases, the child doesn't. I kept my Barbies in their boxes in the closet untouched and paid no attention to them whatsoever and extended family members (thankfully my parents were a little smarter) kept getting me Barbie's. I'm definitely not an exception, I'm definitely not the only one who experienced this. Talk to a lot of folks on this very forum (whether butch, femme or trans) and many will tell you that they had the exact same experience. Talk to your local queer community, people assigned male at birth, whether cis or trans, who preferred to play with dolls but were yelled at for even trying. People assigned female at birth who would much rather be playing sports, but were yelled at or told they couldn't because "you're a girl, act like a girl." I'm not talking about "transgendered dolls" I'm talking about society frequently forcing gender stereotypes onto children. All children. I'm talking about society telling girls or children assigned female at birth that they need to want to breastfeed, have children, be "nurturing" and play with toy kitchens.
Like it or not, encouraging nurturing in the case of dolls like this is enforcing gender roles. The advertisements shared here are not asking little boys to breastfeed their dolls in order to "be like mommy," it's targeted to female children.
As far as encouraging nurturing, not all children want to grow up to be "nurturers." It's not a human trait across the board. I'm not going to go and discourage a child who wants to play with that kind of doll from doing so, but neither do I want to see such heavy emphasis on "encouraging" children to be nurturing...especially when girls are so frequently the target.
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Ender, my Goof is transgendered, and we learn daily from each other. I'm not unaware of the horrors of the wrong toy or social expectations that come with those toys. Childhood comes with "toy baggage" for many of us. My point is the individual child should motivate a toy purchase. Not their gender, their gender expectation, or marketing companies.