Saturday, August 15, 2015

Samantha Allen on Controversy re: Target's New Gender-Neutral Policies: "In the Bizarro World of Far-Right Logic, Gender Is at Once the Strongest Force on the Planet and the Most Fragile"



Samantha Allen brilliantly analzyes the bizarre irony at the heart of protests against Target's new policy of shying away from gender-tagging of toys:


If gender is a universal, biological, and God-ordained constant, then why do children need cultural reinforcement from a retail chain to figure it out? In the bizarro world of far-right logic, gender is at once the strongest force on the planet and the most fragile. The God of Genesis may have created male and female but unless Target puts these words on signs for action figures and Barbie dolls, all of His hard work will be undone. The protests seem to be motivated by the paradoxical fear that children will grow up genderless without Target’s help even though their biology should supposedly guide them into pink and blue aisles without any intervention.

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