Gender confusion, aisle seven. Gender confusion to aisle seven, please!

Yet another chance to use the word kerfuffle! It’s always a good day when I get to use that word. This time, it’s a kerfuffle about Target’s recent decision to stop labeling a “boys’ section” and “girls’ section” in the toy aisles at its store. The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood released an article, written by their executive director Grant Castleberry, stating that Target’s decision reflects a broad cultural attempt to reject gender distinctions. Castleberry believes that Target caved to societal pressure and has only fueled the fire of confusing children about what gender really means.

Before I respond, I want to be fair and point out something this article got right. It is indeed true that Target is following a cultural trend. Big companies don’t make big changes unless they feel that their public image or consumer base will take a hit. I would quibble with Castleberry when he says Target heard from “a few” customers who were “disgruntled.” Unless I just happen to be friends with all of these “few” in my personal life, I’d say the wish for less-gendered merchandise is pretty widespread. Also, he and I part ways on whether Target’s actions are a regrettable capitulation to culture or a happy turn of events for kids. I’m quite pleased with Target’s decision, public-image-based though it may be. Yet I agree with him that Target’s signage, or lack thereof, is less about ontological statements and more about what its credit-card-wielding public wants. Welcome to American consumerism.

Beyond that, why does Castleberry claim to be so bothered by this change?

But in a world where the very concept of gender is being neutralized, and in a society where parents themselves are trying to outrun their own gender identities, dragging their children onto their own dark labyrinths….this only adds to the problem.

Rather than reinforcing maleness and femaleness, this confuses it.

Instead of helping guide children towards embracing who they actually are, this blurs reality.

Did anyone else hear that first line as the opening words to a movie trailer?

I’m confused about what, exactly, he’s claiming. Is he trying to say that people are becoming transgender because parents are modeling that for their kids? An awful lot of transgender children are raised by cisgender parents, and an awful lot of parents who come out as transgender do not have kids who then go on to transition, so I call Flying Spaghetti Monster on the idea that parents could make kids transgender.

Maybe he’s not saying that, though; maybe he’s just saying that kids need to see a consistent, clear, and firm delineation between the sexes. That’s not exactly a surprising message coming from the CBMW, and I won’t pretend to be surprised that he’s repeating his organization’s most time-honored mantra. I sure wish he’d picked a more careful way to express it, though.

My bigger question here is to what extent CBMW believes gender delineation must be protected. It’s to the point where children must learn their gender roles even from their toys? A lack of forthright gender instruction even in moments of free play will lead to kids who are confused?

I didn’t realize gender was that fragile.

Further, let’s not forget that this is about signs at Target. It’s not even really about what kids and parents will end up buying, it’s about whether there’s a piece of pink poster board or blue poster board above the aisle where the thing gets bought.

Despite the culture’s belief that we can outrun our gender—and the God of the universe who created it—we are ultimately destined to be as God has intended: male and female.

Sex is an integral part of being an image bearer of God; we are fundamentally at our very core either male or female (Gen 1:27).

Rather than put forth an argument, I want to just bring up a few questions for consideration.

Is the culture really trying to “outrun” gender? Is the culture trying to blur the difference between male and female?

If a little girl says, “I am a girl, but I want to play with dragons and cars,” is she denying which gender she is, or is she questioning why her activities should be limited by her gender?

If a little boy says, “I am a boy, but I want to play with a doll” is he denying which gender he is, or is he saying that as that gender, he wants more options?

Which of those kids is making an argument that they don’t feel a gender identity at their core?

Who in this Target debate is advocating to erase the belief that people feel male or female?

I think Castleberry has created somewhat of a straw man out of what he thinks other people are saying, when they’re not actually saying it.

The Bible teaches that men are wired by God to protect and to pursue, so it is not surprising that they naturally like toys that by-and-large involve fighting, building, and racing. Women, on the other hand, are wired by God to nurture and to be pursued, so it is also not surprising that they largely enjoy playing with American Girl Dolls, Barbies, and Disney princess dresses.

Why would children who are hard-wired to protect others enjoy the idea of fighting and harming others? How do building and racing involve protecting or romantically pursuing women? How does learning about American history through dolls or learning to beautify yourself have anything to do with being a nurturer? In fact, Barbies and dresses are all about teaching girls to value their outward beauty, something that I’m sure Castleberry would argue against on Biblical grounds. Does he realize what he’s saying when he argues that girls are “wired” for those things?

For that matter, where does the Bible teach that men “protect” and “pursue”? Ephesians 5 tells husbands to “love” and also to “nourish” or “take care of” or “feed” depending on which translation you use. There’s similarly no verse that describes women as “nurturing” or enjoying pursuit. If you want to argue that you observe these general tendencies among men and women, that’s one thing, but I have to object to saying that the Bible clearly teaches it. Besides which, the Bible never goes out of its way to describe what men and women are like as differing individuals. Most of the sex-role differences complementarians believe are taught in scripture are descriptions of behavior between married people or members of a community. I can’t think of any verses that describe the being of all men and all women.

However, in the end, the secular ideology is a losing game because it does not work. It is untrue. There are fixed realities in the universe, and they do not change, even if our postmodern minds refuse to acknowledge them. And that’s a good thing!

This article seems to assume that toys have always been highly gendered, and that this change at Target represents a postmodern movement. I’m not sure that’s accurate. Toy and clothing products have become highly gendered in the last couple of decades, more so than they ever were when I was a kid. It’s just the ebb and flow of marketing.

I guess that’s why it’s hard for me to take this article seriously. It’s addressing as “newfangled” a change that is actually a return to how things were when I was a kid, when feminism and egalitarianism hadn’t even come as far as they have now.

And let’s not forget why products became so gendered in the first place. Was it to affirm and teach that girls and boys are different? No, it was because toy and clothing companies realized that if you make boy and girl products so different that there can be no overlap, every parent with a boy and a girl will spend twice as much money in the store. Plus, the earlier you can get girls hooked on beauty and fashion and perfection, the sooner they’ll be unhappy with their looks and shell out cash to fix it.

Castleberry alludes a couple of times to his belief that boys and girls will keep playing with separate types of toys, regardless of Target signs. It leaves me confused about why he’s worried by the signage change in the first place. Are children in danger of being confused and led astray, or is gender identity fixed and strong? He seems to argue for both at different points in the article, and to ultimately decide that “no Target sign can change” what God has designed.

I would agree with that. The girls I’ve known who asked for the boy Lego sets and played with dinosaurs, the boys I’ve known who learned how to knit, the girls who want Captain America on their underpants and the boys who enjoy kitchen sets, all of these kids were not deterred by the signs that used to be in the “Boy” and “Girl” aisles. None of them got confused about which gender they were because they weren’t carefully guided to the correct gendered toy at every turn. My friends and I did not get confused about who we were when, growing up in the 80s, girl and boy things were often nearly interchangeable.

And as an adult, all the chick flicks, cooking lessons, and pink lace slippers in the world could never convince me that my place next to Jaron is one of submission and sugary nurturing.

It just doesn’t work that way, for kids or adults.