I’m Glad I’m a Boy! I’m Glad I’m a Girl! – either the most sexist book of all time, or the cleverest cultural satire. More equally appalling parallels at the link, including “Boys are Presidents. Girls are First Ladies.” and “Boys invent things. Girls use what boys invent.”
One of the first things a student learns when studying Mandarin is the third person pronoun, tā. This was originally written 他 , with “human” radical (a radical is a part of a Chinese character that imparts some semantic or linguistic information), and it stood for feminine, masculine, and neuter—"he,“ "she,” and “it.” During the early 20th century, however, some bright folks—undoubtedly in emulation of European languages—thought it would be a good idea to introduce gender into the Chinese writing system, so 她 (with “female” radical) came to be used for the feminine and 它 (with “roof” radical) for the neuter. I always thought that rather odd, because no attempt was made to differentiate the three forms in speech, only in writing, hence 他, 她, and 它 were still all pronounced tā.
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In recent years, however, there has been an attempt to get rid of the gender distinctions for the third person pronoun and go back to a genderless stage. What is most curious, though, is the manner in which this is being done, namely through Pinyin, the system by which Chinese characters are transcribed into the Roman alphabet. In other words, 他, 她, 它, 牠, and others— all pronounced tā—are now being replaced by the actual letters “ta”!
When her daughter insists that Tolkien’s hobbit Bilbo Baggins be reimagined as a girl, Slate’s Michelle Nijhuis looks at the gendered state of children’s literature.
A few heartening exceptions here, here, and here.
Meanwhile, Tolkien himself admonished against the very notion of “children’s literature.”
The Pink and Blue Projects – Korean visual artist JeongMee Yoon explores the genderization of color.
A lot of marriages don’t survive raising a gender-creative son who is, statistically speaking, most likely going to be gay or transgender as an adult. I wish I could to talk to those men. I wish I could be there for their kids.
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To me, loving a child who is different, a target and seen as vulnerable is my role as a father and decent human being.
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My wife also gets a load of emails from people asking where our son’s father is, as though I couldn’t possibly be around and still allow a male son to display female behavior. To those people I say, I’m right here fathering my son. I want to love him, not change him.
Beautiful, important essay by Matt Duron, a former policeman and firefighter, on raising a “gender-creative” child. (Bonus points for coining the heartening term.)
Pair with this soul-shaker on the subject.
The caveats of gender politics, in comics.
The Big Feminist BUT – artists and writers tackle gender politics in comics.
What makes some men miserly and others generous? What motivated Bill Gates, for example, to make more than $28 billion in philanthropic gifts while many of his billionaire peers kept relatively tightfisted control over their personal fortunes?
New evidence reveals a surprising answer. The mere presence of female family members — even infants — can be enough to nudge men in the generous direction.
On June 21, 1961, Phyllis Richman received this letter from Harvard’s graduate program, to which she had applied, asking her how she planned to balance her “responsibilities” to her husband with her desired career. 52 years later, she responded.
Two years after Harvard sent this letter, The Feminist Mystique pulled into question the very fabric of these assumptions and catapulted women into the quest for true equality.
Though these Guardian infographics on the optimal number of children for literary success are meant as lighthearted commentary on literary prizes and parenting, the two juxtaposed above bespeak a worrisome pattern: Whether or not literature may have a “women problem,” women seem to have a literature problem – successful women of letters procreate significantly less than successful men of letters, suggesting that the cost of parenting is far greater for a female literary career than a male one.
Even with society’s evolving ideas about parenthood and what defines a family, parenting in still more vocationally perilous for mothers than it is for fathers. No wonder a number of female writers choose not to have children.
A woman working on an all-female team of data scientists in the gaming industry pulls an ingenious prank on her male CEO and replaces the scantily clad female comic character he has a soft (hard?) spot for with another kind of poster.
But lest we forget, one of the brave everyday women at the helm of the Second Wave of Feminism did the exact same thing 40 years ago and shared it on the “social media” of her day.
(↬ MetaFilter)
15 years before the recent Wikipedia literary sexism controversy, Margaret Atwood addresses literature’s women problem.
Doesn’t this photo just say, “Ask me again about Stroganoff?” When a New York Times obituary for a female rocket scientist opens with her beef stroganoff recipe, you know the gender gap in science has taken a turn for the aberrant.
Meanwhile, to lift the spirits, some gender-stereotype-busting vintage photos of women in science.