Granted the kids are in Sweden, but it made me smile to see that even kids are recognizing that they don't have to conform to gender roles/stereotypes about play.
The claim came from Swedish-based consumer advocacy group Reklamombudsmannen, after a sixth grade class in Stockholm appealed to them as part of a project. The class examined the toy catalog, which showed boys playing in "action-filled environments" as superheroes, while girls are shown "sitting or standing in passive poses" dressed up in princess costumes. The kids felt that the scenes depicted reinforced a subjective idea of normal play, and filed a complaint against Toys'R'Us for gender discrimination.
The rest of the article can be found here
I wish this was part of regular study for 6th graders here in the states.
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...no idea why it did not record my whole statement...
I said, I
Sorry, but this made me LOL!
Did you have the pointy less than or greater than symbols? I think those don't read on the comments.
haha yes i did. i learned though...third time's the charm! lmao :P
Oh, yeah. You can use html in the comments, so trying to do an ascii heart with a pointy-bracket would break the rest of the comment. ?
You can use the preview button to check if the post will turn out the way you want.
...ok, seriously feministing needs a "delete comment" option because this is just ridiculous.
For the last time (hopefully...) I said I LOOOOVE scandinavia sooo much :)
lolwut? The kids filed a lawsuit for discrimination?
Those are some fucking awesome kids. Christ.
Three issues here:
First of all, I hardly think the 6th graders themselves were motivated to get rid of "gender discrimination" without some kind of ideological pushing by their teacher. This is frightening to me, showing the inappropriate political influence of a undoubtedly twisted teacher. A better idea would be to wait until the children are older to let them decide "proper" gender roles.
Secondly, I hardly think that portraying boys and girls in a situation constitutes discrimination. Would the optimal solution be to never portray boys as superheroes just to avoid possible discrimination? Must we portray boys as passive and girls as active to avoid being criticized for being discriminatory? What if some girls don't want to be superheroes? What if they want to be "passive" and sit down?
Lastly, this comment makes me laugh: “When I see that only girls play with certain things then, as a guy, I don’t want it.” Is this little boy being discriminatory because he doesn't want to play with the same toys that only girls play with? He is part of a group fighting gender disrcimination, yet he is fuleing it at the same time.
You mean sort of like teachers who bring veterans to class to give the kids speeches on how "freedom is not free?"
If there is discrimination going on, is it not the teacher's responsibility to bring forth these points to the kids?
It's sad that 6th-graders can realize situations of gender being played into society and you can't.
Go play in traffic while the rest of us adults discuss matters that we've been education on.
To clarify, I was talking about Republican conservative teachers who, because of their pro-war agenda, brought veterans to class to talk about the war.
In fact, one of them went so far as to take away the students' desk for the afternoon, to signify that, supposedly, if there were no wars, and no soldiers, these kids wouldn't have desks.
I had to clarify, lest someone think my ass is pro war.
False dilemma.