I have three important questions to ask but first . . .
Dr. Seuss just never seems to fade away. As recently as 2008 a CGI version of ‘Horton Hears a Who’ appeared and garnered widespread praise. There is a Dr. Seuss theme park in Orlando, Florida, it looks like his ‘Oh The Places You’ll Go’ will be read at graduations for years to come, there are many Dr. Seuss web sites, and even a Broadway musical called Seussical the Musical. Dr. Seuss wrote and brilliantly illustrated about fifty children’s books, almost all in carefully crafted rhyme. His work has been adapted for films and television. His Bright and Early, and Beginner Books, written in consultation with reading comprehension experts, revolutionized educational reading. Dr. Seuss is particularly popular in the United States but his books sell well internationally and have been translated into at least sixteen other languages. Ted Geisel also had a highly successful career as a political cartoonist and an advertising illustrator.
Dr. Seuss has even been referenced by commentators on this board at least three times in recent months. When someone mentions Dr. Seuss I think first of the Grinch. What pops into your head? The Cat in the Hat? Horton the elephant? Sam-I-am? Yertle the turtle? Dr. Seuss taught us to reject racism and anti-Semitism (The Sneetches), to be environmentally aware (The Lorax), to appreciate democracy and stand up for everyone, no matter how small (Horton Hears a Who), and even to avoid arms races (The Butter Battle Book). Dr. Seuss wrote about universal themes with passion and creativity and he was often able to connect with children because he was mischievously subversive himself and he was famous for shunning the pomp and ceremony of the adult world. Many of us have a soft spot for Dr. Seuss, deservedly so. That’s why it pained me when I realized that if you want to see how misogynist culture works when it is not being dramatic, one need only examine the works of Dr. Seuss.
I carefully defined a series of terms in such a way that they could be clearly measured, terms such as Male Character, Female Character, Human Character, Non-Human Character and so on. Then I meticulously went through all of the Dr. Seuss children’s stories counting and identifying characters and counting their words when they spoke, and I discovered something incredible. Of all the words spoken in the books only 2.7% are spoken by females (86.9% are spoken by males and 10.4% are spoken by characters of uncertain gender). Males speak an incredible 32.2 times as many words as females. Females have been rendered silent and invisible. There are:
• 47 main characters - 44 are male
• 170 speaking parts - 148 of them are male
• 6.5 times as many non-human male speaking parts as non-human female speaking parts
• 7.0 times as many human male speaking parts as human female speaking parts
• 7.3 times as many male human non-speaking parts as female human non-speaking parts.
• 170 speaking parts - 148 of them are male
• 6.5 times as many non-human male speaking parts as non-human female speaking parts
• 7.0 times as many human male speaking parts as human female speaking parts
• 7.3 times as many male human non-speaking parts as female human non-speaking parts.
Gender Elements in the Children’s Stories of Ted Geisel aka Dr. Seuss
Over the course of the books female characters fill these positions: laundress, schoolteacher, majorette, noblewoman, housewife and one queen. That’s it. And the queen is mentioned in passing, on one page of ‘The Cat’s Quizzer’ and she doesn’t say a word. Male characters can be found in these positions: King (more than one), Rajah, Prince, Potentate, Lord, Chief, Chieftain, Mayor, General, Captain, Wise Man, Grand Duke, doctor, pilot, soldier, deep sea diver, military strategist, circus owner, magician, military leader, animal handler, charioteer, lumberjack, all manner of musicians, and zookeeper, among others.
In ‘The Cat in the Hat’ a boy and his sister Sally look to be about the same age but it is the boy who narrates, and he’s the one who captures Thing One and Thing Two. Sally is a non-entity; she doesn’t say a single word in the entire story. In ‘The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins’ various lords and ladies are said to be in the king’s Throne Room. In the accompanying illustration, however, all fourteen people present are either male or unspecified. None appear to be ladies. The main character, Peter, in ‘Scrambled Eggs Super’ spends the entire book explaining to his sister Liz how wonderful a cook he is; she remains silent throughout the book. In that same book Dr. Seuss has Peter refer to two egg-laying Twiddler Owls as “those fellows”. In ‘If I Ran the Zoo’ Dr. Seuss refers to a set of six hens and identifies five of them as male. The words postman, policeman, laundress, and milkman also appear in the stories. There are many other examples of gender imbalance and non-inclusive language in the stories too numerous to mention here.
In ‘The Glunk That Got Thunk’, a small girl has a powerful imagination and decides to take a chance and conjure up a monstrous, green glunk using only the power of her mind. She is unfortunately unable to unthink this Frankenstein’s monster and is rescued by her brother who then advises her not to take any more risks. In the illustration depicting her going back to thinking fuzzy things she is smiling:
Could she Un-thunk the Glunk alone?...Compare this with the parade of male figures who go on dangerous missions without needing rescue (‘I Had Trouble In Getting to Solla Sollew’, ‘Oh The Places You’ll Go’, ‘If I Ran The Zoo’, ‘If I Ran The Circus’, ‘Scrambled Eggs Super’ etc.). Furthermore, this is a far more imaginative plot than the plots of the other two stories in the anthology that ‘The Glunk That Got Thunk’ is in. In one the Cat in the Hat’s son makes excuses then runs away from a fight with a tiger (212 words long). In the other a king gets upset that that he has no one to keep his royal tail from dragging on the ground (409 words long). ‘The Glunk That Got Thunk’ has 676 words, more than the other two stories combined but the main character is a girl: however the anthology is called ‘I Can Lick Thirty Tigers Today and Other Stories’ and it is the tiger story that is featured on the cover.
It’s very doubtful whether.
So I turned on MY Un-thinker.
We Un-thunk the Glunk together.
. . . Then I gave her quite a talking to
About her Thinker-Upper.
NOW … She only thinks up fuzzy things
In the evening, after supper.
Since Dr. Seuss held many progressive views one wonders why there was such a gender imbalance in his work. Though his first book appeared in 1937, his last book, published in 1990, also exhibited a clear gender imbalance. In his book “Dr. Seuss: American Icon” Seussian scholar Philip Nel discusses the issues of misogyny in the works of Dr. Seuss. There Nel notes that it was pointed out to Geisel that there was a line from ‘And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street’ that was sexist (“Say – anyone could think of that, Jack or Fred or Joe or Nat – Say, even Jane could think of that.”) and when asked to change that line, he called the request “beyond contempt”. In 1971 Geisel said, “These gals obviously have a lot of time on their hands to write letters, and I think answering them would just be stirring up a female hornets’ nest.” In reference to those letters again, in 1975, he said, “they were written by Extreme-Fringe-Woman-Libbers” and finally, in 1978, after agreeing to change a racist line from the same book he said that the sexist line about Jane “should never be changed for I am a male chauvinist peeg” (*).
Imagine fifty books featuring characters like a Cat in a Hat named Jane, a Grinch named Grace, a Lorax named Laura, Pam-I-am pushing green eggs and ham at you, and an elephant named Hortense who hatches an egg and hears a Who. Imagine that 89% of the characters are female. Imagine ‘The 500 Hats of Bernadette Cubbins’. Imagine ‘The Queen’s Stilts’ with Lady Droon instead of Lord Droon, and no men in the Throne Room. Imagine every monarch, political leader, musician, police officer, doctor, magician, soldier, military leader and pilot is female. Imagine the few males around saying practically nothing, and being lectured to about not taking risks. Imagine only 2.7% of the spoken words across dozens of million selling books are spoken by males. Imagine all these girls and women also being featured at a theme park, in a Broadway musical, and in a string of television productions and feature films. Imagine all sorts of books analyzing and celebrating all these female-dominated stories. Imagine hearing one of these books read at your graduation, or playing with some of the hundreds of toys featuring female characters from these stories. Imagine all of these female faces, all these female voices, all these female heroes, all these female supporting characters. Imagine being a little boy reading all these books year after year. Something like that has been happening to all the little girls who have been reading the Dr. Seuss books since 1937. Imagine.
So here are my questions:
1. Every individual has their own experiences, thoughts and feelings so responses will vary accordingly, but, how did women respond as children to the Dr. Seuss canon?Feminist scholars have been examining the gender implications of children’s literature for decades. Has anyone out there noticed any particularly annoying misogynies in the Harry Potter Books? Artemis Fowl? The Oz books? Asterix? The Bartimaeus Trilogy? Madeline? Doctor Dolittle? The Famous Five?
2. How does one read a Dr. Seuss book to one’s young daughter (or son) so that s/he isn’t adversely affected by the gender imbalance?
3. Why is someone as progressive as Dr. Seuss (regarding some matters) so savagely critical of gender equity?
Finally, take a look at the lines from ‘And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street’ which Dr. Seuss adamantly refused to change: “Say – anyone could think of that, Jack or Fred or Joe or Nat – Say, even Jane could think of that.” Imagine you’re Jane. Now imagine your name is Dave and this is what Dr. Seuss wrote: “Say – anyone could think of those, Jill or Anne or Liz or Rose – Say, even Dave could think of those.” Now how do you feel?
____________________
Note – Alison Lurie addresses the issue of misogyny in the Dr. Seuss books admirably in her essay ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Seuss’ which appeared in The New York Review of Books in 1990. Seussian scholar Philip Nel also points out that gender issues in Dr. Seuss are more complicated than they might appear to be in his book ‘Dr. Seuss: American Icon’ (pages 101-117).
* Nel, Philip Dr. Seuss: American Icon. New York, London: Continuum, 2004. 108-109.
--The Kidd
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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.
This is why I keep buying my nephews the Emily Brown books. They're picture books, and they're about a girl who has exciting adventures of the jungle-exploring, monster-fighting variety.
That's not something I find very often.
Posted by: Deird, who also likes the Paperbag Princess | May 18, 2011 at 07:43 PM
I've read an interesting stat a couple of times about how boys are the "default narrator" in many children's books because boys aren't willing to read books with female main characters.
