Any electrician knows that Lego bricks are genderless, not ‘heteronormative’, because each can ‘mate’ with any other. But it seems members of the Science Museum’s Gender and Sexuality Network are ignorant of this. Perhaps they should study for an electrical qualification, suggests Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne in a letter to the museum’s Director, posted on X. “It may avoid further such curatorial calumnies and supplement their skillset with something useful.”
Here’s the hilarious letter in full.
Dear Sir Ian
According to an article in the Times, your ‘Stories of Queer Communities, Experiences and Identities’ tour says that Lego reinforces heteronormativity because, “The top of the brick with sticking out pins is male, the bottom of the brick with holes to receive the pins is female, and the process of the two sides being put together is called mating.”
Lego bricks are, however, hermaphroditic. Their mating surfaces have simultaneous male and female aspects, with complementary matching parts each containing both protrusions and indentations. Such mating surfaces are mounted into identical fittings which can freely mate with any other, without regard for gender. Apprentice electricians know such connections to be ‘genderless’. What could possibly be queerer?
Perhaps you could arrange for the members of the Science Museum’s Gender and Sexuality Network to pursue a City and Guilds Technical Certificate in Electrical Installation. It may avoid further such curatorial calumnies and supplement their skillset with something useful.
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne
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To which I would add, as somebody jolly famous said, paraphrasing “the facts of life are heteronormative”.
This doesn’t mean homosexuality should be a crime, merely that the very fact we exist after all these generations shows that heterosexuality is the norm – how can that be contra-fucking-versial?
Oh! Tmesis-how lovely
Hetero means different, normative means, state of being a norm.
“Heteronormativity” = the state of being a different norm – which is meaningless.
I’m an electronic engineer and whilst logo bricks are of course genderless, I think we make a mistake by even responding to this nonsense.
It’s a bit like getting engaged in some conversation with someone insane who thinks he is Napoleon and arguing that the campaign against Russia was not a good idea.
If somebody told me about the heteronormativity of Lego bricks I would just nod with an understanding smile the way you would respond to a mentally retarded five year old.
The answer is
Sir Ian Blatchford
Director
The Science Museum Corp
This guy may act like a retarded five year old but he ain’t one. He’s in a leading position of an institution dedicated to preserving historical artefacts of our culture for our better understanding of who we are by learning about where we came from. Instead of doing that, he seeks to change us according to some theory of a better society he happens to adhere to by changing our perception of our past and present environment.
Somewhat figuratively spoken: A retarded five year old doesn’t matter that much unless he’s in charge of a machine gun. Then, he’s a very serious problem which must be addressed.
Am I right in thinking that the museum has already be dumb-downed and woked?
When it employs people tasked with working out the implications of the assumed implied sexuality of lego bricks, that’s pretty certain.
We do now have a llama as health minister – we would be better off with a Lego brick.
Very tedious and more than a bit daft this carry on, now. Anyway, here’s Frank Haviland’s take on this nonsense. But just to say, I can’t believe how expensive Lego is now. Unless it’s my selective memory, we never had these elaborate models of space ships and the Empire State building, for instance, which sell for 300 euros. You’re lucky to walk into a toy shop and get anything for under 30 euros here. We just had a huge box full of different shaped, sized and coloured blocks and I used to like making giant alien houses out of them, which doubled as dens for the cat. We’d use our imaginations, not follow some complex instructions to build a highly intricate model. How times have changed;
”Where is the evidence that LEGO bricks are “often described in a gendered way”? I have never once heard anyone—child or adult—refer to them as “male” and “female,” or the process of connecting them as “mating.” How exactly would LEGO function without such connecting parts? In what sense can LEGO be classified as “heteronormative” when the pieces are identical? Surely, if anything, that makes LEGO gay-friendly since (like homosexuality) each individual possesses the same equipment? Furthermore, why would you feel the need to sexualise children’s toys, unless you were trying to promote a certain form of sexuality to them?
The more sinister side to the ‘Seeing Things Queerly’ tour is encapsulated in the claim that LEGO “illustrates … heteronormativity (the idea that heterosexuality and the male/female gender binary are the norm and everything that falls outside is unusual).” This is not only profoundly anti-scientific, but outright mendacious. Gender binary is the norm, and everything that falls outside is by definition unusual. That ‘normative’ has culturally come to be considered a negative thing, even at an institution like the Science Museum, speaks volumes. Throughout the entirety of human history, it has not been necessary to “normalise heterosexuality”; thankfully our ancestors had bigger things to worry about than confusing the contents of their pants. Even the word ‘heterosexual’ was not in common use until the 1960s, and we seemed to manage alright up to that point.”
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/not-a-lego-to-stand-on/
Know thine enemy:
https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/seeing-things-queerly/
“Vickers-Supermarine Mk I Spitfire: One Spitfire pilot was Roberta Cowell, a record-breaking race car driver and decorated fighter pilot… She was the first British trans woman to undergo gender affirming surgery and change her birth certificate.”
