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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As “woke capitalism” goes, this example is more sincere than most–the set designer, Matthew Ashton (VP of Design at LEGO), developed it as an expression of his own identity and a tribute to the LGBTQ+ community.
Most LEGO fans are pleased as punch to be getting a set of monochrome minfigs (which is sort of a thing for some reason), regardless of the sociopolitical statement being made.
Some people just need to unbunch their panties.
I feel sorry for any children who love Lego who won’t be allowed to play with it anymore because the adults in their lives decided their queerphobia was the more important consideration. Especially sorry for any of those kids who have realized or will realize that they themselves are LGBTQ.
Kind of wondering about “My grandkids will never own another Lego set!!” grandfather, though. Like, if the kids are primarily cared for by their parents, I’m not sure you have the authority to make that call, dude. Even if he is a primary guardian for the kids, what if they grow up and buy themselves some Lego? Whatcha gonna do then, Grandpa? Steal it in the dark of night?
Irrelevantly: up until the trans stripes that thing’s basically the resistor code.
“Waah! Waah! We’re being excluded because we want to exclude others! Waah!”
It doesn’t look like the kind of LEGOs I would have enjoyed as a kid, but that is more because of the lack of moving parts and dinosaurs (and faces for that matter).
Can we get a fumigator in here? Those transphobic tweets absolutely reek with the stench of paranoia.
Anyone else amused by the ‘AN oBJECT CANT HAVE A GENDER ‘ thing? Because I’d bet they also objected to the ‘Potato Head toy has no gender’ thing too…
Not to be grim or OT but has anyone heard from Naglfar since someone else asked a couple weeks back? Just dropped off the face of the Mammoth, and I was reminded by this post Naglfar is trans and bad shit sometimes happens to trans people, anyone know if she’s ok?
@Big Titty Demon
Somebody said she’s OK but busy. 🙂
“first marvel characters turning gay all of a sudden”
I… read a metric shitton of Marvel comics and when did that happen?
I mean the closest thing I remember is revealing Iceman to be gay almost half a decade ago. And yes it wasn’t handled that well, but it was just making decades old fanon canon.
@Malitia
That tweeter is quoting Babylon Bee in an apparently serious fashion, so I doubt they’re very informed about reality. Or about superhero fiction.
But perhaps they finally caught on to what was going on with that Greek island full of only women that Wonder Woman came from?
@Amtep
But Wonder Woman is a DC character, he’s especially complaining about Marvel ones. But than again I’m not sure they can tell the difference between publishers.
Or between headlines like “Marvel will introduce a new LGBTQ+ Captain America”* and idiots yelling “OMG THEY’RE TURNING STEVE ROGERS GAY!!!!!!“.
*That story is only 1 or 2 months old, I wanted to use a recent example.
I have to admit, I’ve been annoyed at LEGO for ages ever since they started dividing their toys into “boy” and “girl” sets*. Especially since the “for girls” ones all have wasp-waisted characters with long flowing locks; it seems very stereotypical to me. This rainbow set looks better, though I’m a bit creeped out by the faceless minifigures!
* In case it’s not clear, that’s how the LEGO company itself presents it; that’s not me deciding that afab people must only get the pink ones, and amab people must only get the blue ones.
Another round of “won’t somebody THINK of the CHILDREN????” I’d say LEGO is definitely thinking of the children. My cynical half says that children are where LEGO finds its profits. My nicer half says that children want toys that are fun to play with, and part of the fun of play is getting to express yourself in ways that make sense to you.
Lego is the world’s largest manufacturer of tyres.
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/100909-largest-tyre-manufacture-per-annum
I know that’s not exactly pertinent, but I just like facts like that.
That set is mightily cute in my opinion and cool to have.
Similar to that glittery cereal of some days ago, it won’t actively make the life of LGBT better but might help some realize they are allowed to show it.