The opposite clearly isn't true, but it's a sad example of and part of the reason for the continued assumption of maleness as normal, or what semioticians would call the "unmarked" category (I think). Everything else, of course, is abnormal.
Posted by: Aaaaaaaargh | May 18, 2011 at 08:25 PM
isn't it a leap to label Dr. Seuss a misogynist merely because he wrote mostly male characters? My dictionary defines misogyny as the hatred, dislike or mistrust of women. A male author writing mostly male characters is not misogyny. A male author writing male characters who hate, dislike, and mistrust female characters... perhaps.
Posted by: biology guy | May 18, 2011 at 08:33 PM
@biology guy: My dictionary defines misogyny as the hatred, dislike or mistrust of women.
Leaving aside the fact that creating many, many, many worlds all of which share the common characteristic of not having women/girls in important/central roles as evidence that the writer didn't really trust/like/respect women -- one could simply read (again) the words of Geisel himself as quoted in the article you just "read."
BTW, not "mostly", "overwhelmingly"
Posted by: Mmy | May 18, 2011 at 08:50 PM
Hi, biology guy, welcome to Feminism 101. I'm not your teacher. I do, however, invite you to find an accurate label for Seuss's views on women as demonstrated by his lack of depiction of women. 'Misogynist' seems to fit pretty well from where I'm standing, but since you disagree, kindly provide us with a replacement.
Posted by: MercuryBlue | May 18, 2011 at 08:52 PM
Longtime lurker, first time poster - I promise not to kill any posters with sheep, if that's still a bad thing to do around here.
isn't it a leap to label Dr. Seuss a misogynist merely because he wrote mostly male characters? My dictionary defines misogyny as the hatred, dislike or mistrust of women. A male author writing mostly male characters is not misogyny. A male author writing male characters who hate, dislike, and mistrust female characters... perhaps.
I enjoy writing fiction and most of my protagonists are males, so this was my first thought as well. It seems a bit harsh to assume that a writer is misogynist because he prefers to write from the POV of a certain gender.
Is there more to the story? Of course. Minimizing and silencing female characters is more than a gender bias - it's a not-too-subtle statement about the validity of females. And given the data and specific text examples, I'd say that Seuss is most likely guilty of this.
That being said, I enjoyed Dr. Seuss as a kid (who didn't?) and I can say that I never in a million years would have noticed this bias unless it had been pointed out to me*. An argument could be made that internalizing this kind of thing early on in life is exactly what enables male privilege and the like, but in a strict sense it did not affect me to read stories told by mostly male protagonists and with mostly male supporting casts.
*Part of the reason for this is that I didn't think of most characters as being male or female. The "indeterminate gender" thing really prevented me from classifying most of Seuss's characters as girls or boys.
Posted by: Phoenix, who enjoys Deird's inventive signature tags very much | May 18, 2011 at 08:52 PM
I can say that I never in a million years would have noticed this bias unless it had been pointed out to me*.
I wouldn't have either - but I think that's mostly because it's such a common bias for authors to have. I'm noticing it much more now that I'm looking for it, and especially because I'm now trying to find books about little girls...
Posted by: Deird, who enjoys them too! :) | May 18, 2011 at 08:57 PM
Thanks for this; it's not something that had ever occurred to me.
I don't think I would worry too much about reading /a/ Dr. Seuss book to my (hypothetical) daughter, but after this I would definitely make sure to look for some other books with more prominent female characters.
Posted by: Gotchaye | May 18, 2011 at 09:25 PM
I wouldn't have either - but I think that's mostly because it's such a common bias for authors to have. I'm noticing it much more now that I'm looking for it, and especially because I'm now trying to find books about little girls...
Reminds me of the Bechdel Test. Like Godwin's Law, it's a thought exercise which highlights an unfortunate tendency in the culture.
Posted by: Robin Zimmermann | May 18, 2011 at 09:30 PM
He does seem to at least have had a large bias at least, but I would also question misogyny. He does have at least some heroic or respectable female characters. Cindy Lou from The Grinch?
Posted by: Scrawl | May 18, 2011 at 09:35 PM
1. As I read, gender doesn't seem to matter very much when it comes to whether I identify with a character or not. When I was a little girl, a pattern of female characters who only did three types of jobs (nurse, secretary, schoolteacher) did make an impression on me; but I also knew that times had changed and I was going to live in a world where I could be anything I wanted when I grew up... assuming the world didn't end before then, which was a different and unrelated question.
Gender did matter somewhat to little-girl me, though. It wasn't a boy character that I wanted to be like, but Pippi Longstocking (or possibly the Wicked Witch of the West. I was an odd kid).
3. "Why is someone as progressive as Dr. Seuss (regarding some matters) so savagely critical of gender equity?"
My impression from those quotes is that he believed the vicious anti-feminist propaganda of the 1970s and he never quite got over it. Maybe he would have, given another decade or so--after all, in later life he certainly didn't exhibit the kind of racism you can find in his WWII political cartoons.
Posted by: Hummingwolf | May 18, 2011 at 09:40 PM
My older sister requested two books be bought for her when she graduated university. One was a book of hilarious wrong answers to test questions, the other was "Oh The Places You'll Go". After her graduation we gave her the books and I read "Oh the Places You'll Go" to her right after we gave them to her. I was surprised to find the main character being explicitly male because there's really absolutely no reason for the main character to be identified as anything. The main character is "you."
A few small changes and you could read the story to anyone without something jumping out as not being right for that person.
Posted by: chris the cynic | May 18, 2011 at 10:10 PM
Has anyone out there noticed any particularly annoying misogynies in the Harry Potter Books? Artemis Fowl? The Oz books? Asterix? The Bartimaeus Trilogy? Madeline? Doctor Dolittle? The Famous Five?
Can't speak to all of them; but the Oz books are famous for their female protagonists (especially Land of Oz, with its big reveal).
The Artemis Fowl books split the focus between Artemis and Captain Holly Short, his elf-cop nemesis. Imagine Tinker Bell starring in Lethal Weapon.
As to Asterix... Uderzo (sometime after Goscinny's passing) took on feminism in Asterix and the Secret Weapon. (http://www.amazon.com/Asterix-Secret-Weapon-Albert-Uderzo/dp/0752847163/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305772265&sr=1-1) I thought the results were an embarrassment. Almost as bad as Falling Sky.
Posted by: Brad | May 18, 2011 at 10:34 PM
isn't it a leap to label Dr. Seuss a misogynist merely because he wrote mostly male characters? My dictionary defines misogyny as the hatred, dislike or mistrust of women. A male author writing mostly male characters is not misogyny. A male author writing male characters who hate, dislike, and mistrust female characters... perhaps.
A) Go educate yourself. You are speaking from ignorance.
B) Yes, it is still misogyny. It still has the effect of describing women as lower-status, as less-than, as unimportant, just as if he had set out to do just that.
I enjoy writing fiction and most of my protagonists are males, so this was my first thought as well. It seems a bit harsh to assume that a writer is misogynist because he prefers to write from the POV of a certain gender.
And we must never, ever be harsh to those who relegate women to second-class status, as long as they don't mean to. Why did you even feel the need to write this sentence? And maybe you need to reexamine your writing.
He does seem to at least have had a large bias at least, but I would also question misogyny.
And again, yes, it is. If you question it, then you need to go educate yourself.
What is it about these topics that makes the misogyny-deniers come out of the woodwork? (No, don't answer that, I know perfectly well.) Who are there guys? I don't recognize these names.
Also, no further warning given: both barrels, next round. I have no patience with this crap. Anybody who sincerely wants to go educate themselves can go click the link on my name, which leads to Finally: A Feminism 101 Blog, and start there. While you're at it, try Intent! It's Fucking Magic! for details on why, no, it does not matter that he didn't mean it. Anybody who wants to argue about it, or faux-reasonably "discuss" it, gets the full Nuker treatment. Somebody else can be reasonable this time, I'm all out.
And anybody who doesn't want to see it can killfile me right now. Yes, I'll still put the warnings on, but consider this an additional, advance warning.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, the big meanie | May 18, 2011 at 10:37 PM
Thank you, MadGastronomer. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Posted by: The Kidd | May 18, 2011 at 10:44 PM
You're welcome, Kidd. Anytime.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, the big meanie | May 18, 2011 at 10:46 PM
*bookmarked*
Seriously, though, Phoenix, I'm forced to paraphrase Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip here: thou shalt not put writers or artists on ridiculous pedestals, no matter how great they are or were. Dr. Seuss was just an author.
Posted by: Robin Zimmermann | May 18, 2011 at 11:02 PM
Somehow relevant at this juncture: The Kids In the Hall's Dr. Seuss Bible.
Posted by: Enoch Root | May 18, 2011 at 11:12 PM
Aaaaaaargh: I've read an interesting stat a couple of times about how boys are the "default narrator" in many children's books because boys aren't willing to read books with female main characters.
Hoping I got your name right, I lost count among the a's.
Anyway, FWIW, this came up on anther thread several months ago; I asked whether this is still true, and several former boys and parents of boys spoke up to say that it isn't. That they when younger, or their sons now, were perfectly willing to read about girls if the book was otherwise the kind of book they like. So it'a an attitude that seems to be changing; I wonder if the publishers have kept up?
Scrawl: Cindy Lou from The Grinch?
Who was not more than two? And who did nothing more than be fooled by the Grinch and go back to bed? Not that I'd expect more of a two-year-old, but you can't exactly call her a heroic or even interesting character.
I loved the Seuss books as a child, but then I'm old, and nobody was worrying about this kind of thing way back then. In fact, I'm old enough to have actually learned to read from a Dick-and-Jane reader, and compared to those, the Seuss books were a model of innovation. There was some point in learning to read for that kind of language.
Which doesn't excuse the overwhelming male bias of his work, or the attitudes expressed in those quotes, but compared to most of what was available at the time, at least his stuff was no worse and more interesting.
My daughter had a few of the books, but she had so much else to read, including plenty of books about girls, that I don't think that Dr. Seuss did her any harm.
