Skip it if you're tired of it.

[meganbmoore]

Disjointed ramblings regarding gender (and some on race) ahead.

So, at lunch today, Mom and I somehow ended up talking about about children's toys.  Likely because she helped me out in the church nursery today, and Jackson will be staying with them next weekend.  I mentioned that i'd also looked at the toys for little girls when I'd been shopping for Jackson's Christmas and birthday gifts, and I'd noticed that there didn't seem to be many action figures for little girls*, but that I remembered there being action figures for little girls when I was a kid.  At that point, with no prompting at all, she said (in that parent voice that says "this was annoying to live with, but I'm glad I have the memories") "She-Ra!  By the power of...Greyskull!"

Then I asked what action figures Myles always had and what shows he watched, and she rattled off He-Man, Ninja Turtles, Thundercats, G.I.Joe and a couple others whose names I've forgotten.  I asked if she remembered any of the lines there, but all she remembered was that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made him obsessed with cheese pizza.  I don't think this means that she liked She-Ra more, just that I ran around the house yelling one thing all the time, while he ran around yelling half a dozen things.  (ETA:  But with equal amounts of actual yelling going on.  Sorry, i'm still giggling a bit at my mother's "By the power of Greyskull!"  Also, she spoiled the second of Alexander McCall Smith's Precious Ramotswe books.  As I have been put in charge of acquiring them for her since we're both reading them, I shall just have to make sure she doesn't read them before me!)

And while I was typing that paragraph, I got a phone call asking to speak with "a male registered voter."  I asked for a repeat, and then clarfied "you are saying a male registered voter, right?" He said yes. I said there were none, and then he asked if I was a registered voter.  When I asked why he asked for a man if he could talk to me, he stuttered and then started to say something about equal polling.  I hung up.  I can get polls specifically aimed at either gender, but only wanting to talk to me if there isn't a guy in the house?  I don't think so.

Anyway, during that conversation (at lunch, the phone call was just amazingly well timed), something clicked for why some of the things I've linked to lately-specifically Whines When Girls Smoke, Flirt, Shoot, And Fly Fighter Planes and Says Girls Don't Like Action Things Unless They Feel Inferior To Men-seem worse than your run-of-the-mill stupidity.  Both put themselves forth as wanting fiction for women and female roles...as long as those roles and those pieces of fiction are "approved."  Give us fiction meant for women and give us female characters, but keep them separate, away from things men might like.  Don't let female characters do things male characters have always done.  Keep them in their proper place.  Prominent women, central women, are ok as long as it doesn't affect male domination in anything outside of traditional roles or certain types of fiction.  Roles and genres approved of as being ok for women.

Specifically, it makes me think of Separate But Equal.  I don't know if what I'm referring to is as well known by that term outside of the U.S., so for anyone who doesn't want to click that link and doesn't immediately know what I mean, it refers to segragation laws in the U.S. that where black people and white people were given public services (public restrooms, schools, public transportation, water fountains, etc.) but there were different services available to you based on the color of your skin.  It gave black people "rights," but the services given to them were vastly inferior to those given to white people.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not comparing representation of gender in fiction to generations of racism and segregation (though it is a result of generations of sexism) but I do think there's similar thinking going on.  It's easy to say "I'm not sexist, I just think men and women are different and should be treated as such,"  just like it's easy to say "I'm not racist, I just think blacks and whites are different and should be treated as such."  And usually, people who say it genuinely mean it, and will loudly protest against something they see that's glaringly sexist or racist.  At the same time, though, there are many forms of sexism and racism that aren't obvious, and that have always been treated as "natural."  These forms are the kind people argue against and are afraid to admit to, because they tend to challenge their worldview, and threaten them with having to examine their own privilege.  It's why no one likes to have something they like criticized, because that criticism might make them admit there could be a flaw, and then there's the fear that they could be "wrong" for liking it.

This is also why people get accused of seeing racism and/or sexism everywhere.  Some people do that.  Most accused of it don't.  It's just that, once you start to become aware of the fact that there are prejudices and inequalities in fiction beyond the obvious ones that everyone can recognize, you start to see how prominent those problems are, and how they're often the default.  But I think you're much more likely to find a person who refuses to admit there might be a problem with something because they fear that doing so will challenge them than you are to find a person actively looking for things to complain about.

