I would have wanted to play with the blaster while wearing the princess dress.

Ooooor. If you were me as a little girl, you'll want the sweet starship legos your brother has but won't let you play with because he's a big jerk.

Yeah, I was like that with dresses and skirts. I just wanted to fit in with my brothers. But my mom was cool and bought me those clothes in the boy's section. Still does once and a while for Christmas (men's sweaters are warmer).

Nice try, but the TV shows came first, so it was really a case of licensing. The 70s weren't a gender-neutral paradise, but it wasn't nearly as bad.

I was pretty horrified when I went shopping with my sister when she was just a couple months pregnant. She didn't know the gender yet, and we were really just browsing, so we initially intended to look at both boy and girl stuff. The boys' clothes were all so cute! So many different colors and themes! Then we…

The answer is yes, they will be influenced by what's popular with other kids and trying to fit in.

The line was drawn with dolls—sorry, action figures—a while ago. Or maybe it always was, since dolls have been perceived as a girl's toy for a long time, and action figures were just a marketing scheme to sell doll-like toys to boys (a step up from inarticulate toy soldiers). But back in the 70s and 80s, rarely were…

If you've taught them right, they'll also want toys that they like.

My niece was born several months before my daughter. When they had a baby shower, every single piece of clothing she received was predominantly pink or purple. Every one. When my daughter was on the way, I told my family not to buy her pink or purple clothes. You'd have thought I told them to drown a bag of kittens.…

My son loved scented sparkly pens with lots of color and glitter until very recently (he's 16 years old now). Totally hetero guy but say it to his peers. I am proud of him for telling them off with "I'm not gay but what if I were, it's no big deal being gay" He is strong (stronger than me!) and never bowed to…

I have a three year old daughter. And a teenager son. I hate pink but she has caught the bug early enough. What we promote is diversity. Dolls with different skin colors and hair color, even blue skinned or green haired. Colorful blocks. Clay. Toy cars (she loves her hot wheels as much as she loves her polly pockets).…

ugh. my little guy is 3 and loves frozen, dress up, nail polish, etc. he is also into trucks and tools and what have you. i dread him going to school and getting hammered into the boxes some of his peers have already been hammered into.

my kids are still very young so i can't speak from my own experience but from watching a friend (who has tried very hard to raise her kids to be confident and skeptical of prescribed gender roles) deal with this it seems to go in phases. when they're babies, of course, they don't care. when they're toddlers and…

29 yr old male here, I mostly had Ninja Turtles, toy cars, guy stuff. I did have a PJ Sparkle though, because I loved shit that lit up. Had a couple other "girl" toys. I got a little grief from my friends, but it was fine. Kids will like what they want if you let them, & if they get picked on slightly for it, so…

I loved my sister's easy-bake when I was a kid. Because it was a fucking awesome toy that cooked shit. Who wouldn't love that?!

My youngest is keenly aware of what's a "girl's" toy and a "boy's" toy, but I'm pretty proud of him for deciding he doesn't give a damn: he likes Easy Bake Ovens and My Little Pony in addition to liking toys marketed to his gender. He even likes those awful Tinker Bell movies and Frozen.

I have a baby on the way and my wife and I decide to go gender neutral. At first we did a lot of research on how to do it because no matter how easy it sounded we could not for the life of us figure out how to go neutral. We hope by treating our child less as a gender and more as a person we can let him/her grow up…

My daughter is outgrowing toys now, but my retinas are still seared by the glare of the girl's toy aisle, which appeared to be covered by the copious vomit of a pink and fusia Demon, Hell-bent on gender role indoctrination.

Oldie but goody