About five months ago Toys 'R Us announced it was going to be doing away with dividing its toys for sale by gender. No longer would there be sections of toys for boys and sections for girls. Rather, all toys would be together and each person could choose whatever toy he or she preferred without having to have an entire section of toys away from his or her likely discovery.
The purpose of this is to do away with sexism, protest gender inequality, and the like.
The announcement was by the UK division of Toys R Us, and the UK website no longer differentiates between boys and girls, while the American division continues, for now, to separate the toys by gender.
It seems that the Israel branches are going to be implementing this change as well, as the Eida Hachareidis in Jerusalem is upset about the pritzus that will come of mixing genders like this. They say it will cause a serious problem with tzniyus and have a bad effect on youth.
Somehow mixing girls and boys toys on store shelves and in online shopping directories will have a negative effect on the kedusha of Jerusalem and Eretz Yisrael. Yoelish Krausz says they will find a way, but this is not going to happen - in New York and Tel Aviv the secular can do what they want, but not in Jerusalem. He says"we won't allow pride parades in Jerusalem, we won't allow the opening of Cinema City on Shabbos in Jerusalem, and we won't allow stores to open in Jerusalem that plan to change the creations, to confuse and mix between the genders and to oppose the human nature as created by God".
That statement alone by Krausz is rich in its comment-worthiness.
So, the Eida is considering announcing a cherem, a boycott, against Toys 'R Us over this.
source: Kikar
Interestingly, Toys 'R Us is not already in cherem despite the chain in Israel keeping [some of] its stores open on Shabbos, unlike some other businesses and chains that do get boycotted or quasi-boycotted over this issue.
I am not so sure what is so bad about this non-division of toy categories. Is it that in the stores both boys and girls will be mixed as they will now be looking at the same shelves for their preferred toys instead of in different parts of the store? Is it that getting rid of such a differentiation will cause people, kids, to wonder about differences in gender and think boys and girls are more similar than different and maybe can mix and socialize rather than stay apart? Something else? Are Eida followers major consumers of Toys 'R Us products anyway that this cherem might actually be considered a significant threat?
And regarding what Krausz said - he might say we won't allow this or that, but some of those are already fait accompli. The pride parade has been happening in Jerusalem for many years already. Other things the Eida has protested (the opening of Karta parking lot on Shabbos comes to mind) have come to be despite the Eida protests and threats. On some issues they will succeed, especially by getting the public behind them, and on some issues they will fail. This seems more like a failure issue, to me. Will people understand the problem and get behind them? I don't see it happening.
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