Just got alerted to this lovely post over at Jezebel, a man musing on the difficulty of raising a boy amid the gender-policing traps that lurk everywhere.
The author notes that there is a serious disconnect in how we look at kids who fuck with their assigned gendered activities. Yeah, unspoken cultural pressures mean that there’s a real need for the Rock n’ Roll Camp For Girls, but at least if you tell people that you’re teaching your daughter to play a wicked bass riff, they’ll be basically supportive. “Awesome,” they’ll say, “good for you for not confining her to girly stuff.” Now tell those same people you’re sending your son to ballet camp. Watch their expressions change. “Oh, uh, cool…” they stammer. “I mean, aren’t you afraid it might make him… I mean, you know, don’t you worry about him getting picked on?”
The raw facts on the ground are that right now, our culture values stereotypically-masculine attributes more highly than stereotypically-feminine ones, and that gender enforcement goes double or triple when it comes to kids. (If you doubt this, I await your explanation for the Avatar: The Last Airbender action figure line. Seriously, two fucking figures of Roku and none of Katara, Toph, or Azula? Seriously?) One of the reasons feminism has been able to make strides in helping women participate in “men’s spheres” is that women doing man-stuff is is seen as trading up, and hey, who wouldn’t want to trade up? A guy doing woman-stuff (or, as it’s usually called, girl stuff) is trading down, and that’s just CRAZY.
Until it is just as cool for your little boy to want to learn to make his own clothes as it is for your little girl to play Little League, we are not free. Until men don’t have to make sniggering jokes about “bronies” if we want to enjoy a kids’ show with female characters, we are not free. And goddammit, until I get my Toph action figure, I’m just going to be over here pouting. Pouting girlishly, just to piss off the Man.
The question of Avatar figures is actually rather simple to address: There was only a line of figures made based on season 1 characters. If you look on Amazon, you’ll notice that all of the figures are either in the “Water Series” (Avatar’s code word for season one) line or the “The Last Airbender” (movie) line. Since Toph doesn’t show up until the second season, it makes sense for there to not be a figure in the first season lineup. The same point can be said for Azula since, although she shows up in the first season, she doesn’t have… Read more »
My reaction to hearing about “bronies” was overwhelmingly positive. I was too terrified to even watch an episode of My Little Pony when I was a boy, for fear of getting (even more) picked on by my peers. Or was it a fear that I would actually enjoy it — and what would that mean?
So to hear that there are men and boys who will actually stand up and say “hey, I like this show” is wonderful. Bronies, I salute you! 8^)
<— total brony. Anyways, I wanted to add that it's RIDICULOUS there are no action figures of Toph. She's widely considered one of the most popular characters from that series. I can understand the lack of Azula (none of the characters there are villains) or Suki (she was a pretty minor character) and I could even understand why there wouldn't be that many of katara (there's 1 of Sokka), but NO KATARA? NO TOPH? I'm not outraged for feminism, I'm outraged because those are the two most powerful non-avatar-state benders that are ever seen and they are ABSENT? Plus toph… Read more »
“”The raw facts on the ground are that right now, our culture values stereotypically-masculine attributes more highly than stereotypically-feminine ones, and that gender enforcement goes double or triple when it comes to kids. (If you doubt this, I await your explanation for the Avatar: The Last Airbender action figure line. Seriously, two fucking figures of Roku and none of Katara, Toph, or Azula? Seriously?)”” I’ll give it a shot. As you may notice, none of those characters are actually particularly feminine in the traditional sense*. In fact, Toph was written male then gender-switched in the script I believe. The trouble,… Read more »
“I’ve only heard the ‘bronies’ term in relation to male adult fans, like “mancation” or “bromance,” the idea being that one must stress their masculinity when naming an activity that may or may not have feminine connotations because what if someone forgets?? ” I love the word “bromance”!!! This is distinguished from the word “romance” because romance has a sexual connotation, whereas a “bromance” is understood to be completely platonic. Bromance is such a great word, because it describes all of the courtship process (movie dates, hangouts, dinner dates etc), and excitement that is typical of having found a new… Read more »
@tu quoque “Here the feminine is pedestalized and seen as righteous, civilized, and nurturing.” Save for when feminine traits are expressed by the male-assigned. There weren’t a great deal of people leaping to say the attack on Chrissy Lee Polis was especially unwarranted due to the attack on virtuous femininity. You can see radicalfeminist* after radicalfeminist attack any expression of feminine attributes in the coercively-male-assigned as artificial, and even misogynistic. So you will forgive me for saying, from direct experience that there are many more acceptable ways to be a woman than to be a man. *I write the term… Read more »
@ Mods
Yeah, I think some of the assumptions in this post need to be discussed because I don’t agree that femininity is valued less then masculinity as an absolute. After all, femininity is valued more in family court and for anything to do with children.
social constructs are useful
but I agree that they should encompass and include more than what is currently ‘allowed’
how about we stop labeling things as either masculine or feminine and just recognize that they are just things which don’t actually have human characteristics?
