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Legislative Posturing with the CA Gender Neutral Toy Bill

Legislative Posturing with the CA Gender Neutral Toy Bill

Last updated on: January 3, 2024 at 12:02 pm by Jennifer Fitz

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Legislative Posturing with the CA Gender Neutral Toy Bill 2024-01-03T12:02:31-05:00 Jennifer Fitz

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Take a look at the actual text of California’s Assembly Bill 1084, the one about the gender-neutral toy departments, a quick read. I’ve been wondering: How exactly would you enforce such a concept?

The answer seems to be the bill doesn’t really do anything, unless you have a toy or childcare items department that is explicitly labeled “boys” and “girls”.

What does the law require?

Here is the portion of the bill that gives an actual mandate:

A retail department store that offers childcare items or toys for sale shall maintain a gender neutral section or area, to be labeled at the discretion of the retailer, in which a reasonable selection of the items and toys for children that it sells shall be displayed, regardless of whether they have been traditionally marketed for either girls or for boys.

Points to note:

The retailer decides how to label the gender-neutral area. It remains to be litigated whether the law implicitly requires a label of some sort, and if so whether words must be used on the label, or if “at the discretion of” means that the retailer doesn’t have to put any kind of label, the section can just be there.
“reasonable selection” will be a fascinating one to litigate.
“regardless of whether they have been traditionally marketed . . .” tells us: Your gender-neutral toy section can contain . . . just whatever. Some toys. The law doesn’t specify that it has to contain items marketed to both sexes (gender-neutral), nor a combination of toys marketed to each sex.
There is no specification of how we would know what a boy or girl toy is anyway.

This last point is to be expected, since the whole “gender identity” concept is just code for “sexual stereotypes.” There is no way to define a boy- or girl-marketed product without resorting to stereotypes about colors, interests, clothing choices, and beauty standards to prove that a given item is for one sex or the other, barring marketing materials that explicitly say the product is for boys or girls to the exclusion of the other sex.

What about clothing?

Interestingly, clothing is not mentioned in the definition of “childcare item”:

“Childcare item” means any product designed or intended by the manufacturer to facilitate sleep, relaxation, or the feeding of children, or to help children with sucking or teething.

Clothing of course is the one department that most stores do label explicitly as “boys” and “girls.” I can’t think of a store I have been in where childcare items generally (cribs, bottles, pacifiers, diapers, etc.) or toys were explicitly sorted into boys and girls.

So who is actually affected by this law?

I don’t think this law applies to much of anyone**.**

In my experience, toy aisles often have displays that are lumped into subsections of toys that have more boy-type or girl-type marketing (per those stereotypes), but I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a toy store that specifically announced “girls” where the pink packages are and “boys” for the blue-and-grey.

Over in childcare items, meanwhile, there is even less lumping-together of the gender-marketed products. Usually it’s alternating swathes of pink and blue, interspersed with a bit of green and yellow, with all the same-type items gathered together.

So.

It doesn’t look like this bill actually affects anybody, unless California retailers are in fact stuck in 1960 and are explicitly sexing their toy and childcare aisles.

(I’m not in California. Maybe this really is a huge problem there, and state lawmakers have realized they are fifty years behind the rest of the country? Somehow I doubt that.)

If you currently have no gender labels posted, you are already compliant. You are already offering one giant “gender neutral” section. The only thing the law might do (depending on exactly what the labeling clause really means) is require you to post signage saying that indeed everyone’s allowed to just buy what they want, let go of your inhibitions and shop away.

Thus both the cries of lamentation from social-conservatives and jubilation from gender-progressives are much ado about literally nothing. In actual practice, this bill changes nothing.

But, my goodness: The laments of legal and fiscal conservatives are indeed spot-on. It’s a nothing-bill that has potential to create a whole pile of legal expenses and incursions into constitutional law, while doing nothing but offering ammunition to social conservatives who want to show just how over-reaching progressive lawmakers are, inviting a backlash at, say, the next presidential election. Dumb.

Just a bad law in every possible way.

Photo: Pootstert the purple hippo dressed and buckled into his car seat, ready to go.

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Jennifer Fitz doesn't buy Lego that come in pink boxes. You can read more about the author here.

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