Bbbuuttt...

If boys want to be like women then they might grow up to be queer. That Would Be Wrong, we can't be having That Sort Of Thing.

Oh, wait, we grew out of that sort of attitude, right? Please tell me we've grown out of it. Oh, wait, mostly we have, but the Beeb's producers are from an earlier generation and haven't caught up yet.

I refer my honourable fiancé to the furore over an ADVERT that has been going on this week...

Oh I know, but prompted by a company overreacting to a very small number of complaints, probably mostly made by people to old to worry about what they say to their children.

Hopefully, anyway. I know there are a bunch of bigots about, still, but it should be getting better. BBC producers shouldn't be like that, but sometimes...

I did get the feeling that in many cases "How will I explain it to my kids" could probably be countered by "They're forty, I think they know by now..."

When I was a real youngun, I wanted to be the Blue Ranger because he was cool and geeky and had a triceratops. The fact that he was a boy didn't deter me in the slightest, because I liked his character traits (and his cool ride) not the fact that he had a willy.

In fact, I was pretty sure the only character who did have a penis was the guy who was a wolf in armour, because he had that stupidly big codpiece.

ETA - This post so reminded me of this. >.>;

Edited at 2008-06-30 10:10 am (UTC)

When I was a little girl I wanted to grow up to be Lord John Roxton.

So what, exactly, did they say?

It was a continuation of the piece on Friday in which some woman was arguing that women CANNOT teach teenage boys because teenage boys won't respect them.

Somebody today made the excellent point that teenage boys try to vie with male teachers in a way that they don't with female ones, but it was the unquestioning acceptance of the idea that males need their teachers to be male and females need their teachers to be female for role model purposes that really wound me up.

Bollocks. I need my teachers to understand how my brain works and what interests me.

Which, uh - always male. Stupid rare-in-females leanring patterns.

Indeed.

You're absolutely right of course, and it's not something I've ever really thought about before.

I suppose the question is - what exactly is a role model? Like you say in your email, if it's a person you admire and want to emulate, then their gender has nothing to do with it unless whatever they're doing that you want to emulate is somehow specific to their gender.

Generally though, I think role models are kind of silly. It's good to be inspired by someone to go along a certain path, but to want to be just like someone else seems a bit unhealthy to me. I think people should concentrate on being themselves.

*sends soothing vibes to ease your migraine*

I wanted to be David Attenborough.

I still do. I'm not going to stop just because he doesn't have a vagina.

I bet he's got lots of female reproductive tracts in jars, from lots of species.

I don't remember ever having a role model. There were plenty of people I liked, but I can't remember ever thinking "I want to be that person."

I always like to see a woman playing bass and Kim Deal is one of my favourites, but I've always felt slightly guilty that my unquestioned bass god is Joe Preston. Seeing him in a few weeks! Squeal!

But you shouldn't feel guilty about that at all! One day maybe some little boy will see YOU as his bass God...

When I was about ten we had to research and then pretend to be on a TV chat show as some historical figure we admired - we performed in front of the rest of our class and it was videoed and everything.

And I was the only kid in the class to choose someone of the opposite gender (Louis Braille). I realize some of this may have had to do with the logistics of wanting to look like the person, but still!

When I was a young'un (just typed 'we' there; obviously the men in white coats will be along for me soon) I wanted to be Greenmantle. Then I did Post-Colonial theory and reconsidered slightly. However, I still wanted to beat the essentialist feminists to death with their own textbooks.