I didn't think the Harry Potter books were misogynist, but I am aware that opinions vary: shall we have that argument again?
Posted by: Amaryllis | May 18, 2011 at 11:41 PM
MG, you seriously believe that writing from a male POV means a writer is misogynist? That's a new one for me. Why does it matter which gender I prefer to write?
Posted by: Phoenix | May 19, 2011 at 12:15 AM
1. You make no reference to the passage from And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street and Theodore Geisel's defense thereof.
2. It is not simply a matter of writing from a male POV, but of silencing or marginalizing all female characters. Even if you prefer to write male characters, to make fully half of the human species all but invisible and inaudible is a distortion of reality rightly condemned.
Yellow card: straw man argumentation.
Posted by: Robin Zimmermann | May 19, 2011 at 12:26 AM
WARNING: NUCLEAR MG IS NUCLEAR; CUSSING AND MEANNESS AHEAD
MG, you seriously believe that writing from a male POV means a writer is misogynist? That's a new one for me. Why does it matter which gender I prefer to write?
No, you puling pillock, I think that if you start out by taking it personally when someone points out that in Dr. Seuss's entire body of work, females speak only 2.7% of the words, then maybe your subconscious knows that it's more than a preference for writing from the POV of one gender. Nor, you will note, did I say that you were misogynist. (Defensive, much? I wonder why.) I said that you might want to reexamine your own writing. To, you know, *gasp* check to see if maybe some unintentional bias had slipped in.
What I do think is that defending misogyny enables misogyny, and yeah, jumping straight to a wounded "that's kind of harsh" is, in fact, defending misogyny. And enabling misogyny has the effect of misogyny, so yeah, you are practicing misogyny, and therefor, you are currently a fucking misogynist. You know how you can stop being a fucking misogynist? By ceasing to defend and enable misogyny, and by accepting that maybe, just maybe, since you're marinating in a goddamned misogynistic culture, some unintentional misogyny may have slipped into your work, and maybe that's something you want to look at more closely and work on in the future. That's how you can stop being a misogynist. Jackass.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, the big meanie | May 19, 2011 at 12:31 AM
It wasn't a strawman. MG quoted the part of my first post where I spoke of my own preferred gender to write and questioned my writing. It's a legitimate question, especially since I also conceded in my post that Seuss himself was most likely guilty of misogyny.
By the way, I'm female.
Posted by: Phoenix | May 19, 2011 at 12:34 AM
By the way, I'm female.
And women are never guilty of misogyny. Ever. There's no such thing as internalized misogyny, either.
I'll take one thing back, though, if you like. You're not a jackass, you're a jennyass.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, the big meanie | May 19, 2011 at 12:38 AM
Sorry, did that one need a warning? If so, can a TBAT tack it on, please? My fingers got ahead of me.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, the big meanie | May 19, 2011 at 12:39 AM
Well, I spent the better part of last week fighting tooth and nail against a bona fide misogynist and rape apologist, mostly using arguments which I learned on slacktivist, but whatever.
And I thought MY message board was hard on newcomers...
Posted by: Phoenix | May 19, 2011 at 12:44 AM
Phoenix: Why are you putting words in MadGastronomer's mouth? That's not at all what she said.
Posted by: Andrew Glasgow | May 19, 2011 at 12:45 AM
It looks like I'm going to get driven out of the comments here for this, but I, too, question labeling this misogyny instead of sexism. Hatred seems much more active and intentional than bias, prejudice, and stereotyping. Or are is the working definition here that sexism is misogyny?
Posted by: We Must Dissent | May 19, 2011 at 12:48 AM
I don't think there's any cussing in this one, but I'm still being stern.
And, again, that has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not you are excusing and enabling misogyny now, nor whether or not there are problems you're not seeing in your writing.
I'm not being hard on anyone for being a newcomer, I'm being hard on people for excusing misogyny, which I am no matter how long they've been around. Ask around, if you don't believe me.
If you hadn't opened with saying it was "harsh" to call someone a misogynist for overwhelmingly neglecting to have female characters, especially speaking ones, and hadn't gotten defensive, and had just posted the rest, I wouldn't have made a peep.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, the big meanie | May 19, 2011 at 12:50 AM
I have to admit that I never noticed that imbalance in Dr Seuss. (My favorites were things like 'On Beyond Zebra', and I tended to ignore most of the gender stuff that might have been in there - I think of most of his characters as having gender-of-convenience, rather than being actually male/female.whatever.)
Posted by: P J Evans | May 19, 2011 at 12:50 AM
I said I preferred to write from a male perspective. She responded by telling me to examine my own writing, presumably for misogyny. Since all I said about my writing was that I like to write from male POV, that implies to me that she thinks liking to write from a male POV suggests misogyny. So I asked her a follow up question to make sure I had that right.
I don't see how I put words in her mouth.
Posted by: Phoenix | May 19, 2011 at 12:53 AM
WARNING: AND AGAIN WITH THE CUSSING AND NASTINESS
It looks like I'm going to get driven out of the comments here for this, but I, too, question labeling this misogyny instead of sexism.
Oh, FFS. I am so sick of this whining about how you can't call people misogynist unless they meet this or that high criteria of nastiness. It's fucking bullshit.
Hatred seems much more active and intentional than bias, prejudice, and stereotyping. Or are is the working definition here that sexism is misogyny?
The working definition is that being utterly shitty to women as a group is misogyny, and that's exactly what he was doing by excluding women to such an overwhelming extent. Plus, there's the misogynistic shit he said. Get your head out of your ass. This is not the important topic. The important topic is the actual fucking problem of how women are treated, and what to do about it. What you're doing is called derailing, and it, too, enables misogyny.
You don't have to leave, you just have to stop being a shit.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, the big meanie | May 19, 2011 at 12:54 AM
So you did - I apologize. I believe part of the vitriol directed against you may arise from confusing your defense of Seuss (and claiming he was only "most likely" misogynistic is defending him, given the evidence presented) and your remarks on your own writing.
Nevertheless, I would second MadGastronomer's point about internalizing misogyny. I remember taking at least one online implicit association test which suggested I associated black skin with violence - and I'm black. Being a member of a disadvantaged group does not automatically shield you from the culture which penalizes that group.
Posted by: Robin Zimmermann | May 19, 2011 at 12:54 AM
And Phoenix? I note you haven't actually responded to my reply to your oh-so-hotly-defended legitimate question.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, the big meanie | May 19, 2011 at 12:56 AM
MG, I don't think you read my whole post. I said that it was harsh to call a writer misogynist for preferring to write male characters. I then went on to say that it WAS misogynist to minimize and silence women, which it looked like Seuss was indeed guilty of doing.
I was not apologizing for misogyny. I simply opened by saying that I didn't think that the sole quality of liking to write males shouldn't automatically qualify a writer as misogynist.
Posted by: Phoenix | May 19, 2011 at 01:00 AM
Respond to what? Your assertion that I feel defensive about my writing? I'm not sure how to respond to that, considering I don't feel the least bit defensive about it.
Posted by: Phoenix | May 19, 2011 at 01:02 AM
So for you, any sexism is misogyny then. The way I am used to those words being used, they are not the same. It seems to me like calling someone who assaulted someone else a murderer. The assault is bad, but that doesn't make it murder.
Posted by: We Must Dissent | May 19, 2011 at 01:02 AM
I simply opened by saying that I didn't think that the sole quality of liking to write males shouldn't automatically qualify a writer as misogynist.
Which, since nobody said that, was very defensive of you, as you said yourself that you took it personally. We're not talking about a preference or a liking, we're talking about only 2.7% of words being spoken by female characters. There's a whole lot of ground between the two.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, the big meanie | May 19, 2011 at 01:03 AM
WARNING: MORE CUSSING
So for you, any sexism is misogyny then. The way I am used to those words being used, they are not the same. It seems to me like calling someone who assaulted someone else a murderer. The assault is bad, but that doesn't make it murder.
And, again, you're derailing, which is, yeah, being a shit. The definitions are not the problem, and I'm not going to discuss them further with you. Derailing the conversation is itself problematic, as it distracts from actually trying to find solutions.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, the big meanie | May 19, 2011 at 01:08 AM
Fair enough, Robin. Seuss is guilty of misogyny in his writing. I just don't like to assign that label so quickly, I guess, especially when the offender is an author I like a lot. I realize that's a problem of mine. I like Seuss but that shouldn't and doesn't excuse my excusing his behavior.
Posted by: Phoenix | May 19, 2011 at 01:08 AM
MG, I'm typing on my phone and it's hard to reread as I'm doing so, therefore I'm working from memory here. I thought part of the essay asserted that Seuss's preference to write male characters was part of his misogynistic tendencies. I know the number of male versus female or indeterminate characters was part of the statistics at least.
Possibly I'm remembering that wrong and/or I read something into the essay because I did indeed feel defensive of Seuss. But that's an important note- I felt defensive of Seuss himself, not misogyny.
I know, I know. Intent isn't magic. So shoot me.
Posted by: Phoenix | May 19, 2011 at 01:15 AM
Posted by: We Must Dissent | May 19, 2011 at 01:16 AM
Phoenix, why don't you reread it when you get the chance, and then tell me it's a "preference." Yes, statistics were part of it, because they are absolutely relevant. But this goes way beyond a preference, especially in light of the rest of what he said.
I don't want to shoot you, I just don't want you to defend misogynistic behavior. Which you have, for the moment, stopped, so I'm content.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, the big meanie | May 19, 2011 at 01:17 AM
WARNING: CUSSING
What solutions are possible? The works are written and the author is dead. Sexism in Seuss's works can't be remedied.
Did you read the goddamned post? How (and whether) to present Seuss's work to children so it doesn't reinforce the cultural stew of sexism and misogyny, what books are less sexist and misogynist that can be given children instead, how current and future children's writers can avoid the same problem.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, the big meanie | May 19, 2011 at 01:20 AM
I will, but it won't be until Friday when I have access to a computer again.
