California considers bill requiring gender-neutral children's sections at large retailers

[Samael_Khan]

You're not listening. That's okay.

I am. There is just holes in your thought process regarding this topic.

 

[Samael_Khan]

But why do we assume boys build things?
Why do we assume girls like and play with dolls?
Why do we declare that puzzles are genderless?

Well that is just the thing. How do we know how our cultural ideas like these arose? Was it because of biology or gender? I suspect a combination of both. I would think that the more common an idea of gender is throughout the world, the more likely it is that that trait is biological. If it is purely isolated traits in certain cultures then those are more likely to be purely a social construction.

 

[Samael_Khan]

These preferences are not genetic, they arise from cultural context that is unlikely to be even perceptible to infants at birth, let alone so ingrained that they would be inevitably driven into the pink vs. blue and/or pony vs. dinosaur dichotomy that is being advertised to us.

In fact, since you mention blue and pink, blue in Western culture was traditionally associated with Mary, Mother of God, while pink, as a lighter version of purple, was considered a color reserved only for the most precious and imperial of children, but either they were not considered gendered colors, or the gendering of these colors varied wildly between countries and regions.

It was only at the Fin de Siècle that these perceptions would shift, and eventually crystallize into our current traditional gendered color scheme, where we are trained to believe that pink is unmanly, lesser, and therefore for girls and LGBTQ people, while blue is a color for manly men, both working class and bourgeois.

Well you have to prove that preferences are purely social constructs, which you can do in many cases but not all, especially preferences that are more common throughout different societies. As another poster mention, in the case of colours, it isn't necessarily the colour itself that males and females prefer but what the colour represents in a society that determines what males and females prefer. So if pink is associated with aggression then generally males would naturally gravitate towards that if males relate to aggressive representation.

Lions are not humans, and trying to infer wide-sweeping conclusions over human society based on observing animals usually ends in pseudoscience, see e.g. the pseudoscientific canard of "alphas and betas" that's so prevalent among a certain portion of frustrated-yet-impressionable young men.

For example, I have yet to encounter a single human society where it would have been acceptable, or even tolerated, for the patriarch to literally eat the children of the pride that had been sired by different fathers (which is something that dominant males in lion prides have been observed to do).

(edit: inserted some links, fixed the quote tags I messed up originally)

Humans are animals. We have common ancestors with other animals. Therefore it stands to reason that we can hypothesise human characteristics based off animals to show possible reasons for why humans behave. As for lions eating other males, even though it is not eating, we as a society have a long history of rulers killing males sired by other men so that those males do not inherit rulership. The alpha male eliminates potential threats. That is common in human society, such as in governments and the corporations. Thus we have already a common traits between human society and lion society. Although in our society females kill potential threats as well. An in lion society females also kill their children on occasion.

Understanding lion infanticide - Africa Geographic

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I am. There is just holes in your thought process regarding this topic.

No, I just recognize that many of your assumptions on this issue are baseless.

 

[Samael_Khan]

No, I just recognize that many of your assumptions on this issue are baseless.

Do you work in marketing?

Because if you do then you should be very well aware that you advertise to how the culture perceives things, not try and market to views that the culture does not hold. Thing is that a lot of cultures have a perception of what is boys toys and girls toys, and if you don't cater to that you will decrease visibility and the ability to tell a culturally relevant retail story, thus decreasing sales.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Do you work in marketing?

Because if you do then you should be very well aware that you advertise to how the culture perceives things, not try and market to views that the culture does not hold. Thing is that a lot of cultures have a perception of what is boys toys and girls toys, and if you don't cater to that you will decrease visibility and the ability to tell a culturally relevant retail story, thus decreasing sales.

That's them. Those are the assumptions I was talking about.

I guess we should be glad that we have you here: the marketing genius who knows better than all the toy brands I see on store shelves where "boy" and "girl" toys are all in together.

 

[Samael_Khan]

That's them. Those are the assumptions I was talking about.

I guess we should be glad that we have you here: the marketing genius who knows better than all the toy brands I see on store shelves where "boy" and "girl" toys are all in together.

Yeah you should be glad that I am here, I can educate you.

Just because stores do not make the separation, does not mean that the store is using best practice for retail.

I am talking from experience here. No assumption needed. We sold girls and boys toys but made no effort to separate them. Because that categorisation didn't gel with how consumers shopped, they didn't sell well. As soon as we placed the boys items in the boys section and the girls items in the girls section, our sales increase, because we were categorising the toys based off how people shopped. The toys section then becomes more organised and caters to people's shopping habits.

This is entry level retail practice, nothing genius about it.

Now, if the culture doesn't have that girl and boy distinction and peoples shopping habits are not based on gender, then it makes sense to organise the toys together rather than separate.