@Bookworm in hijab : it’s not really how they market it tho. They never outright say it, with the visibly for girl showing only female user, and the other showing mostly boys and some girls. Still annoying, yes.
(technically, it “only” happen for the lego for children. The one visibly made for adult/older children don’t usually have visible user at all ; and I suspect that it’s the biggest part of what Lego sell nowaday)
I do remember I mellowed a bit about it when actually looking at the range and seeing that in addition to hair dressers and nursery there also were a robotic lab and some computer-using set. Overall, there’s a ton of sets I like in that range, even if the marketing is annoyinbg.
It just occurred to me that this adds a new level of hilarity to telling MRAs etc to “go step on a LEGO”.
“Go step on a LGBTQ+ rainbow LEGO that will not only hurt your foot as it would anyone, but will also make you shriek specifically because you’re a bigot!”
I wanna buy a bunch of Legos now to own the… ‘servatives?
What’s the Liberal version of “Own the Libs”? Operation Pearl Clutch cannot commence until we have our verbiage down.
*takes out Werther’s Originals from my old lady shawl*
In my day the Lego weren’t gendered at all, they were just primary color blocks and I made my own little genderless people out of rectangles or just mixed in my Fisher Price people with the houses and furniture I made out of Lego.
Kind of sad to see a former WHTM commenter (The Bewilderness) included in the TERF line up. I was holding out faint hope that some of our banned for terfiness commenters would’ve seen the light as the “gender critical” movement has become explicitly and openly aligned with fascism. But I guess not.
To those who are side-eyeing the faceless minifigs…try not to read anything into it. Monochrome minifigs with no printing are sort of a niche fad with collectors, but one with enough traction that I expect this set to be very popular for that reason alone.
And just in case anyone here is concerned by the pink = girl, blue = boy color-coding, that symbolism comes from the Trans Pride flag, where pink and blue represent femininity and masculinity, respectively. The color palette of Everyone is Awesome is based on the Progress Flag, which combines the six-stripe rainbow with a chevron in the hoist (indicating a forward-moving arrow) colored pink, pastel blue, white, brown, and black for trans and POC inclusivity.
Would be interesting to see how many of these folks claiming to never buy another Lego for their kids/grandkids relent faster than Trump ordering a Diet Coke once the kids start asking for more Legos.
@ nequam
Ohm my god, you’re right.
I suppose that’s a happy coincidence that the flag has the association with ‘resistance’.
I just hope they don’t meet any impedance.
(OK, that’s enough now)
I’d love to be a fly on the wall when they have to explain to their crying kids why they can’t have more Legos or when they’re trashing the ones they have.
Neat set. Like it. Grandkids prefer messing around with our old Meccano stuff to Lego though. What can I say – thanks to a failure in grandparenting, they’re all bloody engineers in training. 🙁
@nequam, Alan:
Well, they’re conducting themselves pretty well so far.
(I studied electrical engineering and have been through extended pun contests before. Don’t get me started. Please.)
I have some friends who are even more serious LEGO fans than I am, and some of them weren’t entirely happy about the ‘Friends’ line because of the somewhat blatantly female marketing, but they liked the Friends line because it added a few new block colours. Though my understanding is that the whole marketing point of the ‘Friends’ line was less a matter of corporate policy at LEGO itself and more a matter of trying to get any LEGO into the girl’s side of extremely gender-segregated American toy stores so that girls would still be able to get LEGO; in other words, they were trying to work around institutional sexism rather than promote it.
Also, the ‘OpheliaRising’ Twitter image reminded me of an ex-FreethoughtBlogs blogger who since went full TERF, but that isn’t her account. I do wonder if it’s a fan or the handle comes from some other source.
If I never again have to read a tweet from a right wing turd blossom with the word “woke” in it, I can die happy.
Problems with corporations monetizing queer culture aside, I think this set it rather a nice idea. I won’t be buying one however, as lego commands a financial outlay that makes even warhammer look reasonably priced.