My 11 year old son (#2) and 6 year old daughter (#4) were playing the Wii yesterday when the inevitable fight broke out.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut why do you get to be the girl?\u00a0 There\u2019s only one girl and a bajillion boys.\u00a0 Be one of them.\u201d My sweet daughter whined for the thousandth time at her brother.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was playing first.\u00a0 I already picked a character.\u00a0 Pick someone else.\u201d Her adoring brother sneered.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you\u2019re always the girls.\u201d #4 replied.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m tired of having to be the yucky boys.\u00a0 You are<\/i> one, so be one.\u201d <\/p>\n
I\u2019d had enough of bickering, video games, and Christmas vacation when I called him up into the kitchen to figure out what the heck was going on.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s the deal?\u201d I asked him. \u201cAre you just torturing your sister, or do you actually want to be the girl?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was that character first.\u00a0 I want to be the girl.\u201d<\/p>\n
I took a deep breath and let it out.\u00a0 Where did we go from here?\u00a0 Why would my son want to be the girl?\u00a0 I have brothers, you couldn\u2019t have paid them money to be the girl.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want to be the girl<\/i>?\u201d I asked again.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, no.\u201d He answered me.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019d rather be a guy, but I want to win.\u00a0 The only character that can win this game is the girl.\u00a0 The only characters that can easily win most of my games are the girls.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want<\/i> to be the girl, but I don\u2019t really have a choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
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I\u2019ve spent the last day or so thinking about this conversation.\u00a0 My son is right.\u00a0 The guys are wimps.\u00a0 If you want to win, you have to be the girl.<\/p>\n
When I was a young girl in the 1970s, there were no strong girl characters other than Wonder Woman, and even her stuff was girly\u2026.magic bracelets?\u00a0 Please. (I know about Charlie\u2019s Angels.\u00a0 I just wasn\u2019t allowed to watch it then, and it was a pretty transformative show as far as gender roles went.) As I got older and we moved into the 80s, there was a shift in our culture.\u00a0 We moved away from the doe-eyed helpless girl and onto the empowered I-can-take-care-of-myself woman.\u00a0 It was a welcome change and girls everywhere were shown that they could be strong, courageous, and brave.<\/p>\n
When our eldest child was born in the mid-90s, I had only a fleeting thought of the kind of role models I would like to find for her and was pleased to see that strong independent women seemed to be all around us.\u00a0 When our son was born 3 years later, it never even occurred to me that his role models were the ones I\u2019d have to search to find.<\/p>\n
Where are the heroes?\u00a0 Where are the strong, smart, capable men?\u00a0 The guys on television are crass, rude, and very often too dumb to actually be married to their TV spouses.\u00a0 The dad on any sitcom is an idiot and his poor wife and children are made to put up with his bumbling buffoonery.\u00a0 The movies are no better.\u00a0 The male characters start off looking strong, but have to be rescued by the girls they pick up along the way.\u00a0 Even the books he reads perpetuate this smart girl\/dumb guy stereotype.\u00a0 The boys may be the main character, but his female sidekick is the brains and cleverness of the whole operation.\u00a0 We often are left with the impression that without the girls, the boys would fail, but without the boys\u2026..the girl would figure it out.<\/p>\n
Are these really the type of men that we want to raise in this society?\u00a0 Why do we want boys who are as clingy, helpless and doe-eyed as girls supposedly once were?\u00a0 Who benefits from the feminization and wussification of modern boys?\u00a0 It\u2019s not us.<\/p>\n
There were many good things which came from \u201cliberating\u201d women.\u00a0 I\u2019m happy that women can roar.\u00a0 I just don\u2019t understand why having roaring women means that our boys have to be scared lambs.\u00a0 Why is it that the only way my son can win is to be the girl?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My 11 year old son (#2) and 6 year old daughter (#4) were playing the Wii yesterday when the inevitable fight broke out. \u201cBut why do you get to be the girl?\u00a0 There\u2019s only one girl and a bajillion boys.\u00a0 Be one of them.\u201d My sweet daughter whined for the thousandth time at her brother. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n