 

[SkepticThinker]

The funny thing is, LEGO was originally marketed to both girls and boys in Denmark. It was only when LEGO entered the American market that they started to gender their marketing. This only increased when they started partnering with high profile movie licenses such as Star Wars or Harry Potter, both licenses that were already strongly gendering towards a male audience in their marketing and merchandising (despite the massive female HP fanbase I might add).

As an overview and analysis as to how LEGO became gendered through gender-exclusive marketing, I recommend the videos of Youtube channel Feminist Frequency:

Very interesting. I had no idea.
Thanks for sharing.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Well that is just the thing. How do we know how our cultural ideas like these arose? Was it because of biology or gender? I suspect a combination of both. I would think that the more common an idea of gender is throughout the world, the more likely it is that that trait is biological. If it is purely isolated traits in certain cultures then those are more likely to be purely a social construction.

My take is that such notions are imposed upon us by societal norms at the time.

Hence the reason men used to wear heels and makeup a couple of centuries ago and we used to put little fancy dresses on baby boys just a few decades ago.
We put women in the role of cooks and cleaners when there's no evidence that women are biologically more inclined to be more interested in cleaning things and cooking. Personally, I hate doing those things and I'm a terrible cook.
Why shouldn't boys like dolls? They're supposed to represent babies. Do boys dislike babies? Should we not teach boys how to care for babies the way we do little girls? Do men not take care of their own children? Of course they do. Society has just decided that girls/women are supposed to care for babies/children. And it seems to me, in doing so, we're doing a great disservice to boys.

There are actual studies on this I'll have to look up after (sorry) that indicate that some of these things we assume are biologically ingrained to either gender/sex really are just the results of positive or negative reinforcement based on societal expectations. For instance, they talked about how boys seemed to be more skilled and adept in playing sports like baseball, when compared with girls. So should we assume that is biologically ingrained? Well, it turns out that the reason for this could just be that people with young boys tend to push them into playing sports like baseball from a young age, while they don't do the same for girls, because they assume girls wouldn't be interested in baseball and instead push them towards other things like dancing, for instance. So of course, the boys are going to be more skilled in playing baseball, on average, because they've had much more practice overall than girls have. That's just one of the ways we impose our ideas of gender norms onto children.

 

[Revoltingest]

Yeah you should be glad that I am here, I can educate you.

Just because stores do not make the separation, does not mean that the store is using best practice for retail.

I am talking from experience here. No assumption needed. We sold girls and boys toys but made no effort to separate them. Because that categorisation didn't gel with how consumers shopped, they didn't sell well. As soon as we placed the boys items in the boys section and the girls items in the girls section, our sales increase, because we were categorising the toys based off how people shopped. The toys section then becomes more organised and caters to people's shopping habits.

This is entry level retail practice, nothing genius about it.

Now, if the culture doesn't have that girl and boy distinction and peoples shopping habits are not based on gender, then it makes sense to organise the toys together rather than separate.

But your approach, ie, marketing based upon consumers'
actual behavior doesn't re-engineer that behavior to suit
government's desire for reducing gender differences.
We need strict economic regulation to implement its
brand of "progressive".

 

[ADigitalArtist]

Actors and some upper class fashions do not represent the majority of men. The only culture I can think of were everyone, regardless of sex or class, was obsessed with makeup and hair removal, was ancient Egypt. But they were odd in many ways.

I never said it did. But makeup was gender neutral for the majority of human history. The only reason it was considered 'upper class fashion' for a time was because the material used for it was expensive and poverty creates utilitarian views on makeup across the board. But as it became more readily available post 1600's you'd see nearly all men in Europe and the America's wearing powdered makeup, eyeliner and other cosmetics. It wasn't really until the 1800s that makeup started being relegated to women.

This just to underline the point that a lot of the assumption of biologically driven gender behavior isn't. Not that there's zero instances of it but it's way, way exaggerated.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Yeah you should be glad that I am here, I can educate you.

Well thank goodness for that.

Just because stores do not make the separation, does not mean that the store is using best practice for retail.

I am talking from experience here. No assumption needed. We sold girls and boys toys but made no effort to separate them.

So you worked in retail? So did I.

Good job.

Because that categorisation didn't gel with how consumers shopped, they didn't sell well. As soon as we placed the boys items in the boys section and the girls items in the girls section, our sales increase, because we were categorising the toys based off how people shopped. The toys section then becomes more organised and caters to people's shopping habits.

This is entry level retail practice, nothing genius about it.

"Nothing genius" seems an especially apt description.

Tell you what: rather than "educating" random people on the internet, why don't you dispense your wisdom on all the large chain retailers who apparently don't agree with you?