No one is saying that every good heroine has to shoot guns/swing a sword and be better at it than men or it's sexist, or that the only strong female character is a man with breasts, and no one is saying that a princess is automatically a weak character or that the girl next door is useless.  (Ok, some do, but we try to ignore them.)  We're just saying that it'd be nice if it were considered normal for women to have those roles in addition to more traditional roles-just like men can be politicians, scholars, warriors, etc. without it being unusual-unless it's a situation (pregnancy, WWII battlefield,  etc.) where there's no way it could happen.


*Mind you, there may be some and I just didn't see them, or they may have been in the rows of action figures for little boys and I just missed them due to their being outnumbered 40-to-1.

Comments

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

I agree wholeheartedly with your rant. I feel very lucky that, when I was a kid, I had for heroines not only She-Rah but also Oscar from Roses of Versailles, the three girls from Cat's Eyes, Clementine, and a few girls of sports series. It was still not a lot, but it was something.

I can get polls specifically aimed at either gender, but only wanting to talk to me if there isn't a guy in the house? I don't think so.
I can probably explain this if you want (having worked in polling/interviewing places for a short time).

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I really wish I'd been able to watch Rose of Versailles as a kid. (Even though I'm still on ep 9.)

Go ahead and explain the polling thing. My problem wasn't so much that he wanted to speak to a guy as it was that he couldn't really explain why he could only talk to me if there wasn't one.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

In almost every kinds of surveys you can find there are very specic quotas about how many women and men they want to interview (They also almost always have some for age; then there's usually a bunch of other quotas which depend of the subject of the survey). At a call center they try to follow how the advancement of the quota goes; so when it starts being unbalanced (much more many women interviewed than men for example), they're going to give consigns like : you can still interview women, but try to have males in priority. It seems likely that's what was going on. Why the interviewer wasn't able to explain that, I don't know... maybe he just felt unbalanced (they probably had a scrip under their eyes that they were supposed to follow...)

[ms-treesap.livejournal.com]

This is also why people gets accused of seeing racism and/or sexism everywhere. Some people do that. Most accused of it don't. It's just that, once you start to become aware of the fact that there are prejudices and inequality in fiction beyond the obvious ones that everyone can recognize, you start to see how prominent those problems are, and how they're often the default.

Yes, exactly. I like to think of it as the more enlightened (no pun intended) perspective, although it is harder to live with.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yes. It's true that, once you start seeing it, you can't stop, even when you just want to turn off part of your brain and enjoy something silly. But that doesn't mean you're actively looking for something to complain about. It just means that you're trying to be more aware of problems that exist, but that may not always be obvious.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

I love your crayons!

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

That was my reaction too!

(And man, I just remembered going through the crayons at the nursery last week, and finding my old ones that my mother donated when I outgrew them. My name in her handwriting was a big clue.)

[ryanitenebrae.livejournal.com]

Someone already said exactly what I said about the polling thing. The only other thing I can say is that I do know that companies like Hasbro feel that their main demographic is males, though I cannot explain why this is. The rest of your post . . . didn't make sense to me, to be honest.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

How so?

[ryanitenebrae.livejournal.com]

. . . I feel like I see good female characters all the time. I feel like I see good fiction with no gender demographic all the time. Even Lost, which had about three or four women when it started, one of which was done passably well, now has some amazing female characters. Maybe I'm just selective, maybe it's that I tend to avoid things that are very popular, not because of popularity, but because of lack of appeal. I see some subtle sexism, yes, in terms of gender roles, but not often, and it feels to me like it's leaking out of fiction and society slowly. The shows that do have poor characterization, for females or in general(and if they have bad female characters, they usually have bad characters to begin with), I just ignore. They don't feel worth it to me in any form. So maybe I just have a different outlook, because I don't feel I see what you're seeing.

[southerndave.livejournal.com]

"Specifically, it makes me think of Separate But Equal. I don't know if what I'm referring to is as well known by that term outside of the U.S."

It's well enough known here, not so much in the context of the United States but in the context of South Africa during the `eighties.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

But with a similar meaning?

[rhap-chan.livejournal.com]

Really insightful and thoughtful. I totally agree.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Somehow I want to connect this with a post I read on the journal of A Person I Will Not Name Who Is Not Getting It And Apparently Does Not Want To, about some fictional utopia in his head where everyone wanted racial differences to disappear and now These Young Kids seem to think that they should prize being black and stuff.

Which is to say that there's a line between celebrating diversity and making differences the only notable things about a character. Or something like that. I will hopefully think to come back to this when my brain is less tired.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Connect in a good way, I hope. I might want to read that post. Most of those conversations have moved to a level that I can't really keep up with.

