Lego just announced that they will be releasing a new LGBTQ playset just in time for Pride Month, with gender-indeterminate characters in all the colors of the rainbow flag, including the pink, white and pale blue stripes representing trans people.
I’m not going to lie; it’s a little weird and minimal, and the lack of faces on each of the little lego people is a tad surreal. But it’s certainly a well-intentioned product designed to push the message that “Everyone is Awesome,” regardless of skin color or gender or sexual orientation.
So naturally I expected to run across some detractors on the right yelling about “woke” capitalism and the supposed degeneracy of the the LEGO corporation. And there were in fact plenty of people who reacted in this oh-so-original way.
And there were some who thought the whole thing was rather crass, a simple money-grab on Lego’s part.
But what I wasn’t expecting, but probably should have been, was the response from the so-called “gender critical” trasnphobes who consider themselves radical feminists.
I’m not really seeing any pedophilia in the “Everyone is Awesome” playset. But thanks for resurrecting and updating the old homophobic lie that gay people are pedophiles.
While LEGO does gender some of its playsets in regressive ways, this is not one of them. The pink and blue characters in the “Everybody is Awesome” playset aren’t attached to particular genders; that’s kind of the whole point.
Then there were those who accused Lego of “grooming” kids — much in the way that homophobes used to accuse gay people of doing.
It’s easy to be cynical about “woke” capitalists embracing the LGBTQ community, to see it as an attempt to cash in on a market that hasn’t always been served very well. And clearly Lego, like every other company hoisting the pride flag for Pride Month in June, is hoping to make more money from LGBTQ customers — at least enough to offset the business they lose when homophobic and transphobic shoppers vow to never buy anything from Lego again.
But, as the reactions to Lego’s rainbow playset remind us, symbolism matters. And so I’m glad Lego is releasing this playset, and glad that it’s offending the right people.
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It really is un watching these twits constantly getting their undies in a bunch over toys, books and movies. I must be nice to live in a world where the only problem that exists is forever being offended by things that cannot harm you in any way.
@Nequam: grooming our children into becoming electrical experts!!! /s
@WWTH: (takes Werther’s). Yep. Lego didn’t have minifigs, it was just blocks in very basic colors and shapes. I remember being ridiculously excited when windows and wheels became available.
My only objection to this set is now I have that annoying song earworming me again.
@ Book in hijab
Oh, that was a more literal “popping” than I was thinking of. Thank you for the clarification.
Wow, thanks transphobes. I thought that Q+ meant queer, questioning, and HIV+. I didn’t realize that it really means “No definition is given of the ‘Q+’ and its association with queer theory, fetish, kink and BDSM.”
And I also didn’t realize that the pink and blue represented the trans flag. I thought the set was just a pretty palette.
Having said that, I do think the faceless figures are a little creepy.
As a lesbian, I am ambivalent about the corporatization of Pride Month. I do view rainbow-themed products as pandering, empty gestures, and greed. If the companies claimed to donate a significant portion of the profits from the sales of these items to LGBTQ-related causes (and some do, namely Target) maybe I’d feel different. And one of the Tweeters above raises a valid point: will Lego sell these kits where being LGBTQ is a capital offense? I doubt it.
@ginger : on the other hand, for a corporation, willingly trying export in a country stuff who is forbidden in it seem like a big no-no.
As in, corporations are free to refuse to engage with rules they don’t like, but it’s more NGO, governments, associations, and the like who should actively try to bend/divert them. (with all the risks associated).
I’ve just looked at this again. One of them says he’s bought Lego for his son for 29 years.
When I was 29, I bought my own damn Lego.
Absent any disability in his son…. wut?
GSS, I think that’s adorable! I would totally continue to buy lego as presents for my kids as they get older. I mean, giving your grown kids practical presents is great, but…who doesn’t want to play with legos, at any age? ?
Though maybe that’s just me; lol, no comments on my maturity-level…
Transphobes getting freaked out about plastic figures without genders (or with genders the transphobes don’t think they should have) always seemed particularly amusing to be, because transphobes usually say gender is defined entirely by genitals, and Lego figures don’t have genitals.
@bcb
To be fair, they also harp about one pair of chromosomes(while knowing nothing about how they work), which are as relevant to real people’s lives as genitals are to a LEGO figure.
Babylon bee is satire btw
@VM: Spectacularly inept satire, at that– as has been pointed out here in the past:
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2021/05/09/explaining-the-babylon-bee-one-bad-tweet-at-a-time/
As a Lego loving child I would have viewed this as an awesome wig set for my existing Lego people. Then again, my favorite figure was the “pirate wench” cleavage torso attached to an awning that mimicked a hoop skirt. And yes, I was a little gay boy.
To add some concrete photos of recent minidolls sets, the two minidolls set I got in my “get out of confining” shopping spree :
I don’t know the movie it’s based on at all, but that’s a good example of why I say they are much less heavily gendered than one might think.
(I *think* the reasoning is that all disney stuff get minidolls because historically the first set were disney princess sets)