LEGO: Proselytising model to build


I will begin by anticipating misinterpretations or gossip. I defend and will defend the basic rights of all of us to freely choose our ideas, our faith, or our sexuality, which cannot be imposed from any moral, ideological, or religious supremacy. I deeply distrust any moralistic discourse to demand from others a supposed “normality” that so often only justifies the interests of the power that, repressing, goes around with its eternal tale of the “common good”.

Our true love for our neighbour does not lie in the narcissism in front of the mirror of the preachers of “like oneself”, but in the capacity to respect and admire the other who is different, who has another way of thinking and feeling. I believe that in this way we always learn more, even from ourselves. For this reason, I respect and defend the free definition of sexuality of adults and I believe that this should be a purely personal matter, free of any judgment or prejudice.

Precisely from this respect for the freedoms of adults, I also demand the right of children to be free from the sexist manipulation of adults, who use children to justify their own perversity, who violently invade their world of creative innocence and unlimited learning to impose on them subjects and feelings that are not for children.

Recently, the well-known Danish children’s toy brand LEGO removed it from a new LGBTQIA+ product line with transgender toys for children over the age of 5, advertising them with homosexual models who present themselves as characters of the opposite sex (to be specific, not only homo, but of the immense variety of letters that make up this definition and that I don’t have to know and recognise in the face of practices that are not of interest to me). Now children will be able to assemble their toys by changing their sex, freely converting them from boys to girls or combining them. They could even start putting on the head of a puppy, the tail of a mouse, but then again, when has that ever been an obstacle to a child’s play.

This is how Matthew Ashton, the LEGO group’s vice president of design and designer of the “We’re all awesome” model, introduces his product:

“The starting point was my feeling that, as a society, we could do more to support each other and appreciate our differences. Being LGBTQIA+ myself, I knew I had to step up and make a real statement about love and inclusion, and generally spread some LEGO® love to everyone who needs it. Children are our role models and they welcome everyone, whatever their background. Something we should all aspire to.

Representation is very important. I grew up in the 80s and obviously, I was a gay kid… If someone had given me this set at that time in my life, it would have been a great relief to know that someone was supporting me…

…Design-wise, I love how bold and simplistic the set is. It conveys a powerful message, but it’s also fun and quirky and doesn’t take itself too seriously. We’ve made sure to include black and brown colours to represent the broad diversity of all members of the LGBTQIA+ community. We have also added light blue, white, and pink to support and embrace the trans community. I purposely put in the purple drag queen as a clear nod to the fabulous side of the LGBTQIA+ community. I hope it’s a pleasure to build and look at, and I hope it brings a lot of joy to people’s lives…”

Surely, several books could be written analysing the product marketer’s pitch, where practically every letter is a display of manipulation and hypocrisy. As I warned from the beginning, our analysis does not come from morality, much less from emotional disturbance, which they do not contribute.

To be precise and not discriminate against anyone, according to the logic of the inventors of “inclusive language” and its long abbreviations, we should continue to broaden the criteria and at once recognise that the sexuality of each human being is unique and different from others, and for a clear lack of all the letters of our alphabet, invent some 8,000 million signs and thus ensure that no one will be offended or forgotten for not being “named”.

The trite discourse of “love and inclusion” in an increasingly individualistic society, where true feelings are hypocritically and politically correct hidden behind the mask of “tolerance”, is a farce. The word “love” is far more dangerous. The West, an inventor of pornography as a Style of Life for millions and millions (together with drug addiction and alcoholism, etc.), is a farce, for all behaviour in its vision is vicious), often confuses, even within its language, love with sex, and in a classist and racist world of bestial inequality between one and the other, the main consumers of child prostitution and a thousand perversities of all kinds are the citizens of the rich, moralistic and prudish societies, and their victims, as always and in everything, are the poor, who have their bodies as the only product required to participate in the capitalist world carnage. “Love and inclusion” become as impossible as the promised “social market economy”.

The heartbreaking autobiographical tale of the discriminated gay child is another infallible selling technique. Human beings and their hormonal functioning are a universe full of mysteries. It is safe to say that gay children are often discriminated against, as are girls, the poor, or those of other races, and the problem lies not in the lack of one or the other educational product, but in the nature of Western society, which is extremely discriminatory and hypocritical. Respect for differences should be in the role models of adults, but reality often shows children something else, which educates a thousand times more than any toy. The lack of real love is not replaceable with plastic models.

Talking to 5-year-olds about trans and drag queens is a direct proselytising and sexual abuse of early childhood, something that should be punishable by law.

To offer such toys to young children is to have no respect or mercy for childhood, and with such demagogic and irresponsible arguments, normalised in “democratic societies”, is to close the doors to the future. More than anything else, it is a sexual experiment with children.

A system based on money as a central value does not distinguish between a child and an adult, nor between love and sex. It is simply part of its nature. Moreover, it targets most viciously the child, who is the future consumer or the one who most pressures the adult to buy.

The four drives of the living being (human, in this case) – temperature, sleep, hunger, and sexuality – for the system are nothing more than sources for its business, and it is very easy to find examples. Selling us the false tale of “love and inclusion” is a dark and cold trade of what a human being dreams of or needs most, with the basic needs of some and the gross desires of others. A multi-coloured plastic toy to destroy childhoods and idiotise adulthoods is just another case in point.

The future is presented to us like the LEGO model: there are only A, B, and C and nothing else. This is a lie. The human being is infinite and the possibilities of the imagination and the future are also infinite. That we are offered “diversity” or “inclusion” only THEIR possibilities is proof of the trap.

The world capitalist system is a big LEGO to build all kinds of walls to block our future. The colours, figures and concepts they offer us always end up forming the no-end construction of loneliness, fear and meaninglessness. The social model has no other toys to offer us. With the exception of one more, the one it promotes and sells the most: that of war.

Oleg Yasinsky