I have recently begun watching My Little Pony, which is clearly BEST SHOW. But, unfortunately, I began watching it when I was at home with my parents for the holidays. My parents, while lovely people, carry around giant bags of kyriarchal assumptions all the time, and are also rather prone to superfluous geek-punching.
Nevertheless, I was caught up in the fluffy pink stupids of fan-love, and therefore decided to explain to them my newfound love.
Ozy: So I’m watching this new show, My Little Pony–
Parents: Isn’t that a kids’ show?
Ozy: Yes. But lots of people my age watch it. In fact, it’s really popular among geeky college-age men.
Parents: Are they all gay?
Ozy: …no. In fact, they’re mostly straight men.
Parents: I dunno, any guy who’s into My Little Pony seems like he must be a pedophile.
Ozy: >:(
My parents aren’t the only ones who seem to be under the impression that My Little Pony fans are pedophiles. Entering “my little pony pedophile” into Google gets you Fark informing us that the Internet loves MLP because of its fondness for pedophilia, Gothamist calling MLP fans “men who don’t appear to be pedophiles,” and a Steam group that I really, really, really hope is a parody which explains that the only reason for an adult male to like My Little Pony is to reach out to young females.
If you Google “deadliest catch pedophile,” though, all you get is a bunch of people talking about To Catch A Predator.
Stop it, you guys are making Fluttershy cry!
However, all this has enlightened me and brought me to a deeper understanding of gender norms! Men are naturally masculine, and hence like manly things like Deadliest Catch and Transformers and Batman movies. In addition, being masculine is way cooler than being feminine, so if a woman likes Deadliest Catch it’s cool because Deadliest Catch is cool. If a lot of men like watching a feminine thing like My Little Pony +++OUT OF CHEESE ERROR REDO FROM START+++
All right, our systems are back online, except for that one guy whose head exploded from sheer confusion.
So a lot of men like My Little Pony! Of course, it being a cute, funny, well-written show is completely out of the question as an explanation. Men don’t like things that are cute, funny, and well-written! Men like things that are manly! Like Transformers!
Not that kind of Transformers!
However! As we know from EVOLUTION! and also SCIENCE! men are always horny and will have sex with anything. So therefore it is simple enough to explain this bizarre behavior. The men just get off on little girls! And so instead of having sex with little girls they watch a TV show that is directed at little girls! It all makes perfect sense!
The best part is that now that we’ve developed this AWESOME THEORY, we can apply it to all sorts of things people who were born with penises do that confuse or scare us because they don’t fit in our tiny model of how the world works. For instance, crossdressers!
Matt Smith in drag looks so confused. “Why am I wearing a dress? Why are there pearls? WHAT’S GOING ON?”
Clearly, it is never just that men might want to wear skirts. No, crossdressing is always always always a fetish, in much the same way that every time someone wears leather pants it’s a sign that they have a deep-seated leather kink. In fact, it is such a fetish that we can put Transvestic Fetishism in the DSM! Because not only is wanting to wear some kinds of clothing we don’t want you to wear a fetish, but it’s a mental illness.
Not only that, but men who crossdress are clearly weird and creepy and otherwise squicky! All our discomfort with men who break down the gender binary that we think is important is clearly not our own bigotry, it’s a reaction to the simple fact that if you like the way silk panties feel on your cock you are clearly a sexual predator and probably a serial killer.
And what about those bizarre people who are born with penises and think, just because they identify as women, that they’re really chicks? Well, that’s a sexual fetish too: they’re clearly just sexually aroused by the idea of being women. I mean, duh! Women think with their brains, men think with their cocks (because, clearly, all men have cocks!). Men would do any kind of bizarre behavior if it turns them on! Of course!
Fabulous Sir Ian McKellen does not have time for this shit.
So that is how thinking My Little Pony fans are pedophiles links in to transphobia, kinkphobia, and gender-role enforcement, along with probably another thousand cases of pathologization of male gender deviance I can’t think of off the top of my head. So don’t do that shit.
Here, have a picture of Muslim Fluttershy.
