An open letter to anyone upset about Target not dividing up its toys by gender

I'm 41 years old. When I was a kid, when I walked into a Toys 'R Us, most toys weren't marked "for boys" and "for girls". Yes, the Barbies were together, and there WERE things that were gendered, but it wasn't explicitly put on the signs.

My parents are in their sixties, and when they were kids, a lot of toys were advertised with, "Hey, boys and girls, don't you want this toy?" A lot of dead raccoons ended up on the heads of kids after Disney's Davey Crocket show aired -- both boys' heads AND girls' heads. Yo-yos, Slinkys, Silly Putty, hula hoops -- generally speaking, they were not gender-identified. Captain Zoom and Little Orphan Annie were happy to trade your box tops for toys no matter your gender.

Again, plenty of stuff WAS gendered -- my first cookbook was a hand-me-down from my mother, and I pointed out to her that I couldn't do the first step in the introduction which taught basic techniques, since I wasn't WEARING a pretty dress to put an apron over. But, again, plenty of stuff wasn't.

My grandparents, too, didn't have their stores set up with the toys separated. Sure, it would have been weird for a boy to get a doll or a girl to get toy soldiers, but they were all shelved together.

In fact, as far as I can tell, even in societies where toys were gendered (which, frankly, has been "most of them"), they've never been split up and sold separately, and there have always been some toys and games which have been for both.

Dear people who are upset about Target stopping putting their "boys' toys" and "girls' toys" in separate aisles: as far as I can tell, you are the first generation of humans that has been confused by this concept. I've seen archeological artifacts of toys and games from civilizations five thousand years ago. Heck, children have played with toys since we came down from the trees to wander the veld, or probably before -- after all I've seen plenty of nature videos of crows and lions playing with toys.

And in all the time that humanity has EVER existed, you people are the very first who ever had trouble with this.

A thought Lis just had about INSIDE OUT:

Lis just pointed this out to me. After she had the thought, she started poking around, and other people have had it, too, but I credit it to Lis.

So, in the movie INSIDE OUT, when we see inside everybody else's head, all their emotions match the external gender of the person. All of the mother's emotions are female; all the father's are male. The same holds true for the bus driver, the teacher, and, indeed, everybody else we've seen. Including other kids her age.

The ONLY character who has both male and female emotions is the main character Riley, whose anger and fear are male, and whose joy, sadness, and disgust are female.

Does this mean that Riley is genderqueer in some fashion? "Riley" isn't a bad name for someone who's genderqueer or genderfluid, after all.