Scene 1
Several months ago, two elementary-school-aged boys whom I sometimes babysit were describing a book series they like, one with which I was not familiar. They were talking about their favorite characters from the series, and which they would like to be if they could.
“So-and-so is really cool because they have such-and-such powers,” said the older of the boys. “But she’s a girl,” he added.
When I asked why that should make a difference about her being his favorite or him wanting to be like her, all he could come up with was that it was because she was a girl and he was a boy.
Scene 2
I was helping with childcare at my church’s evening service on Sunday. There were at least 10 small children in the room, so a lot of chaos. Yet in the midst of it all, I noticed one of the boys attempting to aggravate his brother in a very specific way.
“Hey, you’re Hermione!” he yelled tauntingly across the room.
“Um, why is that an insult? Hermione is awesome,” I pointed out.
“She’s a girl.”
“So? Why is it insulting to be like a really cool girl?”
“It’s just something that we say.”
. . .
I wish that this is the part where I throw my hands up in the air and lament that I don’t understand where this attitude comes from, that I don’t know why boys think that comparing one another to girls is an insult.
But I know exactly where it comes from.
It comes from The Sandlot, where “You play ball like a GIRL!” is the insult to end all insults.
It comes from The Horse and His Boy, where Prince Corin expresses his admiration for Queen Lucy by saying that she is “almost as good as a man.”
It comes from the assumption that books and movies with male protagonists will be appealing to both boys and girls, but that those with female protagonists are just for girls.
And all of this comes from the time-honored Western tradition of holding the male up as the human perfection towards which we should all aspire, as opposed to females, who are inherently defective in some way.
Of course, few people can get away with just coming out and saying that women and girls are defective human beings just because of their gender, but every time a little boy learns that the best way to insult his brother is to feminize him, that is what is being expressed.
Look at it this way: if a girl watched Disney’s Tangled and decided that she liked Flynn Ryder better than Rapunzel, and said that if she could be one of the characters she would rather be him, I don’t think that would give many people pause. But what if a boy said he would rather be Rapunzel? I know that I at least have this weird gut-level reaction indicating that that is somehow very strange, despite the fact that I think boys should be just as free to like and identify with princesses as girls are to like and identify with heroes and warriors. (Not that there isn’t a problematic expectation that girls will prefer the princesses, just that I’ve noticed that in these instances girls are given more leeway than boys.)
It’s a sobering reality, but I think there is hope. The boys from my first anecdote love the Little House books and Avatar the Last Airbender, the both of which have female protagonists. Plus, the latter includes a character arc where a male character thinks that girls are inferior and then learns how very wrong he was. The boys from my second anecdote have a little sister who is showing signs of being one helluva girl (and with brothers like these, she’ll have to be to survive), and I suspect that could go a long way towards changing their minds.
And these are smart kids. Maybe if enough adults take thirty seconds to question them when they use girl as an insult, even if each instance is fleeting, those moments will accumulate into a realization that what they are saying just doesn’t make sense.
At which point they can go back to using creative descriptions of bodily functions to take each other down a peg. Because surely it is a far worse thing to be a “Pumpkin pooper!” than a girl.
The Thing With Feathers 