Gender-neutral toys would threaten traditional gender roles

The argument

Proponents of this position argue that the case for gendered toys rests on a claim about social order rather than about commerce. On their account, societies have for centuries recognised that girls and boys go on to fulfil different roles: girls, they hold, naturally grow up to become wives and mothers, while boys enter the workforce. Gendered toys are not, on this view, an arbitrary marketing convention imposed on children but an accommodation the toy industry makes to a division of roles that already exists. The argument holds that toymakers are responding to observed differences rather than manufacturing them. Girls, proponents say, gravitate toward toys involving caregiving, creativity and appearances, while boys tend to prefer more aggressive, action-oriented play. Gender-specific advertising is then read as doing nothing more than appealing to those natural differences, and doing so in a way that remains mindful of the role each child is expected to occupy in society. A toy marketed to girls and one marketed to boys are treated as reflections of an existing pattern rather than as instruments that create it. The conclusion follows from treating that pattern as something worth preserving. If the toy industry stopped producing gendered toys, proponents argue, children would cross the gender barriers their toys currently reinforce — girls playing at the aggressive, action-oriented games assigned to boys, and boys at the caregiving ones assigned to girls. Because the toys children play with are understood here as preparation for adult roles, that crossing is taken to threaten traditional gender roles themselves. It is precisely because gender-neutral toys would have this effect, on this argument, that toys should continue to be gendered.

Premises

Counter-arguments

It is naive to assume that children naturally assume differing societal roles. For centuries, our societies limited the roles that children could grow up to occupy based on their genders. In light of our culture's recent re-evaluation of gender identity, we must stop prescribing certain societal roles to children, opting instead to let them choose their own path in life. Additionally, we should not view toys as a means of furthering certain societal agendas. Toys exist solely to promote the holistic development of children.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise treats a historical division of labour as a natural fact. The counter-argument on record replies that societies restricted the roles available to children by sex for centuries, so what is observed is the result of that restriction rather than independent evidence of a natural tendency. [Rejecting P2] Toy gendering has not been stable enough to reflect anything natural. The colour coding now taken as fixed was reversed within living memory, and gender-segregated toy marketing was markedly less pronounced in the 1970s than it became in the decades that followed — a pattern that tracks marketing strategy rather than children's dispositions. [Rejecting P3] The argument is circular at its centre. That gender-neutral toys would let children 'cross gender barriers' is offered as the harm, but that a barrier exists and should be maintained is exactly what is in dispute. Naming the consequence does not establish that it is bad. [Rejecting C] The counter concludes that toys should not be treated as instruments for maintaining a social order at all, and that their purpose is the holistic development of the child — which the argument's own account of boys' and girls' toys would restrict in opposite directions.