It does go beyond a preference, MG. I know. All I said was that such a preference, by itself, doesn't make someone misogynist.
I specifically went on to say that Seuss doesn't stop there, and that by minimizing and silencing women, he WAS being misogynist (and yes, I initially watered down that statement by saying "most likely" - my bad).
So I am not even sure we disagree here.
Posted by: Phoenix | May 19, 2011 at 01:28 AM
All I said was that such a preference, by itself, doesn't make someone misogynist.
And I said that I didn't understand why you wrote that sentence. Nobody had said that it did. You also said that your immediate response was personal, because you did prefer to write from a male POV, which again was not at all what we were talking about. So, yeah, that sounded pretty defensive, and that defensiveness was what made me suggest that you check your writing again -- not your preference, but your immediate jump to defend your preference when it wasn't at all what we were talking about -- which is just a suggestion that you check, not accusing you of misogyny because of your preference.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, the big meanie | May 19, 2011 at 01:31 AM
I recall Peter T. Hooper as being a blowhard about his scrambled eggs; all puffery. And my recollection is that his sister Liz, looking on, somehow seems to have superior scrambled-egg knowledge, which she keeps to herself.
Since I don't have the text, I can't compare this with what Dr. Seuss actually wrote.
But I can say that it looks from here like I, as a little girl, put a spin on the story where the girl was more interesting than might be assumed. So that's my recollection of how I reacted to one piece of Dr Seuss's sexism.
And in general I identified with the adventuring, tree-climbing, dragon-slaying boy characters in my children's books. I had no problem identifying with the gusty girls when they showed up (Liza Lou-) but given a choice between a demure girl and a brave boy, I identified with the boy. And I was serious conflicted/upset when I hit puberty, because my androgynous girl self didn't want to become a woman.
Posted by: bread and roses | May 19, 2011 at 01:43 AM
Okay. I hear you, and although I still don't think it's entirely appropriate or in keeping with the spirit of what this site has become since Fred's departure to immediately nuke newcomers who say things you don't like, I did listen to what you said.
I wouldn't mind continuing the discussion, but my fiance and I are moving tomorrow. So if I don't comment again until Friday, that's why.
Posted by: Phoenix | May 19, 2011 at 01:43 AM
Phoenix, please, please, please do not bring up the Nuking argument. Please. It is not worth it, and I will not back down, and I do not care who thinks it is or is not appropriate, and I do not see any reason why newcomers should be exempt.
Good luck to you and your fiancee in your move. I hope to see you here more.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, the big meanie | May 19, 2011 at 01:53 AM
Doesn't this little contrempts as to whether or not Seuss was 'really' a misogynist mirror the difficulty in talking about racism? I'm given to understand that white people often understand 'racist' to mean something like 'hates people because of their skin colour', and they inevitably start thinking of Nazis and the KKK. A racist policy would be one enacted by a racist (= KKK member or similar) to deliberately hurt people of other races.
Of course, the white person in question (usually) doesn't actually feel overwhelmed with hatred every time they see a non-white person, so they don't think that they themselves are a racist, can't see that the policy is racist, and are deeply insulted when someone suggests that they are, as it's tantamount to suggesting that they agree with the Final Solution.
Whereas non-white people often take 'racism' to mean something more like 'systematically disadvantages or advantages people of a specific race'. Obviously a person or a policy could do this without being motivated by any kind of dramatic feelings of hatred, and could even be racist quite unintentionally.
Or at least, so I have heard.
This difference in meaning effectively shuts down any meaningful discussion about the issue, as reasonable complaints about unfair practices by one party will be taken as hysterical accusations and barbed insults by the other. On the other hand, understandable denial of being motivated by hate-filled malevolence by one party will be taken as whitewashing and deaf ears by the other. Instead of coming to some mutual understanding, the discussion degenerates into a vitriolic fight.
Hopefully if we all step back a bit and count to '10' we can see that 'misogyny' is being used in similarly different ways here. I don't think The Kidd is supposing that after writing another brilliant cartoon, Dr. Seuss was in the habit of going to his parlour, smoking a cigar, and plotting how next to oppress womenkind. And Phoenix isn't denying that there's a real problem here.
Seeing as there's broad agreement here on what's going on, can we drop the terminological dispute? It helps nobody to defend one's use of 'misogyny' to the death.
It seems pretty evident that Dr. Seuss's books do marginalize women. Whether or not he intended to do so, or what he internally felt when he was writing the things, are not so important, as has already been pointed out.
Posted by: arc | May 19, 2011 at 01:57 AM
Regarding 'Words in mouth' the conversation got way ahead of my post, so it's out of place in the posts... please just disregard it, or if mods want to they can delete.
Posted by: Andrew Glasgow | May 19, 2011 at 02:03 AM
Doesn't this little contrempts as to whether or not Seuss was 'really' a misogynist mirror the difficulty in talking about racism?
Yes.
Seeing as there's broad agreement here on what's going on, can we drop the terminological dispute?
Please.
Thank you, arc. Apparently, you have the reasonable I don't, at the moment. (But suggesting I step back and count to 10 doesn't generally work. I haven't lost my temper, I do what I do deliberately.)
Posted by: MadGastronomer, the big meanie | May 19, 2011 at 02:04 AM
I grew up with Dr. Seuss and had strong reactions to his books--I was, and am, extremely fond of _I Had Trouble In Getting to Solla Sollew_ (I can quote big chunks from memory. On the other hand I hated _Green Eggs and Ham_ with a passion--I thought the narrator was taking the side of the bully--and mostly did not care for the more moralistic stories, except for _The Sneeches_.
I think that I perceive characters like the narrator of _Solla_ as somewhat androgynous, just as they are ambiguous as to species and age. I do call the narrator "he" to myself, but I would balk at calling him a boy or man. On the other hand, that "he" is a telltale that I probably do regard the narrator as a male...something. I certainly can't label it as a girl or woman.
But the world with few or no females in it was familiar territory for me from very early on--I picked up SF very early, and most SF of that period simply didn't have women around. I cherished the few stories that did, but hardly noticed the ones that didn't--it was a default.
I think what this encouraged in me, rather than straightforward sexism, was the more subtle kind where you don't think there are gender limits to what *you* can do but consider yourself as exceptional in that regard. The "honorary male" mindset--I was an honorary male in quite a few social situations, like the chess club. It was a lot better than not belonging at all, but you really shouldn't have to de-gender yourself to fit in.
My mother wrote of being hostile to feminism when she was young, because she perceived those who were more vulnerable to sexism than herself as simply weak. Then she had a daughter, which changed her perspective completely. This feels like a related thing, though I can't analyze it further right now (too tired).
Posted by: MaryKaye | May 19, 2011 at 02:07 AM
I would like to propose that hair-splitting between 'sexism' and 'misogyny' is disregarded for the irrelevancy that it is. If something is bad for women, it's bad for women, and that's the important issue. I really don't care which it is, and it's a good way to change the subject from sexism to semantics - to something, anything other than the thing that actually matters. Let's not.
I'd also like to propose that we ignore the stupid posts. They really don't merit centre stage: sexist men get more than their share of resources everywhere else, and letting them turn a potentially interesting discussion about a writer into a discussion of their own touchy egos is giving them more attention than they merit. Let's just have an intelligent conversation and they can learn from it if they choose. This isn't their website.
--
I've read an interesting stat a couple of times about how boys are the "default narrator" in many children's books because boys aren't willing to read books with female main characters.
If female main characters were as prevalent in exciting stories as male ones, I suspect this would not be the case.
I also suspect parental expectations play a pretty big role. My husband's parents read him Anne of Green Gables as a child, for example, with the assumption that he'd like it because he was a good book - and they were quite right, he loved it. He didn't see it as a story about 'a girl'; he saw it as a story about that particular girl, and it was one of his favourite books in childhood.
If girls can read stories about boys, boys can read stories about girls. What boys won't do is read books people imply are beneath them, or read books that aren't interesting.
--
Personal response:
This saddens me. I loved Dr Seuss passionately as a child, but I cannot disagree with anything said here.
How did I respond as a child? I loved the books, and was fortunate enough to miss the really sexist ones. Whether this was because my mother was a watchful and supportive partner in my reading (which she was), or whether it was luck, I can't say.
I know I noticed that all the characters were boys. But well, that was just what fiction was like. A unisex story had boys in it. I don't think I expected him to write female characters very much; that was for girls' stories, not children's stories.
But there were quirks. My favourite was Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose, and in retrospect there may have been a gendered aspect to it: Thidwick is obliged to carry a load of selfish and demanding animals on his horns, unable to resist them because 'A host above all must be nice to his guests.' Being 'nice' is something society expects of girls a lot more than boys; you might say that of the male characters, Thidwick occupies a role more traditionally imposed on women.
And I was very interested in Sally. I wondered what she was like, what she had to say. She seemed somehow glamorous in her mystery: she could be anything. In marginalisation, I read tantalising enigma: it just didn't occur to me that she'd be sidelined because she wasn't equal, because girls clearly were as good as boys. (Or indeed, in my five-year-old mind, a lot more interesting.) Sally, in my mind, was a kind of exciting secret: things must be going on with her, and they seemed to me concealed rather than neglected. As an adult I see that crappy old sister-as-sidekick stereotype, but as a child, I saw in her sidelining not exclusion, but privacy.
And now? Well, I have a pre-verbal son, and I read to him. But while I still have a lot of Dr Seuss books, they aren't the ones I usually choose. I've already given away the book containing the Glunk; if he wants to read it I won't stop him, but I'm not about to put it in his path. Partly I don't read them much because they're a little long for a pre-verbal baby, partly because I've discovered that Julia Donaldson reads aloud better. (I wish she'd put some female characters into The Gruffalo - why can't the fox or the owl or the snake be female? - but at least Room on the Broom divides fairly well.) I may read some of them to him as he gets older - and if he likes them, I'll probably end up reading them many, many times. But they aren't books I feel compelled to share with him. Just for myself, they feel like a sailed ship: part of my past, flawed with sexism, and while not forbidden at all, in competition with other writers who are equally good to read aloud and afflicted with fewer problems. I'm mostly focused on Donaldson and the Hairy MacClary books.
As much as anything else, popular books create a common language among small children and I want to read my son the books his friends will be familiar with so he can join in that conversation. Seuss is an option, but really I'm on the lookout for what all the cool babies are reading nowadays.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 19, 2011 at 02:07 AM
I'd also like to propose that we ignore the stupid posts.
They aren't stupid, they are pernicious and harmful. These positions must be challenged. They go unchallenged all too often in the world, and all too many people who voice them take silence for agreement. You may ignore them if you like, but I can't.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, the big meanie | May 19, 2011 at 02:14 AM
One more, then sleep.
I don't want to get into a tone argument, MG. I truly don't. I've learned a lot from your nukings in the past, so it would be disingenuous of me not to learn from ones directed at me.
I don't feel I defended misogyny, although I do plan to examine that. And I felt bullied by your response, although I did my best not to take it personally and to learn from it.
Again, I'm not trying to argue or get you to back down. But since you did yell at me, I do feel entitled to tell you how that made me feel.
Thanks for the good wishes, and the welcome. I hope to begin posting here more often also.
Posted by: Phoenix | May 19, 2011 at 02:18 AM
And I felt that you defended misogyny, Phoenix, and felt attacked by that. You get to acknowledge your feelings, and I get to acknowledge mine.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, the big meanie | May 19, 2011 at 02:22 AM
Fair enough, MG. I apologize for that, and I'll be back on Friday.
Posted by: Phoenix | May 19, 2011 at 02:28 AM
They aren't stupid, they are pernicious and harmful. These positions must be challenged. They go unchallenged all too often in the world, and all too many people who voice them take silence for agreement. You may ignore them if you like, but I can't.
The problem with that is that it allows them to turn a conversation about something else into a conversation about them. It's negative attention, but it's the reward of attention nonetheless. At worst, the thread turns into a flamewar that teaches the sexists nothing and discourages all the women who don't feel up to a fight; at best, it turns the thread into an education session for people who really ought to be educating themselves. Either way, it lets men take over the space.
I'm not saying we can't disagree, but I would not like to see a conversation that could potentially be interesting for women and men both turn into a conversation with men whose only interest is in silencing women. If women wind up talking about nothing but those men, we've been half-silenced already. Let's at least have some balance and talk about the actual post as well as the sexist comments.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 19, 2011 at 02:30 AM
Oh, also - 'pernicious and harmful' and 'stupid' are not mutually exclusive.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 19, 2011 at 02:32 AM
OK, they're not just stupid.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, the big meanie | May 19, 2011 at 02:35 AM
I think we're both interested in fighting these comments. The difference seems to be that you propose fighting them with nuking and I propose fighting them with contempt.
The thing is, sexist comments are indeed pernicious and harmful - but only if anybody listens to them. If every time some guy said a dumb, sexist thing everybody just rolled their eyes and treated him as not worth talking to, I suspect he'd learn not to make such remarks. Social exclusion is a powerful force in its own right.
I'm not proposing ignoring them because I'm trying to be fluffy and nice. I'm proposing it partly because I think it'd make a more comfortable thread for some nice people, but also because it's a different way of doing the 'big meanie' thing. That's why I called the comments stupid. I wasn't trying to excuse them; they can't be excused. I was indicating that they're so devoid of worthwhile content that I don't think they merit more than a single word's worth of my time describing them. I wasn't actually ignoring them entirely; I was paying them just enough attention to dismiss them.
So I'm not actually being nice here.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 19, 2011 at 02:42 AM
I didn't say you were being nice. If you feel you're challenging them by doing things your way, then more power to you. I will continue to challenge them in my way. If you prefer to foster the larger conversation, then by all means do so. For myself, I'm still sorting out what contribution I want to make to that conversation.
Posted by: MadGastronomer, the big meanie | May 19, 2011 at 03:00 AM
My impression from those quotes is that he believed the vicious anti-feminist propaganda of the 1970s and he never quite got over it.
Is there any evidence for that, or is it just a guess? Because if the latter, I think Occam's Razor is probably against you...
Of course, having 'too much time on your hands' could indeed be a problem for women. The foundation of The Feminine Mystique was pointing out that women did indeed have too much time on their hands unless they had a young child - and that they were sick to the soul with the boredom of it all because human beings need activity. That's kind of an important element of feminism: women don't do any better than men if they're just deposited somewhere with nothing to do. 'Time on your hands', when you're actively excluded from anything that would make use of your time and talents, is a form of oppression.
I doubt that's what he meant, of course.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 19, 2011 at 03:06 AM
re: question of boys not wanting to read about female characters - anecdotal - I have heard that too, but my son (now 13) says he's just as happy to read a book where the main character or hero is female (provided that it's the type of book that he likes).
re: Seuss books & sharing them w/ kids & sexist children's lit in general
I did notice the absent mother, only represented by her high-heel shoes when I read my children "The Cat in the Hat" & it bothered me a bit. We also read "Green Eggs and Ham" and "The Grinch" and yes, now that it is pointed out, it's all male - as are the Zaxes. I didn't read them that much more of Seuss.
I guess I also counter-acted it by reading a lot of "The Little Engine that Could" where the little engine (identified as "she") comes to the rescue. :)
As they got older, I also consciously looked for stories for my kids that had strong female characters. So, those can help inoculate them a bit from sexism. I also look for books w/ characters and heroes that are not of European heritage as well. For example, my daughter read and liked Louise Erdrich's "The Birchbark House" and "The Game of Silence" better than she liked the Laura Ingalls Wilder books.
So, don't completely avoid such books, but try to go beyond them and find counter-examples.
Posted by: skreader | May 19, 2011 at 03:14 AM
Re question 1: I don't recall thinking, "Hey, why aren't any of these characters girls?" I mostly enjoyed the art, although I thought from a very young age that the jumpsuit/fur/? body coverings of many of the critters were disturbingly surreal. I mean, it's obv. fur, except that it also forms sleeves and a collar . . .
2: I mostly don't. I don't have any Seuss in the house except the first cartoon version of "Horton Hears a Who." I am homeschooling using the suggestions of educator Charlotte Mason, who frowned on books that were easily outgrown. She argued that books adults found annoying probably weren't the best fare for children either. We read other children's classics and we watch the original "Grinch" cartoon every year. Also, when my younger daughter hangs out at the dance studio during my older daughter's class, she'll often bring me "One Fish, Two Fish" or one of the Cat in the Hat books to read. I can deal with it once a week.
3. Good people have blind spots.
Posted by: Jenny Islander | May 19, 2011 at 04:20 AM
3. Why is someone as progressive as Dr. Seuss (regarding some matters) so savagely critical of gender equity?
Firstly, I know I said it's not important to work out what is going on in Dr. Seuss's head, but what I meant by that is that whatever he may have thought he was doing is irrelevant to whether or not his books actually do help to marginalize women. This question does require some speculation as to what was going on in his head.
People are generally blind to their own prejudices, and this is particularly true of people who enjoy privilege. Dr. Seuss was obviously aware that racism, pollution and nuclear brinkmanship were bad things, but these are things other people do. It's one thing to see that your society, or people in your society, do bad and unhelpful things, it's quite another to reflect on your own actions to realise how you're contributing to bad and unhelpful things.
(it's also easy to be honestly against an issue like racism 'in the large', even to the point of campaigning against it, and being thoughtlessly racist in your daily life. Perhaps Seuss was like that - there's the sneetches book on the one hand, but the racist line in 'Mulberry st.' (anyone know what that is?))
It's also easy for people who are doing well out of a situation to assume that there isn't anything wrong with the situation, or even if they do recognise that there is, suppose to themselves 'it really isn't *that* bad'. Admitting otherwise is not an easy thing to do - it suggests you don't really deserve your place in society after all. That combined with the thought you're contributing or have been contributing to these things aren't pleasant things to contemplate, and it's no wonder people avoid them when they can.
Here's my armchair speculation: I suspect Dr. Seuss did not see himself as sexist at all. When accused of it, he found it (a) ridiculous, and (b) deeply insulting - remember, white men in particular are likely to interpret that as meaning having a deliberate, conscious policy to oppress women, and/or strongly-felt negative emotions towards them. They aren't likely to interpret it to mean 'happening to have a negative impact on women out there in the world - no matter what you were thinking (or not thinking) when you wrote it'.
Also, writing is a pretty personal matter. Criticising the process or the outcome is often taken by the author to be highly personal criticism, even when they're not being accused of being a sexist bastard.
I think it's highly likely the 'even Jane' line was just what first popped into his head. The thought it was sexist may have struck him as preposterous. The idea of changing it, I suppose, may have struck him as some kind of thought-police. Why should he be subject to this ridiculous censorship for such an innocent line? If he thought, as many men (and plenty of women) do, that women get a pretty good deal 'these days' (010s, 70s, whenever), then characterising his critics in this regard as 'extreme women's libbers' and joking that the line can't be changed because he's a 'chauvanist peeg' seem quite explicable.
anyway, I'm not sure how true any of this is of Dr. Seuss, but it's as likely a story as any. I do think it captures something about the mindset of your average 'non-feminist', though.
Posted by: arc | May 19, 2011 at 04:45 AM
Great post - so sad to see the comments degenerate into a retread of the same old defensive arguments. I'm kind of with Kit that the best response is to turn away and talk more about the actual issues raised.
xCLP and I have two Dr Seuss books - The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham. The boy in Cat is clearly meant to be a boy, but since there's nothing in the text to definitively prove it, I often take the opportunity to say, "How do you know he's a boy? She could be another girl?" I could probably do the same with Sam-I-Am, Sam being a fairly gender-neutral name here, but I tend to engage less with Green Eggs and Ham for the reason MaryKaye mentioned. On the surface, it seems to be saying that you shouldn't dislike something without trying it, but it also says that if someone dislikes something, you ought to hammer at them until they agree to try it, which is not a lesson I want xCLP to learn. So mostly when we read that one, we concentrate on that issue.
Posted by: Nick Kiddle | May 19, 2011 at 05:28 AM
//(I wish she'd put some female characters into The Gruffalo - why can't the fox or the owl or the snake be female? - but at least Room on the Broom divides fairly well.)//
She partially atones in my opinion with The Gruffalo's Child, where the titular child is female and just comes across like any child, without gendered traits that I can see.
Posted by: Nick Kiddle | May 19, 2011 at 05:34 AM
I think it's highly likely the 'even Jane' line was just what first popped into his head. The thought it was sexist may have struck him as preposterous.
It's possible, perhaps, that he thought of it as a character statement, and hence that it wasn't a problem. Maybe he reckoned that he was realistically depicting the fact that little boys often do think girls are stupid and have cooties - and didn't stop to wonder whether books like that are one of the reasons why.
That's actually a problem in children's books, particularly from earlier eras. I always loved Beverly Cleary's Ramona books, and I'll try reading them to my son, but I tried some of the Henry Huggins books recently as well, figuring that a story about a younger daughter might not be the most natural point of interest for a first-born son. They're good books, but Henry does have a habit of complaining that his friend Beezus is a girl when he's annoyed with her, and that puts me in that old bind again, alas. Cleary was a woman and clearly not sexist; she was just depicting Henry's attitude, and in fact Beezus has a book to herself and features in lots of others and is consistently portrayed with respect, but, well, sigh.
On the other hand, back with Seuss, complaining that women had time on their hands to write letters is pretty abusive, because it carries the implication that any time women spend in activities that don't defer to men is too much time. I'm not sure how much benefit of the doubt it merits.
I suspect that one reason a white man might freak out about sexism but not racism is that it would involve him making more serious sacrifices. To begin with, Seuss (or rather Geisel, which was his real surname) was, according to Wikipedia, mistaken for Jewish in his college days and hence experienced some racism himself, which might give him some grasp of the reality; I doubt he was ever mistaken for a woman. He was, however, a white man, in an era where white men didn't have to interact very much with people of colour if they didn't feel like it (sadly still true in many places): he was sufficiently protected by white privilege that racial issues were at a safe remove from him.
He could not, however, spend his life so insulated from women. Accepting feminism would have meant sharing the resources in a way that would actually affect him.
Also according to Wikipedia, he did support the internment of Japanese American citizens during the war, so again, when it came to his own territory, he talked a better game than he played.
All in all I'd say he comes across as a white liberal who was happier undermining other people's privilege than his own.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 19, 2011 at 05:47 AM
Sexism in the Oz books: Ozma. Oh, Ozma.
(Spoilers for book 2.)
The Marvelous Land of Oz follows the adventures of a young boy named Tip who has recently escaped from his guardian, the evil sorceress Mombi. He encounters an army of women who, armed with knitting needles, invade and conquer the Emerald City in order to take its gems for themselves. Then he goes off with the Scarecrow to figure out how to retake the city.
Problem 1: the female army is ridiculously vain. They want the gems, and any more serious grievances they might have are framed as being ridiculous and wrong.
Problem 2: There is a nice scene in which the women of the city have time for leisure while their husbands do all the housework and child-minding, but I feel that is rather undermined by the immediate return to the status quo when the invading army is banished. Familial harmony is restored by the women happily resuming their domestic duties because their husbands can't cook.
Problem 3: Ozma. The rightful ruler of Oz is Ozma. Tip is Ozma magically disguised as a boy by Mombi. Near the end of the story, Tip/Ozma is restored to her proper form. Although she says she is the same person after her transformation, she isn't. Tip is energetic. Tip goes and does things. Tip is defined by his actions, not his sweetness and beauty. The same can't be said for Ozma.
In books three through seven (where I stopped reading), Ozma doesn't have the same kind of physical involvement in adventuring. She's a girly-girl. She is loved because the "girlish ruler" of Oz is so delicate and pretty and winsome. She goes on precisely one adventure in which she is quickly transformed into a piece of bric-a-brac and needs to be rescued, like everyone else. The rest of the time, she sits in her palace looking lovely while things come to her.
The Oz books have a lot going for them, but those bits of book two, as well as the radical differences between Ozma-as-male and Ozma-as-female, bothered me when I read them and still bother me now.
Posted by: lemur | May 19, 2011 at 06:47 AM
On the other hand, back with Seuss, complaining that women had time on their hands to write letters is pretty abusive, because it carries the implication that any time women spend in activities that don't defer to men is too much time. I'm not sure how much benefit of the doubt it merits.
Well, maybe you're right.
But dismissing criticism one has no sympathy for by saying 'these people have too much time on their hands' is a commonplace, and I'd be inclined to suppose he's meaning 'the group of women who write these silly letters to me clearly have too much time on their hands (because I haven't done anything worth criticising)', rather than 'any woman anywhere who criticises a man needs more dishes to do' or something like that.
I guess I could see myself making a similar comment if I took myself in a similar situation to what I think Dr. Seuss perceived himself to be in (my apologies for the clumsy sentence): dismissing pointless and misplaced criticism.
I actually think the 'female hornet's nest' is more damning - why is it important to underscore the gender of the hornets? Are female hornets scarier than male ones?
(I don't know anything about hornets, but if they live in nests wouldn't they be like other social insects and mostly female anyway? Biologically speaking the 'female' may be redundant...)
Posted by: arc | May 19, 2011 at 07:28 AM
I guess I could see myself making a similar comment if I took myself in a similar situation to what I think Dr. Seuss perceived himself to be in (my apologies for the clumsy sentence): dismissing pointless and misplaced criticism.
and if I were to, oh, I don't know, airily dismiss the rude and obnoxious star trek fans who write me long rants about how I've missed the point of the show or something, as having too much time on their hands, I wouldn't want people to conclude I think that all people who like star trek (and aren't ashamed to admit it) have too much time on their hands.
Posted by: arc | May 19, 2011 at 07:32 AM
While it is certainly true that Dr. Seuss wrote predominantly male characters, many of the characters (e.g., in Dr. Seuss' Sleep Book--which was my children's favorite, and indeed, mine as a child) are androgynous enough that altering pronouns & c. on the fly worked well. I should point out that by the time they were old enough to read to themselves, my kids were interested in more complex literature, so Seuss ceased to be a problem at that point (we didn't have to edit the text in the books). What we did was modify things like "blue hair is fun to brush and comb/all girls should have a pet like this at home" (this one springs to mind; I don't necessarily have the line just right" to "/all KIDS should have a pet like this at home." Pronouns got switched around quite a bit.
Interestingly, my spouse and I tended to switch different pronouns...which may have confused the kids, but should have helped convey a message to the effect that gender is not determinative.
Posted by: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1056011152 | May 19, 2011 at 08:07 AM
Leaving aside the personal beliefs or lack thereof of Dr. Seuss the writer, this is a really interesting set of statistics. I devoured those things as a young kid; but I also had Nancy Drew, Pippi Longstocking, Anne of Green Gables, all the Edith Blyton books about girls, etc. That was more than 30 years ago but there were still plenty of kids books about little girls.
The kids in the Cat in the Hat, the kid in To think that I saw it on Mulberry Street, everyone the Lorax or Horton interacted with, or the kid trying to get to Solla Sellew--I would have coded them probably as female, at least half of them, without really paying attention. I could not have told you that it was a little boy in Hop on Pop (was it?). My memory of the books is that about half of the figures in the background were female, so it's really intriguing to realize that's not so. (Had the same experience with science fiction, too, doing the math and realizing the vast majority of what I was reading by the truckload was written by men and about men; it simply hadn't registered that I was out of the club in any way by being female. These days I keep a running tab on how much of the fiction I read passes the Bechdel test, and unfortunately, it's not even half.)
Posted by: textjunkie | May 19, 2011 at 08:33 AM
Jumping back in to something right at the beginning of the argument -- that ignoring women/not seeing women isn't misogyny.
This issue has been much discussed in the world of those who teach/research gender/power inequities -- and basically the argument "invisibility isn't the same as racism/sexism/classism" has long been knocked out of the ballpark.
A good place to start to look at how the same "invisibility" effected African-Americans is to read Cedric C. Clark's Television and Social Control: Some Observations on the Portrayals of Ethnic Minorities [Television Quarterly 1969 8(2) 18-22) which looked at the very, very slow addition of some characters who were not "white" to American television.
There is a wealth of data from that period extending to today that unless a casting call specifically describes a characters as "black" or a particular ethnicity they are white. Similarly if a character is not described as being female they are male. If not specifically described as gay they are straight.
This creates a world in which a child presumes that if they are not "male, straight, white, etc." they are not part of the default normal.
This has an impact on hiring...I know from years of doing hiring within the world of academia that people hire from among those who "seem" qualified and for many those who are not part of the default normal to do NOT seem qualified.
(Old anecdote that runs around the world of Political Science: Child to mother, how can Ronald Reagan have won the election. No one WE know is Republican. The answer is "the set of those we know is not the same as the set of those who vote")
The analogous anecdote in hiring is "how can we hire from outside the group that we know/recognize as competent" the answer is that competency is not limited to the world with the same experience as you.
So, the fusty old academicians I knew who felt that someone who hadn't attended one of the premiere private college in the US couldn't really be well qualified economists/historians/rhetoricians/etc. didn't have to be anti-women, anti-black, anti-working class to exclude people from those groups from their hiring searches.
So, Geisel doesn't need to be openly (consciously) hateful of women to help support a world view that makes it easy/normal to accept the passing over of qualified women and even the conscious exclusion of women from entire areas of the public sphere.
For those who still don't have a clue consider the newspapers that last week photoshopped two women (just the Secretary of State and the Director for Counterterrorism) from the photograph of the White House situation room during the bin Laden raid.
Posted by: Mmy | May 19, 2011 at 08:59 AM
This post is fascinating. I do think about stuff like this all the time when we get books and movies at the library and read aloud. I have made half of all of the three little pigs female, in contradiction to the text in the version we own. We have many times read Sleeping Bobby and Young Guinivere, stories from Not One Damsel in Distress, various swashbuckling versions of Little Red Riding Hood...
We don't have much Dr. Seuss. We have The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, and I did think Sally's role, major but silent, was a bit weird. I might treat my brother the same way if I were telling a story, but probably not. Of course the focus is the crazy cats, and that's what the kids remember and enjoy when I read it. I could almost leave the boy out. OTOH, maybe Sally could be the narrator? Not sure how that would work out with the illustrations.
The overwhelming popularity of Dora the Explorer among 1-4 yr-olds should put to rest questions about boys identifying with female protagonists, I feel. My daughter really loves Diego, too ("Diego-go," she calls him.) And in general the kids' favorite stories are often the ones featuring animals, and they like to pretend to be animals... (When I watch Diego it's obvious that Alicia must be the more senior expert project manager type. Obviously she can't go animal-rescuing all the time; think of the billable hours!)
My son has loved a lot of Barbie movies and princess-y things, too. I...do not. He loves bright colors and sparkly things and tutus and magical adventures with cute creature friends. He adores Rainbow Bright. I think I have a bit of the internalized honorary male thing going on. But it's hard to separate that from the fact that I'm just not very femme. I like swords and sorcery, heavy on the swords.
I am realizing now, raising my kids and maybe especially my daughter, that it's hard to separate liking blue from hating pink, and Barbie, and frills and all things feminine, and moreso going along with a society that told me that pretty princesses were incompatible with swordwielding and spacefaring and mountainclimbing. It's tempting to show favoritism toward superheroes and Transformers, and to kids who prefer those things, and even to badmouth the fairies and princesses and fashion mavens...
I've also found that Tinkerbell and Barbie and other stories directed at girls can be very good. I was inclined to dismiss them because it seemed like a ghetto market, and I guess I assumed if they were really good they would be marketed to boys, too. Haha, punked by sexism again!
Posted by: Lonespark | May 19, 2011 at 09:45 AM
You know, I think it actually did occur to me at a very young age how overwhelmingly *male* Seuss stories were. Having decided to have a certain fondness of female characters from an early age (I wonder why. I bet there was some excellent story I was told as a very small child but it's before the beginning of my memory), I tended to notice their absence.
It wouldn't have occurred to me as a child that this per se indicated misogyny (I hadn't read Mullberry street). And then there's this:
Asshole. And now Seuss is kinda ruined for me. At least he apologized for all the anti-german war propaganda (I *think* he apologized later for supporting Japanese internment, but I'm less sure about that).
Is there actual literature on the existence of these boys? Because I've heard this too, but I don't recall, when I was a boy, meeting another boy who would refuse to read a book with female main characters but would still read, um, books. I knew lots of boys who would NEVER EVER EVER read a book for fun, but none who made me aware of the fact that they'd read books, just not ones with girls in.
Wow. It's like privilige Mad Libs.
Posted by: Ross | May 19, 2011 at 09:49 AM
And, if one is going to lose all pretense of equal interactions, one can follow the route taken by the casting calls for the (Asia-inspired) Airbender movie, which specified that applicant heroes be 'Caucasian or any other'. What.
---
I was, like many here, quite a fan of Seuss when I was small, but only of a relatively small slice of his overall works. Horton, Sleep Book, Sneetches and Other Stories, and, by far most primarily, The Lorax.* The Lorax in particular was the book that my grandmother read to me every year when she visited for Christmas, which may be where I got the vague impression that, regardless of pronouns, the Lorax may be female. I mean, it's not like the guy who makes thneeds is likely to be an expert on the gender system or dimorphism (should there be any) of vaguely-hamster-shaped forest gods.
*I have concluded that, due to quantum, this 'Lorax movie' I have heard rumours about does not exist if I don't observe it.
---
As far as eliminating the gender inequality in the books when sharing them with little kids now, I would think it might help that many characters (that I saw) do not often have clear distinctions in gender, such that judicious replacement of pronouns can help. That doesn't fix everything, and given my aforementioned lack of awareness of the whole Seuss canon, I can't think at the moment of other specific scenarios.
---
Thinking back, I begin to suspect that The Lorax was what began my enjoyment of the artistry of post-apocalyptic dystopias.
Posted by: Will Wildman | May 19, 2011 at 09:53 AM
I mean, it's not like the guy who makes thneeds is likely to be an expert on the gender system or dimorphism (should there be any) of vaguely-hamster-shaped forest gods.
Yeah, whatever else they may be, most Seuss narrators are a bit unreliable.
Posted by: Lonespark | May 19, 2011 at 10:04 AM
Nick Kiddle: I could probably do the same with Sam-I-Am, Sam being a fairly gender-neutral name here,
...It suddenly occurs to me that, even though I've listened to the Moxy Fruvous song-of-the-book plenty of times in my adult life, I never really thought of "Sam-I-Am" as male. When I was a kid, I always identified the character with my sister, who shares the name.
Posted by: Chuck | May 19, 2011 at 10:10 AM
Ross: I knew lots of boys who would NEVER EVER EVER read a book for fun, but none who made me aware of the fact that they'd read books, just not ones with girls in.
You and me both. I wonder if it's just one of those things that "everybody knew" a generation ago and it just stuck?
I was a big reader as a kid, and I remember Wilder's "Little House" books being some of the first "real" books I read. Never had a problem with the female protagonists, if the book itself was interesting.
Posted by: Chuck | May 19, 2011 at 10:15 AM
When I was in second grade, my favorite books were the Beverly Cleary Ramona series. I don't recall there being many male characters in those books at all. I choose to ignore the existence of the new movie with Chris from Northern Exposure playing Ramona's dad, because that's just not right....
Posted by: Jason | May 19, 2011 at 10:33 AM
And in the same vein of internalizing bigotry discussed above: The director was South Asian. Technically not responsible for the casting call, but when a bunch of white kids showed up to audition for the (fantasy-counterpart-Tibetan and fantasy-counterpart-Inuit) main characters, he clearly didn't bat an eye.
Also Kim Possible, though I hear (never actually watched it) it talked the feminist talk better than it walked the walk.
Since Will mentioned AtLA: In the second season, the producers of AtLA were planning to add a new character, a rough-and-tumble, imposingly built, blind teenage boy whose crude humor and participation in AtLA's equivalent of professional wrestling were reactions to a sheltered rich-kid upbringing. However, they noticed the show had an unexpectedly large audience with girls... so they decided to make that character a petite twelve-year-old girl instead, and otherwise keep everything (nose-picking, martial arts skills, backstory and all) the same.
The result was Toph, one of the awesomest characters in animation history--and she was wildly popular among little boys.
Obligatory plug for My Little Pony: Friendship is magic! It's seriously one of the best shows out there right now.
As far as books are concerned, I agree with the need for balance. It's easy enough with many Seuss books to swap pronouns, and there are also good books out there for many age levels to provide gender balance.
I agree the later Oz books are kind of misogynist--the first, with practical Dorothy and wise Glenda contrasted with the rather buffoonish, mostly male rest of the non-evil cast, is pretty okay, but the later ones not so much.
The Harry Potter books start well, with Hermione being portrayed as highly competent but a little bit poorly socialized, and then over the next book or two she gets over the poor socialization and becomes official team superego to Harry's ego and Ron's id. Unfortunately, the minute she hits puberty she starts declining into a temperamental, weepy mess, to the point that she basically spends the last book alternating between crying and screaming at people, and then the epilogue neglects to mention whether she actually ever pursued any of her youthful ambitions--but she had babies,* so that's okay, right?
One set of children's books I recommend for counteracting misogyny: The Enchanted Forest Chronicles. Main character of the first, Cimorene, is a princess who hates it, and is constantly trying to learn things princesses aren't supposed to know, like Latin and fencing and magic. Eventually she gets fed up with her parents' attempts to make her act like a "proper" princess and/or marry her off, and volunteers to be a dragon's captive princess. Adventures ensue. The second book has her falling in love and getting married without losing a bit of her awesomeness and independence, and the third book switches perspectives to an awesome witch who was a supporting character in the first two books. The fourth book was actually written first, and it shows, alas--it's not as well-written, and the only prominent female characters are the new main character's mother and love interest, the latter of whom has temper-tantrum-based powers. Sadly, the third book ends on a cliffhanger resolved in the fourth, so it's kind of necessary reading.
*So... many... babies. The four characters in the epilogue must've been drinking Powerthirst, because they have, like, 400 babies. Each.
Posted by: Froborr | May 19, 2011 at 10:38 AM
@Ross and Chuck. I Got a a lot of grief from my peer group back in the day because I read both the Hardy Boys and Nancy drew books. I found it really odd at the time, especially because I thought it was pretty obvious at the time that Nancy Drew was a better detective than either of the hardys, whose preferred method of mystery solving was getting captured then rescued by their dad.
Posted by: Lou Doench | May 19, 2011 at 10:54 AM
Weirdly, as I recall, that HP epilogue neglects to mentions whether any of the trio pursued their youthful ambitions - Neville is the only one whose actual career path is even touched on in canon (by which I mean outside of interviews, where I know she detailed it further, but I do enjoy pretending that the epilogue isn't canon either).
Um, also, um, regarding question 1, I would like to echo something Phoenix said near the end of her post: "I didn't think of most characters as being male or female. The 'indeterminate gender' thing really prevented me from classifying most of Seuss's characters as girls or boys."
This, honestly. I am also female.
Posted by: Andrea | May 19, 2011 at 10:55 AM
@Froborr: I blame the moral guardians at the ministry for cutting funding to the hogwarts classes in prophylactic charms. You'd be amazed how few wizards can manage a decent sperm-paralysis spell.
Posted by: Ross | May 19, 2011 at 10:55 AM
I have no particular stake in Harry Potter, but that description reminds me of how Orson Scott Card can write pretty interesting young girls and grandmother-types, but women of child-bearing age must be All About the Babies (and a bit about Love and Husbands).
I had heard that Toph was originally envisioned as male but I really have a hard time imagining how that would work. The Four Hero Band would be All Wrong.
Posted by: Lonespark | May 19, 2011 at 10:56 AM
//The four characters in the epilogue must've been drinking Powerthirst, because they have, like, 400 babies. Each.//
Someone on another blog suggested this was JKR's way of saying "and they lived happily ever after and had Lots and Lots of Sex" without offending the censors. Make of that what you will.
Posted by: Nick Kiddle | May 19, 2011 at 10:57 AM
I didn't really develop a love for reading until I was in my mid-teens. However, I will note that almost every single cartoon I watched when I was a kid, I usually found myself drawn to and identifying with the female characters. I mean, Superman's invincibility and heatray vision was cool, but Wonder Woman had an invisible jet, a magic lasso, and a much cooler outfit.
As such, if I had been a more avid reader back then, I don't think I would have cared what the gender of the narrator or main character was. Granted, I'm not sure I qualified as the "typical boy."
As to why Seuss would be so misogynistic in spite of being progressive in so many areas, all I can say is that people can be brilliantly with it in some areas and be horribly wrong in other ways, especially when it comes to marginalizing people. I mean, I know racist and misogynistic* gay people around here. I really don't get how those of us who have been marginalized, dehumanized, and even demonized sometimes fail to see how we do it to others or not have a problem with it. But it happens.
---
* Actually, I've been thinking a lot lately about some of the sneekier bits of misogyny/misogyny-enabling that seems to have become ingrained into certain parts of the gay community, even among those of us** who sincerely love and respect women and don't mean*** to negatively
** Yes, us. I've had more than one "why do I say that?" moment lately.
*** Where's that link about intent again?
Posted by: Jarred | May 19, 2011 at 11:04 AM
@lonespark: you might be interested in Peggy Orenstein's Cinderella Ate My Daughter. Interesting, if kind of inconclusive from a "What's a parent to do?" perspective.
And oh, hey, wait a minute...I'm scanning down the customer reviews, which can be a dangerous thing to do with Amazon, but in this case, there's a thoughtful piece by one "Ana Mardoll." Hi, Ana!
Posted by: Amaryllis | May 19, 2011 at 11:05 AM
It's not that weird. I think JK considered it "obvious"* that Ron, Harry and Hermione would go on to do exactly what they said they were gonna, and therefore it would have been awkward for her to shoehorn it into the epilogue, wherein it is not really the point.
There's kind of a history of Rowling thinking things are obvious and therefore not bothering to say them (From what i rememeber of the exact quote when she announced Dumbledore's orientation, it sounded like she was surprised anyone needed to ask). It often has some unpleasant implications that she thinks some things go without saying. I suspect that the only reason we're told what became of Neville was that he'd been set up for six and three quarters books as a total butt-monkey who was unlikely to ever make anything of his life, and then we hand him this heroic bit at the end.
Personally, the thing I wanted to know at the end was where everyone ended up living.
* As in 'What do you mean "What jobs did they do?" THey all said they wanted to be aurors back when they were twelve. ANd they're the heroes so they always succeed in the end. Of course they grew up to do exactly what they said when they were 12.' Though personally, I would think that the bit with the wand at the end means Harry has to go do something non-dangerous so that he won't die in a fight and inadvertently pass on the wand.
Posted by: Ross | May 19, 2011 at 11:08 AM
I only have time for a quick comment, but I've noticed a distressing tendency in the children's books we've acquired for my daughter: the vast majority have male main characters, but for most of them, the main character could just as easily have been female. This really bothers me. I get that sometimes authors have a specific gender in mind for their protagonist, but you are not going to convince me that, for example, the penguin in "How Deep is the Sea?" has to be a boy. I generally deal by simply switching pronouns around when I read to her. I want to counteract the general tendency for boys to be more numerous and hold more active roles in the media she consumes. Boys get to read about kickass boys all the time. Why shouldn't girls get to read about kickass girls just as often?
Posted by: Nina | May 19, 2011 at 11:11 AM
Just saw this:
//The four characters in the epilogue must've been drinking Powerthirst, because they have, like, 400 babies. Each.//
Um. Harry & Ginny had three children. Ron and Hermione had two. Those don't strike me as incredibly huge family sizes.
Admittedly the four- or five- or six-child family is more rare now than it was when I was a kid, but even now, families with two or thee kids are not unusual: we're not talking Duggar-like fertility here.
And I don't think that any of the characters, male of female, had their work lives or career trajectories discussed in the epilog.
Must go back to work. Must abandon the fascinating byways of HP arguments, and get to work. Must work...must work...see you later, must work...
(I feel like that guy over on Patheos who kept saying he was going to go away and study for a final or something, but he never went. I wonder if he passed? Anyway, I'm going.)
Posted by: Amaryllis | May 19, 2011 at 11:16 AM
As in 'What do you mean "What jobs did they do?" THey all said they wanted to be aurors back when they were twelve. ANd they're the heroes so they always succeed in the end. Of course they grew up to do exactly what they said when they were 12.'
People change their mind about what they want to do with their lives all the time. Two of my closest friends of college never put the degree they graduated with to use. One went back to school right away so he could become a special education teacher instead. The other went to work for IVCF for a few years, then went back to school for nursing.
And let's be honest here, the heroes in HP just went through the epic battle with great evil. They watched friends get horribly wounded and even die. And Rowling doesn't even consider the possiblity that just one of them might suddenly decide that they'd rather not live the rest of their lives like that and opt for a relatively safer job investigating exploding toilets instead?
Though personally, I would think that the bit with the wand at the end means Harry has to go do something non-dangerous so that he won't die in a fight and inadvertently pass on the wand.
But he's Harry Freaking Potter! No one could ever possibly beat him, no matter how humbly he insists otherwise.
Of course, I also hated the "bit with the wand." Rowling spent all the books pushing the simple power of love being the greatest thing ever, only to make the final battle all about a shell game of who disarmed who.
Posted by: Jarred | May 19, 2011 at 11:18 AM
Lonespark: women of child-bearing age must be All About the Babies
I could barely finish the "Shadow" series because of how badly Card hit Petra with this. The older she got, the more useless a character she became.
Lou Doench: whose preferred method of mystery solving was getting captured then rescued by their dad.
...that was kinda the stock ending of each book, wasn't it? (Though I remember the YA "Casefiles" books being much better in that regard, since Frank and Joe were supposed to be a bit older and more like adults at that point.)
I suspect, if my allowance had been larger and my reading time sufficient to pick up another series, I would have given Nancy Drew a go. As it was, trying to collect and read the 100-someodd Hardy Boys books that were available at that point was troublesome enough. And I am nothing if not a completionist.
Posted by: Chuck | May 19, 2011 at 11:19 AM
//I mean, I know racist and misogynistic* gay people around here. I really don't get how those of us who have been marginalized, dehumanized, and even demonized sometimes fail to see how we do it to others or not have a problem with it.//
I have a lot of Thoughts about this, which I hope at some stage to expand into a blog post. The tl;dr is that everyone notices the oppression they suffer much more readily than the oppression others suffer, which fuels horrible games of Oppression Olympics. Also, while some people fall into the "trying but stumbling" category, some people are just jerks who would like their own oppression abolished so they can join straight white cis etc etc men at the top of the pile and oppress everyone else.
//Though personally, I would think that the bit with the wand at the end means Harry has to go do something non-dangerous so that he won't die in a fight and inadvertently pass on the wand.//
That bit has bugged me since about an hour after first reading. It's worse than that, even - remember, he gets the wand in the first place by snatching Draco's wand physically out of his hand, not even using Expelliarmus. So what happens if playful toddler Lily whips his wand to see what it is? Does she become the new master?
Posted by: Nick Kiddle | May 19, 2011 at 11:26 AM
@mmy: The bright-kids enrichment class I was in during my higher single-digit ages included a lot of brain stretchers. Here's one:
A boy and his father are in a traffic accident. The father is killed; the boy is rushed to the hospital with severe injuries. The surgeon takes one look at him and says, "I can't operate--that's my son!" How is this possible?
We were all stumped.
There's your male-as-norm culture right there.
Posted by: Jenny Islander | May 19, 2011 at 11:34 AM
One thing I find troubling is that even in series that have awesome kickass female characters, they're often the *only* awesome kickass female characters, or close. Quite often they're the only main female characters, and the rest are absent or fit typical female roles.
For example, Eoin Colfer: So, Holly Short is great, but she'll the first (?) LEP recon officer that's female, and I can't think of any other main female characters until Opal, who's offstage most of the time. Juliet shows up occasionally, but I don't have much of an impression of her.
By contrast, male characters include Root, Artemis, Butler, Foley, Mulch and that's just major good guys. (Apologizes for misspellings - I listen to the audio books.) Later introductions of main characters, like Number 1, seem to tilt towards male, too. (Does Artemis's girl genius counterpart ever get a major role?)
It's not just one book or series, either - pretty much all fantasy that bothers to include interesting female characters stops at one. Some of this is because a lot of those books are structured around a plot of a woman entering a man's world, a la Song of the Lioness. But even when that's not the case, the same pattern shows up.
Posted by: Dav | May 19, 2011 at 11:43 AM
Jenny Islander: We were all stumped
I remember that one, too, and I remember getting it after a little prodding (my mother has a doctorate, my father doesn't, but I was distracted by the "medical doctor" designation--both pediatricians I'd seen by that point were male).
My classmates, IIRC, were pretty much focused on the idea that either the doctor or the driver was the child's step-father.
I wonder if a group of children right now would be more likely to figure out the doctor was the mother, or assume the kid had two gay dads.
Posted by: Chuck | May 19, 2011 at 11:48 AM