My 11 year old son (#2) and 6 year old daughter (#4) were playing the Wii yesterday when the inevitable fight broke out.
"But why do you get to be the girl? There's only one girl and a bajillion boys. Be one of them." My sweet daughter whined for the thousandth time at her brother.
"I was playing first. I already picked a character. Pick someone else." Her adoring brother sneered.
"But you're always the girls." #4 replied. "I'm tired of having to be the yucky boys. You are one, so be one."
I'd 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.
"What's the deal?" I asked him. "Are you just torturing your sister, or do you actually want to be the girl?"
"I was that character first. I want to be the girl."
I took a deep breath and let it out. Where did we go from here? Why would my son want to be the girl? I have brothers, you couldn't have paid them money to be the girl.
"You want to be the girl?" I asked again.
"Well, no." He answered me. "I'd rather be a guy, but I want to win. The only character that can win this game is the girl. The only characters that can easily win most of my games are the girls. I don't want to be the girl, but I don't really have a choice."
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I've spent the last day or so thinking about this conversation. My son is right. The guys are wimps. If you want to win, you have to be the girl.
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....magic bracelets? Please. (I know about Charlie's Angels. I just wasn't 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. We moved away from the doe-eyed helpless girl and onto the empowered I-can-take-care-of-myself woman. It was a welcome change and girls everywhere were shown that they could be strong, courageous, and brave.
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. When our son was born 3 years later, it never even occurred to me that his role models were the ones I'd have to search to find.
Where are the heroes? Where are the strong, smart, capable men? The guys on television are crass, rude, and very often too dumb to actually be married to their TV spouses. The dad on any sitcom is an idiot and his poor wife and children are made to put up with his bumbling buffoonery. The movies are no better. The male characters start off looking strong, but have to be rescued by the girls they pick up along the way. Even the books he reads perpetuate this smart girl/dumb guy stereotype. The boys may be the main character, but his female sidekick is the brains and cleverness of the whole operation. We often are left with the impression that without the girls, the boys would fail, but without the boys.....the girl would figure it out.
Are these really the type of men that we want to raise in this society? Why do we want boys who are as clingy, helpless and doe-eyed as girls supposedly once were? Who benefits from the feminization and wussification of modern boys? It's not us.
There were many good things which came from "liberating" women. I'm happy that women can roar. I just don't understand why having roaring women means that our boys have to be scared lambs. Why is it that the only way my son can win is to be the girl?
14 comments:
Good post. I have two sons and have been lamenting this for years.
Which Wii game were they playing? I hadn't noticed any gender bias, but then I don't play it that much myself.
Boomer Sooner!
Heather
Well, there's nothing wrong with your son's reasoning abilities or approach to life. I'm not much of a videogame person, but is he projecting his general understanding of plotlines involving females onto the game (seems unlikely - children are pretty concrete thinkers), or does the female character have some advantages intrinsic to the game's programming that allow her to win? I know a few years (decades?) back they started endowing characters with characteristic abilities, and I'm sure a good player would learn that some of these advantages are more advantageous than others. A gender bias wouldn't have occurred to me, though. I imagine Wii will figure this out and fix the problem in later editions...but, that's not going to help you with role models. I've reflected on this question from my childhood, and I honestly think that the perceptions of your parents and the expectations of teachers and other adults does more than TV role models (especially if, like my siblings and me growing up, you barely watch any TV). In terms of education and career, my parents always expected the same of all of us kids. This only became tricky when we became adults and realized that career and family might require trade-offs that differed by gender, but that's not their fault. Their programming appears to have worked, by the way. I was going to throw away the career (and did throw away the chance to get an Ivy League degree) for faith and family, but, peculiarly, God had other plans...
Anyway, it sounds to me as though you guys are doing an amazing job, and I guess I don't have a lot of worries about how your kids will turn out :).
Misfit,
Great question. The female characters are stronger, more capable, better equipped to win than the males. It isn't a design flaw. It is purposefully made that way in order to attract female players. The reasoning is that boys will play as whichever character is the best, but girls need a female player or they won't play at all. The result is that often the female characters are the only ones with all the power and strength to complete all of the missions easily.
