John Lewis has got rid of 'girls' and 'boys' labels in children's clothes.

Sassafras

I thought they'd been doing this for years because Eddie Izzard's mum used to get all his clothes from John Lewis.

Drew_TNBD

Fretwired said:

Drew_TNBD said:

Doesn't matter what they try to do, they'll never eradicate the hardwired biologically determined differences between men and women.

Yeah ... women are vastly superior and won't need men before long. The future is female .. men have no future so get your sex change booked on the NHS now.

Have you had a stroke recently or something? One minute you're Mr. Free Market right-winger, the next minute you're Che reincarnate!

digitalscream

Drew_TNBD said:

Fretwired said:

Drew_TNBD said:

Doesn't matter what they try to do, they'll never eradicate the hardwired biologically determined differences between men and women.

Yeah ... women are vastly superior and won't need men before long. The future is female .. men have no future so get your sex change booked on the NHS now.

Have you had a stroke recently or something? One minute you're Mr. Free Market right-winger, the next minute you're Che reincarnate!

It's the hormone therapy.

Sassafras

The new John Lewis Gender Neutral Range:

Drew_TNBD

Anne Robinson has let herself go.

sinbaadi

In other news Boots are bringing back the slightly revised "Here Come the Humans" advert campaign, which we all remember fondly.

Philly_Q

Drew_TNBD said:

Anne Robinson has let herself go.

I thought it was Angela Merkel trying to vamp up her image.

Danji

It's really interesting reading these responses, but I we've not moved on much since the 80's when my dad used to beat the fucking shit out of me before I even knew what gender was for wanting to be female.

Unlike Loretta from The Life of Brian, I don't want to have babies, but I'm often deeply unhappy being male. I have a girlfriend, a responsible job, and I do have a sense of humour about the whole thing, but as a child I would have loved for this along with an understanding family. I'm not going to go on about this too much, but believe it or not I hate the perception that we/I are a character from Little Britain. 

Drew_TNBD

Danji said:

I'm often deeply unhappy being male. 

I'd be quite interested to explore that if you were willing.

Danji

Drew_TNBD said:

Danji said:

I'm often deeply unhappy being male. 

I'd be quite interested to explore that if you were willing.

No thanks, I just wanted to explain that although I can see the funny side, there's also a terrible understanding on how it feels to be like this. 

Drew_TNBD

Danji said:

Drew_TNBD said:

Danji said:

I'm often deeply unhappy being male. 

I'd be quite interested to explore that if you were willing.

No thanks, I just wanted to explain that although I can see the funny side, there's also a terrible understanding on how it feels to be like this. 

Well wanting to be female is a bit of a misnomer I think... wanting to be feminine is a different thing, and I think should be perfectly acceptable. Sex and gender are two different things according to sociologists, and so you can't change your sex. Thus any moral outrage over 'boys' and 'girls' clothes is completely misplaced. Those clothes are labelled as such because of sexual dimorphic reasons and it has nothing to do with gender.

guitarfishbay

I don't have any issue with the idea of non gender specific clothing - it's the practical elements relating to fit that don't make sense to me.

starwarsnosebleed

CabbageCat said:No they wouldn't. They probably get trans people in their shops all the time. I doubt most of them would look twice.

Did you just assume my gender??
triggered!!!

mellowsun

Danji said:

No thanks, I just wanted to explain that although I can see the funny side, there's also a terrible understanding on how it feels to be like this. 

Sadly, I'm not sure you'll get much empathy for this here, the predominant view seems to be strongly on the side of traditional gender divisions.

guitarfishbay

mellowsun said:

Danji said:

No thanks, I just wanted to explain that although I can see the funny side, there's also a terrible understanding on how it feels to be like this. 

Sadly, I'm not sure you'll get much empathy for this here, the predominant view seems to be strongly on the side of traditional gender divisions.

I wouldn't be so pessimistic to be honest.  But I fully respect Danji's right to not discuss anything he doesn't want to.

Sporky

Drew_TNBD said:

Those clothes are labelled as such because of sexual dimorphic reasons and it has nothing to do with gender.

If that was entirely true you'd have the same styles in each section, just with different sizes/proportions. It wouldn't be (to slightly exaggerate) pink ponies on one side and blue racing cars on the other...

Drew_TNBD

Sporky said:

Drew_TNBD said:

Those clothes are labelled as such because of sexual dimorphic reasons and it has nothing to do with gender.

If that was entirely true you'd have the same styles in each section, just with different sizes/proportions. It wouldn't be (to slightly exaggerate) pink ponies on one side and blue racing cars on the other...

That's the thing... it often isn't the case. There are tons of clothes for girls that are blue, have stars on them instead of ponies, have guitars and footballs and all sorts of other traditional 'boy' things.

Our daughter is nearly a year old right, and she has a ton of clothes that don't look 'girly' and she has a ton that do as well.

Nothing wrong with adding more choice. But to take away choice just seems a bit nonsensical to me.

What I'm saying is that 'male' and 'female' or 'boy' and 'girl' are labels related to sex. The designs factor is related to culture... designs can change very easily... but clothes for girls will still be smaller than clothes for boys because of biology.

guitarfishbay

Drew_TNBD said:

Thus any moral outrage over 'boys' and 'girls' clothes is completely misplaced. Those clothes are labelled as such because of sexual dimorphic reasons and it has nothing to do with gender.

Right but JL's move is part of a wider thing, for example boys vs girls toys.  So it will be a PR win on the grounds of gender, even if I think it might be a fit fail.

And the labels do have an amount of gender significance because traditionally boys wore trousers and girls wore skirts.  I don't know at what point girls started getting the option to wear trousers in the majority of schools, but IIRC it's probably within the past 20 years

This story backs up that guess if it was the first legal challenge - https://www.theguardian.com/education/2000/feb/24/schools.news

octatonic

Sporky said:

Drew_TNBD said:

Those clothes are labelled as such because of sexual dimorphic reasons and it has nothing to do with gender.

If that was entirely true you'd have the same styles in each section, just with different sizes/proportions. It wouldn't be (to slightly exaggerate) pink ponies on one side and blue racing cars on the other...

And yet a couple of hundred years ago pink was a colour primarily for male children- it was deemed too strong for girls.

Sporky

Drew_TNBD said:

What I'm saying is that 'male' and 'female' or 'boy' and 'girl' are labels related to sex. The designs factor is related to culture... designs can change very easily... but clothes for girls will still be smaller than clothes for boys because of biology.

I don't disagree with that. Plus there are other areas where recognising differences would be a positive move - fer example, lots of drugs (I seem to recall that painkillers are an example) work better on men than on women because the trials tend to have more men in them, and our biochemistry is different enough that it matters.

I wonder if they'll have separate sizing charts.