If, unlike me, you have a subscription to the academic journal Gender & Society, the publication of Sociologists for Women in Society, a feminist sociologist organization, you will no doubt already have read the paper decrying "Hetero-Romantic Love and Heterosexiness in Children's G-Rated Films." If you can't access the article, Lifesite News sums up the ultra-important research of the University of Michigan team. Excerpt:
Kazyak and Martin said they studied the role of heterosexual relationships in several of the highest-grossing G-rated films between 1990-2005.The results, say the researchers, illustrate two ways that the children's films "construct heterosexuality": through "depictions of hetero-romantic love as exceptional, powerful, transformative, and magical," and "depictions of interactions between gendered bodies in which the sexiness of feminine characters is subjected to the gaze of masculine characters."
"Characters in love are surrounded by music, flowers, candles, magic, fire, balloons, fancy dresses, dim lights, dancing and elaborate dinners," the researchers observed. "Fireflies, butterflies, sunsets, wind and the beauty and power of nature often provide the setting for - and a link to the naturalness of - hetero-romantic love."
The SWS press release on the research blamed what they called the "old ideals" of romantic relationships, specifically those found the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, which in many instances inspired the films' storylines, for "such heavily gendered depictions and glorified portrayals of heterosexual relationships."
imagine that: Disney attacked from the cultural left for indoctrinating children into perverse (read: traditional) sexual roles!
Every time Erin brings up how aggressively batty these ideologues are, she gets dogpiled for allegedly exaggerating. But facts are stubborn things. I hate to subject you to reading academic jargon, but it's worth your time. Here's the entire paper from the Australian Journal of Early Childhood Education -- hardly a fringe magazine -- in which a disturbed person named Kerry H. Robinson, who escaped from the nuthouse and acquired an academic position in Australia, argues for "queerying" early childhood education. You have to plow through acres of academese lamenting how gender is entirely a social construct, and how the refusal of adults to recognize that little children are sexual beings is like colonialization. It's everywhere in the culture, says Robinson, and pop culture warps the minds of kids by making them think that heterosexuality is normal. Writes Robinson:
It is critical to acknowledge and name the heterogendered performances operating in the everyday lives of children and in the examples given above. However, the voices and the interpretations that we hear almost exclusively around these issues (when we hear them) are those of adults. This is reflective of the heteronormativity operating around constructions of gender, but it is also, as I have argued elsewhere (Robinson, 2005), an additional consequence of the dominating discourses of childhood and sexuality (and those associated child protection discourses), in that we rarely, if at all, know what sense children make of them; their voices on these issues are rarely heard. It is important to ask questions such as: Are children aware of the heterosexualised nature of the scripts they are either drawing on or refusing in terms of their own gender performances? How do children interpret sexuality and actively construct their sexualised worlds? Working with children to explore their understandings and knowledge about gender and sexuality is important, but it involves negotiating the many social barriers and cultural fears that operate largely around sexuality and children. Apart from questioning the relevance of the issues to children, any researcher may be simultaneously placed under suspicion regarding their motives. Yet it is crucial to have a greater understanding of children's views on sexuality and the way that they construct their sexual worlds. It seems that the double-edged sword of 'protection' has left children with little agency and voice in respect of these issues.
Translation: We need to get all up in chlidren's grills about their sexual desires, but those oppressive parents might think we're perverts for doing so. Poor kids!
Read on past the jump, this gets even better. There's an unintentionally hilarious story from the paper about what a little girl whose mind was colonized by hetero hegemons did to a lesbian Barbie.
Robinson says if "queer pedagogy" became mainstreamed into schools, it would do a world of good. What is queer pedagogy? Glad you asked:
Queer pedagogy, informed by queer theory, thus undertakes to critically examine what is considered to be the natural order of things in terms of gender and sexuality; for example, that heterosexuality is presumed to be the natural, unquestionable and only correct sexuality and the point from which all other sexualities are judged; or that there are natural and normal ways of being boys or girls. Similar to doing feminist poststructuralist pedagogy (e.g. Davies, 1994; MacNaughton, 2000; Robinson & Jones Diaz, 1999), queer pedagogy seeks to identify the normalising discourses constituting common-sense understandings that define, restrict and police gendered and sexualised identities within the narrow boundaries of hegemonic masculinity and femininity, which are heterosexualised. For example, it is seen as natural for boys to play chase-and-kiss with girls. Queer pedagogy is primarily about disrupting and destabilising the cultural binaries male-female, sex-gender, heterosexual-homosexual explicit or implicit in these normalising discourses that operate to constitute and perpetuate artificial hierarchical relations of power between their constructed polarised opposites. [Emphasis mine -- RD]
"Disrupting and destabilising" what parents teach children about being male and female. Read on:
Queer pedagogy encourages educators to ask questions (regardless of how heretical they may initially seem!) that highlight and challenge how particular ways of doing gender and sexuality are normalised to the point that they become unquestionable. For example, what would happen if Barbie identified as a lesbian or queer? How would this challenge children's and adult's perceptions of Barbie? What does it say about Ken? The role Barbie has played in terms of constructions of gender in young girls' lives has been the focus of critique, but there has been limited discussion about how Barbie's heterogendered identity impacts on the construction of young girls' heterosexual identities and desire. How would children and adults react if Barbie changed her gender performance to represent a more queer identity; that is, a performance which disrupts emphasised femininity and challenges assumptions about her assumed heterosexuality? How far would they let her gender slippage go? Interestingly, a close friend gave her six-year-old niece a Barbie to add to her extensive collection. This Barbie was different, many hours were spent 'queering' Barbie up; she represented a different performance of gender that was not easily read as heterosexual. Barbie's hair was cut short, she had several tattoos, a nose and nipple ring, black leather clothes, and so on. Despite all the effort put into this performance, this 'Queer Barbie' lasted less than a week--she was found defrocked and mutilated (missing limbs), hidden at the bottom of the cupboard; 'Queer Barbie' was well and truly reprimanded for her gender 'slippage' and was ostracised from her more respectable hetero-feminised cousins.