Please let us know what they say after you tell them that instead of putting all the Lego together in one section, they should put all the pink Lego boxes in the same aisle as the dolls, where they should also put all the pink bikes.

(And on bikes: what could Walmart be thinking? Grouping the kids' bikes by size, with pink and blue bikes all jumbled together? These colours obviously need to be segregated into different aisles!)

Now, if the culture doesn't have that girl and boy distinction and peoples shopping habits are not based on gender, then it makes sense to organise the toys together rather than separate.

Maybe take a step back and ask yourself if whether what you're calling "culture" isn't just your own personal prejudices that you've (erroneously) assumed are shared by everyone else.

 

[Kooky]

Well you have to prove that preferences are purely social constructs, which you can do in many cases but not all, especially preferences that are more common throughout different societies. As another poster mention, in the case of colours, it isn't necessarily the colour itself that males and females prefer but what the colour represents in a society that determines what males and females prefer. So if pink is associated with aggression then generally males would naturally gravitate towards that if males relate to aggressive representation.

That does not factor in those societies where colors are not clearly gendered, or that we only started to gender colors with the advent of industrialization and consumer economics. And just what behavior is considered "aggression" or "manly" is also culturally coded.

Of course, if our only reference point is modern Western society, and if we steadfastly refuse to see any examples to the contrary, then we will manage to convince ourselves that cultural values specific to our current society have always existed forever, and therefore must either be the product of evolution or divine creation, your pick. But personally, I remain extremely wary of such pat argumentation, especially when it concerns such phenomenally complex issues as collective human behavior.

Humans are animals. We have common ancestors with other animals. Therefore it stands to reason that we can hypothesise human characteristics based off animals to show possible reasons for why humans behave.

You are painting an awfully broad brush with this statement - humans are "animals", sure, but we are a very specific kind of animal, and as such, aren't likely have a whole lot in common with animal species whose biology, mental capacity, or social behavior differ significantly form ours.

As for lions eating other males, even though it is not eating, we as a society have a long history of rulers killing males sired by other men so that those males do not inherit rulership.

First of all, leadership of a lion's pride is not inherited.
Second of all, the instances of monarchs murdering children vastly pale to the instances of monarchs not murdering children.
Third of all, there is no evidence that we as humans are in any way genetically predisposed to monarchy - and indeed, evidence more collective or participatory forms of governance stretch back to antiquity (and arguably even further - elder councils, warrior assemblies, and consensual self-governance among small communities likely existed for a long time before that, though we of course have no hard evidence for this).

Fourth, and most importantly of all, there is absolutely no scientific evidence that human society functions at all like a lion pride, and plenty of evidence that the exact opposite is the case

The alpha male eliminates potential threats. That is common in human society, such as in governments and the corporations.

I have seen not a single credible sociological paper showing that "alpha males" actually exist among humans the way they do in e.g. baboon society.

"Alpha", "Beta" etc. are categories used in some management and conflict management models - but first of all, those are heuristic categories and not based on systematic scientifically sound observation, and second of all, the terms have a rather different meaning within the context of those models (we are back at the issue of academic language being used outside its proper context) and furthermore do not imply the conclusion you are argueing here.

Thus we have already a common traits between human society and lion society. Although in our society females kill potential threats as well. An in lion society females also kill their children on occasion.

Understanding lion infanticide - Africa Geographic

How many human children are typically murdered by their stepmothers or stepfathers, and which human societies can you name that find such behavior acceptable or even necessary?


In Bonobo society, conflicts are resolved with intimacy and casual sex.
Wolves live in family units who live, hunt and eat together.
Some jellyfish grow together in colonies.

We can infer a whole lot of things depending on what we want to see in animals, but without proper reasoning and scientific observation, all we get out of this are just-so stories, delivered to justify the flaws and problems of our current society to ourselves and others.

 

[Kooky]

Do you work in marketing?

Because if you do then you should be very well aware that you advertise to how the culture perceives things, not try and market to views that the culture does not hold. Thing is that a lot of cultures have a perception of what is boys toys and girls toys, and if you don't cater to that you will decrease visibility and the ability to tell a culturally relevant retail story, thus decreasing sales.

To indulge in a bit of mischievous trickery - what would you say, if advertisement was incapable of actually changing people's minds, would there still be a point to it?

Regardless, the marketing and advertisement industries do not exist apart from society.
They are part of the same culture everyone else is, and while the practice of gendering infants and young children likely did not originate with marketing executives, the decision to lean into that gendering heavily and marketing toys based predominantly - or in some cases, nearly exclusively - on gender strengthens and emphasises these gender roles.