Never in the field of human conflict has so much been blown out of all proportion by so many loud mouths about so few.
He.
Lego? Pah!
I had Betta Bilda.
That’s probably why I’m a straight white male – or something.
And before Lego came Bako. Boys’ house, pavilion and castle building in bakelite, designed by men for the men of the future, to show off to the parents of the present and peers of the future, in that quaint, primitive and ancient time, when testosterone and estrogen knew their places in life and the Science Museum was what the sign at the door said it was.
XY ≠ XX
QED: never did, never does and never will.
Minibrix.
Lego bricks aren’t hermaphroditic since they can’t mate and produce offspring. I would of thought the Baroness would of known this.
They are genderless since no inanimate object can have any of the 127 different genders unless there’s now an inanigender whereby some deluded people think they’re inanimate objects.
Could someone with objectophilia (object sexuality) fall in love with someone who identifies as inanigender? They could send each other valentines cards
Roses are red
Violets are Blue
I’m fucking mad
And so are you
Would have thought!
I thought it was the opposite i.e. gender only applies to objects, boat,(she in English), la table, le livre (French) and neuter in German- isn’t it grammar and not biology?
In the meantime what fantastic advertising/publicity for lego!
Yes.
And in French it’s le (masculine) vagin – relating to the female anatomy.
In this case the masculine gender refers to the female sex – which rather proves gender has nothing to do with sex and has no place in biology.
Masculine does not mean male, nor feminine mean female. And the neuter gender has no equivalent in biology, outside single cell organisms which are asexual.
In German, there’s also das Mädchen — the girl, gender neuter, despite girls are female. This goes to the point that das is also used as article for referring to girls in certain German dialects instead of die (the female article). People from the area of Germany I was born in would use dat Beate to refer to a daugther of someone whose name is Beate.
That’s the actual meaning of the term. When applied to humans it refers to a social construct gender scientists have constructed in order to construct it. Since then, they insist that it’s much more important than everything else and consequently, everybody must care very much about it.
”They are genderless since no inanimate object can have any of the 127 different genders…”
Actually they can. Gender is a term exclusive to the inanimate – nouns and syntax – masculine feminine, neuter usually, but some languages have more.
This is why those who apply the term in biology need an MRI brain scan and psychiatric evaluation and treatment.
What’s wrong with heternormativity? Is it not quite natural? Most people are heterosexual, a fact not in dispute (yet).
Stickle bricks……
Nothing but pricks!
They are bits of plastic, for goodness sake. They do not have free will nor desires. They require an external force to engage in any coupling acticvity and will remain in that state until uncoupled by another external force. They do not reproduce and often disappear, apparently spontaneously, especially the rarer forms.
It is worrying that officials at the Science Museum appear to be so underemployed that they have the time to engage in these frankly crazy activities.
How dare you assign a male name to crazy activities! Gender fascist!
As previously an electrician, its quite clear that Lego bricks like most removable electrical components join physically by one part to match the other. Are we now going to be stupid about electrical plugs (male) and electrical sockets (female) and the many other applications that need this type of connectivity to work?
Does it really need to be pointed out that all over the physical world, items that need to be joined together often require a piece that juts out and a corresponding piece that will receive the jutting out part?? This situation includes sexual reproduction in a wide variety of animals and insects etc. So to single out something like Lego as being representative of terrible ‘heteronormativity’ (or whatever painful expression they like to use) seems to display a very unhealthy preoccupation with er…sex?
Dovetail joint in wood working…? Er
Hetero normative is the correct way. It is the truth of life. Crush these leftists with Trumpian disdain and strong man tactics. We have been beta and soy boy for too long. Might in the service of right is right. Be powerful and uncaring of rhe communists bullshit. Constantly attack them and deride their garbage theories.
Win by acting like superior people and being superior.
War against the left is the only way to win
The general rule, Baroness Nicholson, is never argue with a lunatic, observers may not be able to tell the difference.
However. There is no such thing as gender in biology, it is a term used in some languages to denote the status of nouns – usually masculine, feminine, neuter – to ensure all aspects of syntax agree.
Using gender in biology is gibberish and misleading.
I concur with the sentiment in the letter but it shows the misunderstanding that arises from the use of “gender”.
An hermaphrodite has both primary reproductive organs, testes and ovaries (earthworms for example) but nothing to do with secondary sex organs such as penis and vagina.
In fact birds of both sexes have the same secondary sex organ – the cloaca – and mate by “cloacal kiss” and earthworms have neither penis nor vaginal.
It is the primary reproductive organs that determine sex – either male or female – and not secondary sex characteristics or the little voice inside the head. It is also the gonads and the hormones they produce which determines secondary sex characteristics and differential behaviour of the sexes not that little voice inside the head.