Fallacy of shielding boys from stories about girl characters

xynomaster · 2015-05-16T03:38:18+00:00

I thought this was pretty sad:

"I have a boy student who is a huge fan of 'Spirit Animals,'" the teacher said. "I got special permission for him to come, but he was too embarrassed."

I agree with the article completely. In my opinion restricting these kinds of things to only be for girls, when they are only decided to be "for girls" because the main character is female, is hurtful to boys in reinforcing social stereotypes that force them into their gender role. As the article mentions, any boy who might be interested in this kind of thing has his interest stamped out by fear of public humiliation.

And as the article mentions, no one has any issue with letting girls enjoy media with male main characters. Why is the reverse a problem? The article argues that it's a problem for girls because it prevents boys from being exposed to strong female characters, I'd agree and add that it's also a problem for boys because it reinforces the idea that girls are free to embrace masculine ideals if they choose but boys are still forbidden from anything feminine.

redditorriot · 2015-05-16T09:22:18+00:00

That site is an absolute shitfest on mobile. Anyone post an archive version, please?

YetAnotherCommenter · 2015-05-16T12:57:06+00:00

Whilst I do think (on a very broad spectrum) males like books about males and females like books about females, the idea that there's no crossover is simply ridiculous.

The Hunger Games has action, political commentary, and attracts both sexes to its readership. Hell, the early 90's X-Men children's cartoon had a female audience surrogate character. Was its audience mostly-female?

We REALLY underestimate the audience of children's books.

MortalBean · 2015-05-16T06:23:50+00:00

I think that the article became far too distracted with the whole idea of empathy for the main character in a book and completely missed that as we have seen with bronies and the like it simply isn't as socially acceptable for boys to do "girl" things as it is for girls to do "boy" things. It has nothing to do with who boys are allowed to empathize with.

Kensin · 2015-05-16T18:47:14+00:00

This happens everywhere in media. One of the best animated children shows in the history of western television almost didn't happen because Nickelodeon was convinced that boys wouldn't watch a cartoon with a girl as the main character. They asked test audiences and were genuinely surprised when the kids told them they couldn't care less if the character was a girl, they all just thought she was awesome. That show kind of had a built in audience already (being a squeal of another series with a male lead) so they gave it the chance, but you can bet other shows were changed or canned because of this fear that boys can't handle anything that might be considered too girly.

Samurai007_ · 2015-05-16T23:06:42+00:00

When I was growing up, I read both the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries, I read Batman comics and Wonder Woman. I cared about the stories, not the gender of the characters.

rtft · 2015-05-17T07:27:35+00:00

The entire concept of boy and girl books is so utterly bogus as to haven been conceived by ideology not reality. While there may be preferences for both genders regarding certain story types it is utterly disgusting to see school administrations enforcing rigid gender stereotypes like this.

AlexReynard · 2015-05-17T09:06:37+00:00

This is a perfect example of what I mean when I say that I'm against feminism because they don't go far enough. They want to smash gender roles? I'm all in favor of that. They only want to smash gender roles that they don't like, and will either do nothing about ones that hurt males, or actively keep them going? Then FUCK OFF.

A feminist is like someone in a rescue boat who comes upon a man and a woman drowning, and they save the woman while pretending the man doesn't exist as they turn the boat around and let him die.

Title	Fallacy of shielding boys from stories about girl characters
Author	xynomaster
Upvotes	33
Comments	12
Date	May 16, 2015 3:33 AM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/364ssx/fallacy_of_shielding_boys_from_stories_about_girl/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/fallacy-of-shielding-boys-from-stories-about-girl.980128 https://theredarchive.com/post/980128

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