Also, I’m not sure I understand why the title of this post was chosen. It doesn’t really discuss how gender non-conformity affects men and boys differently. I almost get the sense that it’s, in an odd way, trying to downplay men’s problems. It’s a convention of humanistic thinking that children generally have things worse than adults since they are more likely to be dependent on potentially harmful people. So that’s a given. But men have a greater expectation to be stereotypically masculine than boys since manhood is thought to be acquired with maturity. A boy acting girly raises concerns and… Read more »
“The raw facts on the ground are that right now, our culture values stereotypically-masculine attributes more highly than stereotypically-feminine ones, and that gender enforcement goes double or triple when it comes to kids.” It seems like feminists make this argument in order to make the oppression of males dependent on the even greater oppression of females. It’s a subtle form of oppression olympics. Masculine attributes are not more valued than feminine ones, especially in american culture. Here the feminine is pedestalized and seen as righteous, civilized, and nurturing. The reason why females will be lauded for succeeding in the masculine… Read more »
Well you better convince him he likes light-red because otherwise he is a sissy, and he can be anything he wants to be except girly. But that is also part of the problem. We not only code the color pink as girly, we code liking the color pink as being girly. Most boys and men who like the color pink are not and do not want to be girly. They just like the color. That is partly why you see words like “bromance”. Some guys feel the need to protect their masculinity because people are calling them feminine when they… Read more »
Ah, but you need to realize a system designed is very different than the one that is presently applied. Youre living in another time frame……………..
No, I know the stats.
And I also know that a system designed when girls generally weren’t sent to school cannot possibly be biased towards girls.
@Blackhumor
I guess I should laugh right now, afterall your moniker tells me so. Really, biased for boys?? You need to go look at some stats.
@titfortat: Men, obviously. It was originally designed for boys* and still in some ways is biased towards boys.
That it doesn’t seem to give boys an actual advantage is not (mostly) because of the educational system itself.
*:Not that it really matters because it was designed for “normal people who are assumed to be male” and not “manly men”, but still.
The raw facts on the ground are that right now, our culture values stereotypically-masculine attributes more highly than stereotypically-feminine ones, and that gender enforcement goes double or triple when it comes to kids.(Noah)
I guess you have to define ‘value’ because if you look at the educational system, it is pretty obvious, presently, which gender has more value.
“It goes like this: Activities/clothing/traits coded feminine are bad!”
That may not be the only thing going on here, but it sure is going on, and it has to die. What is the root of this – and no, “because the Patriarchy” is not going to cut it. Why is it about the way little boys grow up that makes them reject and low-rate women-things in the first place?
I’ve only heard the ‘bronies’ term in relation to male adult fans, like “mancation” or “bromance,” the idea being that one must stress their masculinity when naming an activity that may or may not have feminine connotations because what if someone forgets?? But huh, I wonder if it started that way and then became gender-neutral within the fandom? Trading-up? But aside from that, I absolutely agree with the premise here! It goes like this: Activities/clothing/traits coded feminine are bad! Men and women should absolutely stay away from them! Unless you know, your girl-child just happens to like pink, then that’s… Read more »
@Paul Hobson It’s a term for adult fans of “My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic”. Some act like it’s male only, but adult females call themselves that too. (Mostly because filly sounds like “aww, lil’ girl” to me.)
er, “bronies”?
“Reading, one of the most basic elements of civilization, got coded as “for girls”, so ….”
How ironic is that? That’s about like coding knitting as “for boys”.
The goalposts sure do shift. I remember on one thread where a woman was showing how unsqueamish and willing to do messy man-type work she was by saying how when her husband brought home a deer, she had no problem with skinning and butchering it. Goody for her – skinning and cutting up a kill is about the rock-bottom standard Me-Tarzan-You-Jane women’s work if there ever was any.
People seem to forget how important it is for boys and men to be “one of the guys”. If no one told a boy that painting fingernails is something girls do, the boy would not care. It is only when it is coded as “not masculine” that makes it something that boys will avoid. This happens in school. Reading, one of the most basic elements of civilization, got coded as “for girls”, so unsurprisingly a lot of boys do not like to read. Teaching, cooking, tailoring, all these used to be things men did, and not even that long ago.… Read more »
I for one cannot get over those Avatar figurines you linked! I frakkin love that show and all of those ladies are total badasses. So sad they don’t have their own action figures.
Loved the post, too! Just really distracted by how there is no Toph action figure.
I ready a study awhile back (can’t remember the authors now, will try and find it if anyone cares) about “gender neutral parenting.” They interviewed a bunch of parents, who all insisted that they parented gender-neutrally. Then they interviewed the kids, asking them how they thought their parents would react if they did gender-transgressive activities. The results? The girls didn’t think anyone would mind if they played with “boy toys” but the boys thought their parents would be upset if they played with “girl toys.”
Made me sad 🙁