During a late night discussion with my boyfriend about gender bias, I explained how hurtful it was to me as a child to be surrounded by characters in books, TV, and movies, that were almost all male. What characters that were female were there only to play the role of what made them different from men--girlfriend, boobs, mother, nurse, damsel in distress, temptress.
As I child I dealt with this discrepancy by internalising male characters. In my inner thoughts I am male. I wanted to be able to relate to dynamic characters who were dealing with real life choices without pretending I was a man, but I had so few opportunities.
I had recently read Michelle Nijhuis's article on reading Bilbo and Gandalf as female characters to her daughter which got me thinking about this problem. In my (down the rabbit hole) research I discovered Anne F. Garréta's completely genderless novel Sphinx, which is incredibly impressive given that it's written in French, one of the world's most gendered languages.
Thoby suggested that we could genderswap children's books that were in the public domain. That was last night and now I'm here.
As I child I dealt with this discrepancy by internalising male characters. In my inner thoughts I am male. I wanted to be able to relate to dynamic characters who were dealing with real life choices without pretending I was a man, but I had so few opportunities.
I had recently read Michelle Nijhuis's article on reading Bilbo and Gandalf as female characters to her daughter which got me thinking about this problem. In my (down the rabbit hole) research I discovered Anne F. Garréta's completely genderless novel Sphinx, which is incredibly impressive given that it's written in French, one of the world's most gendered languages.
Thoby suggested that we could genderswap children's books that were in the public domain. That was last night and now I'm here.
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