A year ago an old friend of mine posted on Facebook his disappointment in seeing his school (he's a teacher) cast a girl in the role of Peter Pan. His argument was that when he was a kid he looked up to Peter Pan and saw him as a role model, and if the character was played by a girl then little boys today wouldn't have that role model.
I was incensed. Should girls have no role models? I posted a hasty and angry response. But later I realised that although girls are raised to understand and relate to male characters boys never have to relate to non-male characters. They aren't expected to relate to female protagonists because female characters are confined to chick-flicks and chick-lit.
No wonder empathy is seen as a female trait.
We rob our boys of ever having the chance to develop it by surrounding them with characters that look like them! This is even more true if you take ethnicity into account. No wonder so many white men feel so distanced from any conversation on gender or race or bias. They've never needed to relate to a character that was different than them.
Boys need the opportunity to relate to female characters (just as whites need the opportunity to relate to characters of other races/ethnicities). Yes, there are female characters in movies, books, TV, plays, but too often these characters are so focused on the things that make them different from men (babies, boobies, fashion) that it's really hard for them to be taken seriously as protagonists, much less related to by males. Boys need to be exposed to female characters that spend their time thinking about the same things that all humans think about regardless of gender. Boys need to see female characters that could easily be them, that could easily be genderswapped.
We owe it to them.
I was incensed. Should girls have no role models? I posted a hasty and angry response. But later I realised that although girls are raised to understand and relate to male characters boys never have to relate to non-male characters. They aren't expected to relate to female protagonists because female characters are confined to chick-flicks and chick-lit.
No wonder empathy is seen as a female trait.
We rob our boys of ever having the chance to develop it by surrounding them with characters that look like them! This is even more true if you take ethnicity into account. No wonder so many white men feel so distanced from any conversation on gender or race or bias. They've never needed to relate to a character that was different than them.
Boys need the opportunity to relate to female characters (just as whites need the opportunity to relate to characters of other races/ethnicities). Yes, there are female characters in movies, books, TV, plays, but too often these characters are so focused on the things that make them different from men (babies, boobies, fashion) that it's really hard for them to be taken seriously as protagonists, much less related to by males. Boys need to be exposed to female characters that spend their time thinking about the same things that all humans think about regardless of gender. Boys need to see female characters that could easily be them, that could easily be genderswapped.
We owe it to them.
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