Recently, my 3 yo daughter has been requesting that I change most characters in her story books to girls when I read them to her. She will correct me: "No daddy, Piglet is a girl. Rabbit is a girl."
Yesterday she told me that Yankee Doodle is a girl. It made me realize that most protagonists in children's books are boys, even in modern ones. It's not that I didn't know it, but her calling it out made me feel a bit guilty and frustrated. No single book is flawed by this fact, but her collection of books is.
I am going with it, and have begun to preemptively change male characters to girls, especially when they are animals, and they may as well be.
In a snap decision, although Yankee now sticks a feather in her hat, I decided that she could still be handy with the girls.
Thanks. That's interesting. The picture book we have suggests that he is a young boy, and that's why he eventually gets scared and runs home to his mother. The Wikipedia article is full of a number of variations.
Reminds me of the dad that changed Link from a boy to a girl in Windwaker for his daughter. Pretty cool. If I have a daughter (and I have a feeling I will, for some weird reason), living in a family comprised of intelligent women has made me more aware of this sort of thing. Hopefully by the time I do have a kid, things will have changed for the better.
We've been polling my daughter on the gender of her "friends", the entourage of plushies et. al. that she takes to bed with her. Our "control" is asking her whether she's a boy or a girl, whether mommy is a boy or a girl, whether daddy is a boy or a girl, whether grandma is a boy or a girl, etc. The results: - Mali doll - invariably girl - Owl (white plushie) - girl or boy, depending on the day - Baby (generic baby doll) - almost always girl - Space Penguin (a blue and chrome plush penguin promoting Cincinnati Sub Zero) - always a boy - Giraffe - always a girl, in fact she will often point between Giraffe's hind leg's and exclaim "look! Giraffe's labia!" - Gus the Sloth - Ambiguous as Owl We're letting it roll. So far, most of the stuff she reads is either very specifically gendered (and we have "I'm a big sister!" as well as "I'm a big brother!" or relating to animals.
Patterns of virtues and shortcomings merely changes. It is possible the shift would be timely, but we don't have the data. (Something must have necessitated the shift from matriarchy back in the day, right? Women were factually in charge for a long long time on this planet.)
They controlled sex and religion. Why do you think patriarchy's priests wear dresses? :) p.s. couldn't resist: