Culture, social justice, queer issues, disability rights, arts, Boston, and stuff I think is cool.Kids' sports equipment is going beyond pointless gendering into, hm, antithetical gendering?I shop at REI when they have good sales, and basically consider them a good business, but I always wonder why they of all places have fallen into the mass-media-land trap of needing to specify the gender of children's items such as bikes, skis, raincoats, etc. While my general view is that I wish gender would just go away, I do get that items meant for grown adults are arranged by gender to help people narrow down what type of pubescent body things are meant for. Women's clothing accommodates butts and boobs and women's equipment often assumes a different center of gravity and different dominant muscles. But kids? Their bodies are the same before puberty except for their genitalia (which may or may not match their gender...), and I tend to discourage kids from involving their genitalia in their outdoor recreational activities.The gendering of most of this stuff just doesn't make sense. REI seems to specify genders for all sorts of things, even ones that I would say come from the manufacturer as a pretty non-gendered product. (Sure, the manufacturer might specify a gender, but REI then does their own tagging on the website and in the store, and their system allows them to not specify gender on items.) Even if one is subscribing to western gender norms, wouldn't that mean that most things are either "girl" or "everybody?" We all know that most products are designed in the default version and then the female version, right? So shouldn't the plain black bike that looks like a bike be "everyone" and the pink bike covered in flowers and fairies be "girl?" Again, putting aside that I know plenty of boys who like pink flowers and plenty of girls who like robots and zombies, shouldn't "boy" be reserved for the things that are speficially conventionally gendered, like the bikes with flames on them or whatever? Why does REI label so much plain stuff as "boy"?The way in which it's gendered gets interesting too, and is particularly odd with athletic brands. In the adult lines, outdoor and athletic equipment and clothing seem to have some traditional gendering between men's and women's items, but I would say that the female items exude girl power and feminine diva strength, not "I'm a pretty princess who will be sitting inside while you men hike." The children's items, though, tend to differ in that the boys' items look like they're encouraging vigor and perseverance, but the girls' look like they're encouraging, um, being pretty. Even the names reflect this! There's an identical-except-for-color Novara bike called "Stinger" for the boys and "Firefly" for the girls. While I actually think "stinger" sounds a little trashy and reminds me too much of professional wrestling, I want my female kids and my male kids to ride like a stinger, fast and fearless and with a goal in mind