 

[Samael_Khan]

"Nothing genius" seems an especially apt description.

Tell you what: rather than "educating" random people on the internet, why don't you dispense your wisdom on all the large chain retailers who apparently don't agree with you?

Please let us know what they say after you tell them that instead of putting all the Lego together in one section, they should put all the pink Lego boxes in the same aisle as the dolls, where they should also put all the pink bikes.

(And on bikes: what could Walmart be thinking? Grouping the kids' bikes by size, with pink and blue bikes all jumbled together? These colours obviously need to be segregated into different aisles!)

Actually here in South Africa it is done exactly that way. And interesting as well is that Walmart does own a few major stores here like Game and Makro. So we see isles for girls toys and isles for boys toys which is common. It isn't that I have to convince large retailers here it is that I agree with them.

And if you were actually paying attention to what I wrote you will notice that I mentioned "peoples shopping habits" and what the culture says, what you replied to below. Good retail layout is based on peoples shopping habits.

Maybe take a step back and ask yourself if whether what you're calling "culture" isn't just your own personal prejudices that you've (erroneously) assumed are shared by everyone else.

I already explained how it played out in practice. That is evidence enough for me for the culture that we have to deal with in the retail departments here. Prejudice has nothing to do with it.

 

[Samael_Khan]

But your approach, ie, marketing based upon consumers'
actual behavior doesn't re-engineer that behavior to suit
government's desire for reducing gender differences.
We need strict economic regulation to implement its
brand of "progressive".

In order to do that you will have to change how individual toys are marketed. So the packaging shouldn't make the gender distinction in the first place. Government will basically have to interfere in the corporate creative structure in order to make these changes and thus change society.

 

[Samael_Khan]

To indulge in a bit of mischievous trickery - what would you say, if advertisement was incapable of actually changing people's minds, would there still be a point to it?

There definitely wouldn't be a point to it. But the retail space isn't the place to change the mind. That should be done on the presentation of individual products and its packaging and some genius advertising on behalf of the company. Minds should be changed first and then retail adapts to that change. Just changing things placed in retail won't bring about a social change.

Regardless, the marketing and advertisement industries do not exist apart from society.
They are part of the same culture everyone else is, and while the practice of gendering infants and young children likely did not originate with marketing executives, the decision to lean into that gendering heavily and marketing toys based predominantly - or in some cases, nearly exclusively - on gender strengthens and emphasises these gender roles.

I agree. That is my point. In order to make the most money in retail best retail practice is to adapt store layout to the peoples cultural shopping habits. If they want to make sudden social change in retail then that would be bad practice because they wouldn't make as much money because of going against those habits. The whole point of marketing to gain money and capitalize on what is popular at the time and reinforce that idea so that people want your products more.

 

[Kooky]

There definitely wouldn't be a point to it. But the retail space isn't the place to change the mind. That should be done on the presentation of individual products and its packaging and some genius advertising on behalf of the company. Minds should be changed first and then retail adapts to that change. Just changing things placed in retail won't bring about a social change.

I agree. That is my point. In order to make the most money in retail best retail practice is to adapt store layout to the peoples cultural shopping habits. If they want to make sudden social change in retail then that would be bad practice because they wouldn't make as much money because of going against those habits. The whole point of marketing to gain money and capitalize on what is popular at the time and reinforce that idea so that people want your products more.

I think you're making this a little too easy on yourself, though.

I'm not convinced that cultural practices and behaviors operate along a simple If-Then (or Stimulus-Response, if you will) model the way our mathematical models tend to suggest. My understanding is that a much more accurate model is the feedback loop, where behavior and practices are being strengthened and reinforced by observation and repetition.

In such a model, you wouldn't be able to simply rationally will yourself out of a widespread cultural practice - the only way to enact any sort of lasting change at all, is to change your behavior in the here and now, and to continue encouraging others to change as well. Staying in the loop, on the other hand, reinforces existing practices and behavior.

What I mean by this is that when it comes to cultural traditions and social practices - especially such all-encompassing ones like gender roles - it is simply impossible for us to be an impassionate observer or a neutral party: We participate in society, and our behavior helps reinforce society's norms.

So any change we want to see necessarily needs to start with ourselves.

 

[Revoltingest]

In order to do that you will have to change how individual toys are marketed. So the packaging shouldn't make the gender distinction in the first place. Government will basically have to interfere in the corporate creative structure in order to make these changes and thus change society.

Everything must change....
Government will decide what society should become,
& begin training children by engineering toys to mold
them in the correct image.

 

[Samael_Khan]

Everything must change....
Government will decide what society should become,
& begin training children by engineering toys to mold
them in the correct image.

So it would be a joint effort between government and corporates to socially engineer children?