afternoonsnoozebutton:joshuanguyen:
Are we really living in 2013? The Lego ads from the 1980s seem more modern to me.
If you want to find out more about the advent of Lego’s sexist advertising, I’d suggest this video by Feminist Frequency.
Yep. And to be clear: it’s not that dolls/”playing house” or more socially inclined play toys aren’t of value; they are. It’s the overall tone/execution and utter condescension that make the bottom toys sexist.
Annoying Childhood Friend
Ahhhh! Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Gregory… I still remember your annoying ass. When you fell off the playground set in 3rd grade when you refused to be the tagger after I tagged you, I actually cackled and I will never feel bad about it.
[TW: street harassment] When my confident, curious, adventurous 12-year-old daughter asked if she could go get ice cream by herself (we live in a city) the first thing that I thought of was how to prepare her to hear:
“Where’s my smile, baby?”
“Wanna go for a ride?”
What if she is surprised? Looks down? Doesn’t give the guy speaking to her the positive response that he seems to think he’s entitled to? What hurtful, explicit things will he then say to put her in her place?
From now on, she’ll have to be on alert. How many times will she have to go out of her way, take longer routes, not go certain places, alter her clothes? Not forget to hold her keys poking through her fingers? Not take certain buses, and pay for a cab instead of taking a metro? Take her lighthearted moods and tuck them away behind earphones and fake phone conversations?
How will it make my daughter feel? Powerless? Angry? Sad? Scared? It’s stressful and depressing to have to acknowledge the underlying threat of violence, especially in a culture that is dedicated to equality for all, a concept predicated on equal and safe access to public space and free speech. Her loss of innocence will have as much to do with the betrayal of this myth of equality and equal access as with understanding her physical vulnerability.
| — | Soraya Chemaly: Street Harassment is Everywhere; What do We Tell Our Daughters? (via heavenearthandhoratio) |
The persistent belief that childhood is a rosy, happy time where nothing bad ever happens is directly damaging to children who are, in fact, not having a rosy and happy time. The rise in dark YA isn’t about feeding the depraved tastes of children who enjoy violent videogames. It is about addressing the very real pain and marginalisation experienced by children across the United States who find that the ‘responsible adults’ in their lives fail to act, and it is through young adult fiction that they may find the words to express themselves, to describe their experiences, and the courage to keep going even though no one around them offers support.
Furthermore, many children also grow up with the idea that they are wrong in some way; because their gender doesn’t match the one assigned to them, because they are disabled and surrounded by nondisabled people, because their skin is the wrong colour. Gurdon claims that YA is damaging because it ‘normalises.’ On the contrary, that normalisation is one of the greatest gifts young adult authors can give to their readers, to tell children that, no, they are not freaks for being who they are. That there is nothing wrong with being a gay teen, that you are not irreparably damaged if you are mentally ill. If YA celebrating diverse identities is ‘dark’ and ‘depraved,’ what does that say about the lives of young adults who actually inhabit those identities, and experience constant social pressure to be ‘normal’?