You can win with the boys, but often have to switch from one to the other in order to use all of the strengths which the one girl has on her own.
The message that my sons and their friends get is that girls are better. That somehow there is something weak in being a boy.
I'm currently pregnant with our first baby and worry about this. I don't know if we're having a boy or girl (we chose not to find out) but I do know that we want our girls raised as girls and our boys raised as boys (I am NOT saying that girls are in the kitchen and boys in the garage) as we feel that each gender brings unique things to the table and we don't want those lines blurred. This has been somewhat troubling for me as it seems that men are only protrayed as helpful, foolish, or outright dumb beings whereas females are useful, smart, and exasperated with men. Watch tv commercials and you'll see what I mean. Hopefully we'll be able to successfully navigate this world to teach our children that being themselves is the best and we'll have the toys, books, etc that will back this up.
Awesome post! You are so right about the male characters on television. So sad! And that is crazy about the Wii characters!
I think that men are feeling unneccesary these days, and it has really caused a problem in today's society.
If we ever have boys, they will be having frequent boy days with Daddy, and I plan on having our priest over for dinner on a regular basis. :)
Megan,
Are you psychic? Having the priest over for dinner is the subject of my post for tomorrow.
Great post! My hubby's and I have had similar thoughts for years and very often felt we had to go out of our way to find books and movies with strong male characters for our son.
The gaming developers have it wrong, in my experience, our girls were more willing to take a boy character, whereas or sons absolutely refuse to take a female character despite her abilities and strengths.
I could not agree with your assessment of things more! I have six sons, and I have promised God that they will be STRONG men, virtuous men, real men! Have you even read Gut Check, by Tarek Saab? Such an EXCELLENT book. I have my teen boys read it (older teens).
"Where are the heroes? Where are the strong, smart, capable men?"
In Russia. Just have a gander at Putin on vacation vs. Obama. Any time.
I rest my case.
P.S. i bet putin's wife wears pearls...
I've heard my sons complain about the same thing. One has an xbox360 game where he has to be the girl to win. It is frustrating!
Feminazis have made the women so strong that they've made our men wimps. I hope my sons will be strong, resourceful, self-sufficient, kind and gentle men.
God bless!
Super post. I understand about the games. Hint: Books. Hardy Boys and the ilk. Some of the originals are back in print.
Okay. I'm defining wimp as one who is disrespectful, mean, abusive, lazy, unsupportive, etc.
There are good, brave, strong men around. They just don't often make the front page news. Never have.
Just because someone becomes famous for doing a good deed or two or for winning a battle/war or is a military veteran or is president of anything from a social club to a country doesn't necessarily make that person worthy of our "heroship".
I believe a hero is a man or woman who tries his or her very best to be kind, honest, polite, loving, loyal, giving, and gentle. Not a "job" for a wimp.
I really like your main point about boys lacking good male role models, but I have to disagree with your last paragraph. I don't see much of anything good that has come from "liberating women." It's that very thing that has caused the current crisis of real men right now. Women can now do anything, and boys have never wanted to do what girls do/can do. Why do we need men at all when women can supposedly do everything as well or better?
Although I'm not completely against women working outside the home, I believe the circumstances should be rare and unusual. And some say - women should be able to work outside the home or stay home as they like are contradicting themselves. You can't have it both ways. Our society is paying a heavy price for having so many mothers working outside the home and encouraging so many women not to become mothers in the first place (or to put their careers first.)
Didn't mean to get on a soapbox, but I feel really strongly about this and think it needs to be said!
Thanks.
That's why I love the site The Art of Manliness. It's unapologetic about being manly in an honorable way.
"Talking about honorable manliness was to me a niche seemingly not covered on the web or elsewhere, and I decided to start The Art of Manliness to talk about all things manly- both the serious and the fun, but with the ultimate eye toward encouraging readers to be better husbands, fathers, brothers, men."
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