Less than a week! She was found defrocked, mutilated and discarded! Oh, the humanity. This poor child didn't want a freak Barbie foisted on her by freaky adults trying to destabilise the gender hegemony of her toybox. She sounds perfectly normal to me. You really can't make this stuff up, can you? These ideological loons really do want to take over your kids' minds.
I'm reminded of a conversation I had earlier this year with a friend who's getting his Ph.D. in the humanities at a major university. He was telling me about how he, as a conservative, has to pretty much live in the closet as far as his moral and political beliefs go. He told me some lollapalooza stories about the batsh*t craziness of the academics in his program. Yeah, fine, I said, but who cares about them? Those people live in their own world, and nobody in the real world takes them seriously.
He told me I underestimated how important what goes on in universities is to shaping society, because elites who run institutions do take the universities seriously, and shape their institutions along the lines prescribed by the universities. It really is a "march through the institutions," to use the Gramscian phrase.
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Maybe it's because I'm gay, but I don't see heterosexuality as the norm. I simply recognize it as average.
What's so great about gender roles? So what if a boy plays with mommy's make up? So what if a girl can play tackle football? I'm gay myself, neither butch nor lipstick. My identity and life aren't based on my gender, but my gender is part of my life. I'm a teacher because children are my passion, not because of my gender.
The more walls we build in children's lives, the more they have to rebel against and break down in creating their own identity. The world is full of options. Men and women aren't really just Bratz dolls and GI Joes.
Diversity should be celebrated. Everyone should have some aspect of their personality reflected in the media. Many people have similar life experiences, but if they aren't around people with the same life experiences, then they can feel alone.
Media plays an important role in the lives of children, and well...everybody, really. It's not okay for characters with disabilities to always be the villain. It's not okay for every story to have a perfect nuclear family, ignoring the reality of most families.
It's empowering to see society-marginalized characters be strong on TV and in the media (in my case, homosexual characters). Not everybody gets the validation and support needed at home. It's not so much tearing down heterosexuality (duh, what would gays do without their token straights? j/k) as being inclusive of those that have been ignored or been painted as repulsive. It's about not creating self-fulfilling prophecies of minority=bad, stupid, shouldn't be here.
Validation and support need to be offered in the real world as well. Schools want teachers that are male and of ethnic minorities to be an example of success for all children. Even children that aren't of a minority group, they benefit from exposure to different types of people and experiences.
Diversity exists. Heather's gonna have two mommies, even if the school bans that book. Ignoring diversity is harmful.
(Sorry for the length and rant-type quality of the post. I speak for myself, not any type of community, as well.)
Our species is one that has clear sexual dimorphism. The genders are different so there's a value in gender roles to optimize each one's strength and weaknesses.
This doesn't mean everything assigned to one gender or other is valid. Even in many Western cultures it was once common for men to have long hair and wear jewelry. I think there's little or nothing inherently feminine about collecting crystal statues and enjoying musical theatre. Likewise there's nothing inherently masculine in being a detective who wears a derby and drinks bourbon. Still there does need to be some recognition of difference as there are differences. Generally I'd say sports devoted to upper-body strength truly are masculine. Finding things that are lost is more feminine. There are also others.
If Disney is out to make heterosexuals of everyone, then MarriageNewsNow dot com must be absolutely spot on that ABC's Bachelorette is just as subversive of gays. See site's commentary on Bachelorette programming.
For example, what would happen if Barbie identified as a lesbian or queer? How would this challenge children's and adult's perceptions of Barbie? What does it say about Ken?
Considering the junkless, metrosexualized way before it was "cool" Ken is the only male available to Barbie, perhaps her identification as lesbian or queer is to be expected?
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