The Good Stuff http://stuffyoushouldread.posterous.com We've searched, read, linked and described The Good Stuff so you don't have to. We're interested in science, beauty, art, literature, language, gender, history, food, wine, music, the Web, the Mac, and travel. posterous.com Sat, 21 Jan 2012 20:37:00 -0800 Dogs and Smurfs: Representations of Female in Kid's Books http://stuffyoushouldread.posterous.com/dogs-and-smurfs-representations-of-femlae-in http://stuffyoushouldread.posterous.com/dogs-and-smurfs-representations-of-femlae-in

Male is default. That’s what you learn from a world of boy dogs and Smurf stories. My daughter has no problem with this. She reads these books the way they were intended: not about boys, exactly, but about people who happen to be boys. After years of such books, my daughter can happily identify with these characters.

And this is great. It’s the reason she will grow into a woman who can happily read a novel about men, or watch a movie in which men do all the most interesting things, without feeling like she can’t relate. She will process these stories as being primarily not about males but about human beings.

Except it’s not happening the other way. The five-year-old boy who lives up the street from me does not have a shelf groaning with stories about girl animals. Because you have to seek those books out, and as the parent of a boy, why would you? There are so many great books about boys to which he can relate directly. Smurf stories must make perfect sense to him: all the characters with this one weird personality trait to distinguish them, like being super brave or smart or frightened or a girl.

Find the rest of Max Berry's excelllent and thoughtful post here.

 

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Mon, 26 Dec 2011 09:45:00 -0800 Riley on Marketing http://stuffyoushouldread.posterous.com/riley-on-marketing http://stuffyoushouldread.posterous.com/riley-on-marketing

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Tue, 20 Dec 2011 16:12:00 -0800 DO YOU THINK SEXISM IS A SET OF BEHAVIORS, OR IS IT INHERENT IN THE ATTITUDE OF SPECIFIC PERSONS? (I.E: HOLDING A DOOR FOR A WOMAN BECAUSE SHE WAS RIGHT BEHIND YOU AS OPPOSED TO BECAUSE YOU THINK WOMEN ARE WEAK AND IN NEED OF SPECIAL TREATMENT. http://stuffyoushouldread.posterous.com/87565836 http://stuffyoushouldread.posterous.com/87565836

The majority of sexist behavior is not rooted in some essential wickedness, although that would make sexism much easier to address. There are very few people who are sexist by explicit and informed intent; the majority of oppressive behavior comes from sexism, racism, and oppression simply being normalized.

Which is why people flip their fucking shit when you ask them to examine their own privilege, because what you’re doing is shaking the very foundations of their reality. The nature of privilege is that you don’t notice it until someone takes it away from you.

Men (the vast majority of white men in the united states, that is) have the privilege of walking down the street without being hunted for sport.  So it’s impossible for them to understand why you can’t manage the same.

The horrible truth is that oppression is what’s normal. Getting the privileged to recognize and address this is extremely difficult because it doesn’t fit into the Just World Hypothesis which we’ve all been taught throughout grade school and which many, many people never have to think about or adjust. In a Just World, you would have to do something bad in order to have something bad happen to you. It’s logical, it’s just very shallow logic.

That’s why addressing sexism, racism and homophobia (and transphobia and so on) is so incredibly hard, particularly when you’re talking to the ubiquitous White Heterosexual Cisgendered Man.

From here by 3Liza

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