About ozyfrantz
@The_L: I know that female fans of MLP:FiM exist, but my stereotype of such a fan is a male geek. It raises my eyebrow a little for a woman to be a fan, like if a woman professed her love for Captain Beefheart or Godzilla.
@Paul: It’s hard to explain why I can’t think of MLP:FiM as girly. Maybe it’s that when I first heard of it, I thought it was some kind of obscure web show. It’s easy to explain why vampires and werewolves have gone girly: They’re no longer horror but paranormal romance.
@tovyasagain: My problem with men posing as women online is that it makes me feel like women don’t exist. I know intellectually that women are people, but I feel like women are unicorns. I know intellectually that women exist, but the Internet makes me feel like women are as mythical as the creatures that otherkin use as online identities.
I’d think you’d be more angry about the “grown men trying to hijack a show aimed at little girls” angle, at the very least.
Also the creepy. And there’s a lot of creepy.
“@tovyasagain: My problem with men posing as women online is that it makes me feel like women don’t exist. I know intellectually that women are people, but I feel like women are unicorns. I know intellectually that women exist, but the Internet makes me feel like women are as mythical as the creatures that otherkin use as online identities.”
In games I play, it really does seem that women are unicorns. If the games (which are all East Asia MMORPGs, at least online) I play are not called Sims or Second Life, chances are women represent less than 25% of the presence there. And trans people are overrepresented as compared to their demographic size (which is 0.2%). I’m not a fan of sandbox stuff, wether it’s called Sims or Grand Theft Auto – I’ll get bored fast enough.
I need structure, a goal, a motivation. Tell me that there’s none and I’ll just sit and get bored. I can invent my own motivation, provided there are measurable scales, ways to “get better”, leveling systems, skill-based systems, anything like that. If the goal is “to have the prettiest farm/house in Hello Kitty Online”, I won’t even try. To have the most money-efficient farm is a good goal though. Provided there’s actually something I can spend the money gained therein on.
As much as my style might be interpreted as competitive, I abhor pvp combat in general. Immaturity seems to be the number 1 rule of pvp, and my motor control skills suck a lot more than my strategist skills. This is also why I’m not attracted one bit towards FPS genres.
I saw this today and it bothered me. Not because it was MLP but the reactions from the teenagers watching it. basically about 80% of the reactions from both boys and girls were negative responses to the idea of men and boys watching this show…
of particular note, when asked about what the boys thought of their gender watching MLP:
“it’s like a slap in the face to us…”
“if you’re a guy and watch MLP you shouldn’t be allowed to be called a man.”
“they just need a girlfriend…”
When the girls are asked if they would want to date a “Brony”:
“Hell, no!”
” NO! I want a boy who’s like, “I’m Tough.”
If you were the creator of MLP and you made this for little girls and then all this happened, how would you feel?
“I would feel it’s kind a threat” Girl
I posted this in another thread but asked that it be deleted. I reposted it here…
scrapemind: what about women posing as men online, though? There seems to be a huge obvious asymmetry between how the two groups are treated…
When I first heard of MLP:FiM, I thought it was a 4chan thing. I deleted that from my previous comment to spare the feelings of the readers of this blog. I thought, you guys hate that cesspool of misogyny, reddit, so you must REALLY hate 4chan, and I don’t want to taint your love of MLP:FiM by associating it with something you hate. Maybe that’s why I’m so messed up about MLP:FiM: It’s a 4chan thing; it can’t be for little girls.
@makomk: I understand why women would pose as men online: They want to be treated like people not unicorns. However, it also reinforces my perception that the default person is male. I guess it wouldn’t do so if the woman did something that outed herself as a woman, but I can’t imagine how. I know it’s supposed to be the other way round, that masculinity is fragile and requires constant policing for fear of man card revocation, but I can’t think of an interest a man would have that would make me suspect he’s female in real life. My Little Pony doesn’t count. Yaoi? No, some men like it. Maybe knitting? I don’t know any men who are into that.
I know the double standard with tomboys and sissies. I know that women can wear pants, but men can’t wear dresses. In spite of that, my perception is that masculinity is broader than femininity. Sure, football fans are mostly male, but watching football isn’t the only way to be typically male. Dungeons & Dragons players are mostly male. Transvestic fetishists are mostly male. It’s well-known that there are men who get off on wearing pantyhose, but I find it hard to picture a woman becoming aroused by wearing a jockstrap. Male paraphiliacs outnumber female paraphiliacs in much the same way that geek guys outnumber geek girls. Men are people, so they can be interested in almost anything, but women are unicorns, so they have unicorn interests, and have a disappointing lack of interest in cool stuff that’s nerdy or obscure.
One of my best crochet technique books was written by a man. Don’t have it on hand to check the name, unfortunately.
And, I had meant to say earlier, y no love for Rainbow Dash? She is clearly made of awesome.
“Sure, football fans are mostly male, but watching football isn’t the only way to be typically male. Dungeons & Dragons players are mostly male. Transvestic fetishists are mostly male. It’s well-known that there are men who get off on wearing pantyhose, but I find it hard to picture a woman becoming aroused by wearing a jockstrap.”
Transvestic fetishists, if you use the DSM’s definition, CANNOT be assigned female at birth, by definition. Because they have more options. By definition they need to wear something taboo for their sex, AND be sexually aroused by it. Given there’s no male garment that is uniquely male in Western society (jockstraps technically protect the crotch, not the penis/balls – assigned-female-at-birth persons also have crotches, and would probably scream if they received a puck or baseball there), it’s simply impossible.
“Male paraphiliacs outnumber female paraphiliacs in much the same way that geek guys outnumber geek girls. ”
Maybe this goes to some shrinks who work on that (Ray Blanchard for example) defining paraphilia as something that can only happen to male-assigned persons. Because women don’t have that, it’s just common sense, no need to study it. Pedophilic women are unicorns, don’t exist, are not women, have been forced to be pedophile by some male in their life, anything to deny they exist.
“Men are people, so they can be interested in almost anything, but women are unicorns, so they have unicorn interests, and have a disappointing lack of interest in cool stuff that’s nerdy or obscure.”
Women can be interested in general interests AND unicorn interests.
Men interested in unicorn interests risk their professional and social reputation, health, physical integrity, as while as get the disdain of others if found out.
How many women do you think stay married to transvestites? They leave them over this unicorn deal. So yeah. More choices my ass.
scrapemind:
My father was very fond of knitting, and did not care in the slightest what other people thought about that. Apart from knitting at home, he would often sit and knit while waiting for a bus, or when on a train, or in other situations where he would have some time sitting down and not much to do.
In my part of the world knitting was done by both men and women but for different reasons. the women generally did it to make clothing, the men to repair fishing nets (and to make clothing).
My high school had a pretty impressive turnout for knitting, and an approximate 50/50 split along the sexes. So more anecdotal evidence for that, I suppose.
I think my post was eaten or deleted but I commented how full fledged adults are often able to overcome hang ups about hobbies and such things. For example, my friend was really into knitting and I really like my flowers. If this were 20 years ago (when we were young and really cared about other people’s perceptions) we’d probably to afraid to even consider these as things men can enjoy. Now it’s completely a non-issue.
That’s offensive! We’ve successfully hijacked a show aimed at little girls.
I keed, I keed. There are two non-intersecting fandoms for the show: the primary target audience, and bronies. Never the twain shall meet, nor do they need to. It is, as has been previously mentioned, a damn good show that is written to appeal to both demographics simultaneously. So there’s no hijacking going on–the show is functioning as intended (albeit much more successfully than the creators anticipated).
Creepy is in every fandom ever. Rule 34 is a true story, yo. However, it’s a trivial matter to avoid being exposed to the creepy content in whatever fandoms you happen to be a part of, so I have little sympathy for the people who piss and moan about how X is ruining their Y.
It’s good of you to not let your preconceptions color your views forever. Feel free to read that with whatever level of sarcasm or sincerity is appropriate.
That view is damn near incomprehensible to me. The tip of the iceberg of my problems with it is that 4chan is not monolithic–it’s /b/ that generates (and earns) the bad press. Many parts of 4chan are practically civilized, and the brony thing arguably started in /co/, which, you’ll note, is not /b/.