[kakkobean.livejournal.com]

...I stole my older brother's ninja turtles games/figures and played with those because they seemed to do a hell of a lot more things than my girltoys ever did. At least until I got a Princess Gwenevere figurine (she had a magnet in her hand--that was fuuuun). But I'll definitely say this--nowadays, girl toys seem to be more limited to "we dress them up and change their diapers" than they used to be. At least I could shoot SkyDancers up into the sky like rockets.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I noticed that the toys for girls seemed more limited, I just wasn't sure if they really were, or if my memores were skewed by She-Ra figures that had swords and crossbows and heads that you could switch. (I think my young mind counted that as also being able to play dressup for them.)

[tianneh.livejournal.com]

Re: the 'male registered voter' issue: I've worked as a telephone interviewer before a couple of years ago. The person you talked to might either not have done his job properly (and actually made an effort to read the brief he was given), or the survey itself is bad. I don't know how things are like that over there. But over here the reason why we ask for a male/female registered voter is because we want to get an even number of interviews from both genders. We start off without specifications - just anyone registered to vote, but when it's obvious we're getting more responses from one gender than the other we'll start asking for the one we're lacking. If there are still slots for the other gender we'll ask if the current respondent is willing to go ahead.

Eventually the slots get filled up and we just say, "Thank you for you time, but we've finished our quota for female respondents today."

Applies to age groups too.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

It was more his response to the "Why?" than asking for a male voter. And I'm probably harder on things like this because I've worked for a telecommunications agency-both on and off the phones-for about 6 years, and no one there would get away with not having a response to such an obvious question.

[fivil.livejournal.com]

Not to mention the fact that a lot of women are brought up in an environment that belittles and looks down on generalized female interests so the point about women wanting romcom and guys wanting action is stupid as society tends to value "male interest" movies over "women's fluff" and thus a lot of women as well grow up liking the "male interest" stuff over "female interest" stuff. And even if they like the "girly" movies, they can categorize them as strictly guilty pleasure material.

Anyway, god that blog posts made me angry. Do like how people are ripping him apart, though, and pointing out various clever things to counter his line of argument. :D

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Exactly. People like to say "look how far things have come," and while tat is important, it's even more important to look and see what hasn't been done yet, and what we're told is "justthe way things are."

[kinkytinky.livejournal.com]

1. No one's saying there isn't a problem, but attempts to solve said problem HAVE resulted in overcompensation a lot of times, or what you could call corrective discrimination. So now instead of one problem, we have two. And just like a woman complaining about how women are treated in whatever media is regarded a feminist, anyone pointing out the effects of the aforementioned overcompensation is automatically labeled a sexist by some. Of course, the latter is more an accusation than just a label.

2. Saying men and women are different is not the same as saying they each have their place. Each can do the exact same things (except for childbirth and such), but they are still different. Otherwise, you wouldn't hear women complaining about certain male writers not being able to write believable women.

3. I don't recall ever seeing you complain about a strong female character being paired up with a weak male character. To me, it is JUST as irksome as the opposite. There will be times when I will complain that the girl is not good enough for the guy, and times I will complain about the opposite being true (and you know it to be true).

4. Someone who is secure in their opinions (right or wrong) can discuss them rationally instead of freaking out as soon as their views are threatened.

5. Off topic and yet seems appropriate - I watched Casablanca again recently. Ilsa said in no uncertain terms that she mistook her admiration of Laszlo for love. In other words, not only doesn't she love him during the movie, she never ever truly loved him.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

1. You could have a point, except that the argument is based around a collection of sexist stereotypes not being sexist.

3. I don't complain about strong male characters being paired with weak female characters, either. I just complain about the treatment either way.

4. And someone secure in their opinions can voice them without creating blatant and insulting logic traps, and without jumping to accuse disagreement of being an accusation of sexism, and basing their being "wrong" on their gender.

And this is as much as I care to discuss this with you.

[ladysaotome.livejournal.com]

We were getting calls in the evening constantly for the last two weeks wanting to speak to the male head of household. When I told them he was at work, they'd ask when to call back & I'd say anytime before 3pm. And they'd proceed to call again the next day at 6pm. After the 3rd (or 4th) call, I asked why they kept calling back at 6pm when I kept telling them they had to call before 3 & the woman stammered something about the computer automatically generating the calls & they can't control them. She then asked again, what time they should call back to speak to Hubby. After that, I paid attention to the caller ID & quit answering when they'd call (another dozen times!).

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Eeew. Yeah, what they're doing there is just putting you as a general callback, and ignoting your time request. That, or they run out of people to call, and "recycle" the calls to call again. (This one I recognize.)