One
of the things that really bothers me is when someone says you do
something like a girl as an insult. Not only is that insulting girls
in general, but it's setting an impossibly high standard for boys,
saying that they all
have to be better than every girl.
One
of the books that made me really angry, and had multiple stereotypes
in it is The
Dragon's Tooth by
N. D. Wilson.
It's a good series, but the protagonist’s sister, Antigone, while
being a strong character, is pretty stereotyped. Antigone hates
martial arts, but likes learning languages, while Cyrus (the
protagonist) is the opposite. They are also forced to live in a house
that has no furniture, and ugly paint, and Antigone, of course, cares
while Cyrus doesn't, but the thing that really got to me was in the
second book, The
Drowned Vault.
They had a conversation where Cyrus had screamed because of a bunch
of spiders, and Antigone was saying how high he was screaming. Cyrus
then said that Antigone wouldn't have done better, and part of
Antigone's reply was “...when I scream like a girl, at least I am,
actually, a girl.”
It
was really disappointing to me when I read that, because not only was
someone implying that it was bad to do something like a girl, but a
girl was saying that, and no one seemed to think about the fact that
it's insulting to girls, and it ruined the whole series for me.
Along
with that, in sports, if you tell someone, “you play like a girl”,
it's an insult. If people grow up thinking that playing like a girl
is a bad thing, then they really think that girls don't play as well
as boys, and if a boy can't play better than a girl, then the boy is
a bad player. If a boy believes that playing like a girl is a bad
thing, and then he comes across a girl who can play better than him,
he'll think he's not a good player, and maybe that's true, but more
likely, he is good, and the girl is just better. Then the boy
will just beat himself up about not being better, and you don't have
to be better than everyone. On the other hand, if a girl is better
than a boy, people will just think that the boy isn't very good, and
no one will think about how good the girl actually is. Even if boys
were usually better than girls, you shouldn't use that as an
insult.
If
people think it's insulting to have someone say they do something
like a girl, then that really means that they think girls can't do
things as well as boys. If people then think that a girl shouldn't be
able to do something better than a boy, then they won't help girls to
be as good as they can be, which will just reinforce the stereotypes.
If people really think that women aren't as good at anything than
men, then they won't hire women if they can hire men, and that's
really no different than when everyone discriminated against
African-American people.
On
that happy note, I think that I'll end my post.
--Luna
Lovegood