More importantly, the origins of the brony culture are moot. Even if it had started on /b/, or Reddit, or YouTube, or whatever other site you can name with a horrific user culture, the simple fact that it has become a tremendously positive force in so many places across the internet and in so many peoples’ lives is the relevant and important part of the story.
There’s a tumblr called Pony Confessions, where anonymous users write in and make “confessions” related to My Little Pony. And for every confession complaining about drama within the fandom, there is one that talks about how being part of the fandom led to finding new friends, or finding the inspiration to create art, or deciding not to commit suicide because this cartoon about marshmallow ponies restored their sense of hope. There are quite a few confessions about not committing suicide, actually, which seems to me to be reason enough by itself to support, or at least not to fight against, the spread of this weird outbreak of love and tolerance on the internet.
Society is warped and tries to set standards for men and women. Girls should wear pink and boys blue. Girls should play with dolls and teddy bears and boys with guns, and trucks. To bad
As a child a little girl I hated dolls and stuffed toys, I loved nothing better than playing with toy trucks and cars and climbing trees. I have a grandson who loves his stuffed elephant and he plays with dolls, he plays with trucks and cars too and he has a sister who plays with trucks and cars and likes outdoor things.
My husband wears pink shirts and he is all man. Nothing feminine about him, he is not bi or gay. In fact I know gay men who are very very masculine and unless you knew them would have no clue they are gay so what. They would not likely even watch my little pony. It just is not their thing to do.
In my generation “The Hippie Era” Men grew long long hair and wore beads and flowers in their hair but they were not feminine or gay. Some might have been and if they were so why should that be your problem.
I have a 15 year old grandson he likes My little boy, he is not gay, he is not bi he is not feminine and does not wear feminine clothing. He likes computer games,He likes going hunting with his dad, he loves to go fishing, so do I and I am not masculine I just like fishing it is fun and relaxing. I am a mother, grandmother and love wearing pretty clothes and my hair long and looking pretty for my husband too.
I am not particularly fond of My Little Pony, yes I have seen it. I am not much of a cartoon fan of any sort period. Why is it okay for girls to watch Batman or Spiderman and they are not considered homosexual or unfeminine but a guy watches a show originally geared toward little girls and they are suddenly thought to be gay or feminine??? Spiderman was geared toward boys and no one had a big hurrah over girls watching that.
Some people are just overly judgemental and bigots and that is really sad. Being a bronie might be a passing fad or phase like wearing flowers in your hair or wearing pink. But even if it is not so what. It is certainly a better thing than using drugs, or being a drunk or looking at porn. This 62 year old granny says go for it. I endorse it, the rest of you need to grow up, chill out and be groovy. Because being a Bronie is cool. It makes them better dads for one. And any girl who has a problem with it is looking at things in a wrong light. Get over your egotistical self.
My husband knits, and he does all the sewing, I hate sewing and knitting. love to chop wood and get out in nature. He hates to fish, I love it. O cook, my dad said once that about the only thing a man cannot do is become pregnant and have a baby. But he should be able to do ANYTHING a woman can do. So put that in your pipe and smoke it. I love to read Westerns Louis La Amour, Max Brand, E.T Edison, Zane Grey, John Johnstone, that is considered mostly a man thing but I read and love them . I also butcher out chickens, my husband doesn’t like to do that. I was raised on a farm and in the country. As to girls wanting boys to be tough I would seriously re-think that. Tuff to me means abusive, bullying, beating. Not at all manly. Men can cook and clean and sew and knit and it makes them no less a man. I love when my husband gives me a foot massage or back rub, When he picks flowers to give me and walks with me. He made our daughter when she was little rag dolls. But he was a logger and later a school teacher. Plus we had livestock and animals and he fixes our cars and machines, Get over yourselves, God made men and women and he made them male and female and equal. It is Okay for men to like pink, like dolls and sew or knit or cook if they feel like it and to like flowers or watch a cute cartoon show with little ponies in it.