Male co-worker, in the midst of a conversation about institutionalized gender bias: You know, it's not necessarily gender bias. I think boys just aren't interested in stories about princesses. I've never tried to influence what my kid watches. I just let him gravitate toward what interests him. I took him to see Frozen, and he just wasn't into it.
Secondly: I didn't realize your kid was the spokesperson for every single male child in the entire world, but I'm glad you feel confident using a sample size of one to conclude how the entire non-female-identifying gender feels about stories with women/sisters/princesses as protagonists. Thanks for clarifying.
Third: Maybe your kid just didn't like the movie Frozen. That's allowed, and also could have nothing to do with the movie being about princesses.
But: let's assume you know your kid better than I do, and you're right that his disinterest 100% has to do with Frozen being a "princess movie." Fair enough.
However. While I appreciate that you are a progressive guy who was once a stay-at-home-dad (and while I believe that you don't try to influence what your kid likes based on traditional gender roles), guess what? THAT IS TOTALLY NOT WITHIN THE REALM OF YOUR CONTROL.
Your kid's in school. Your kid watches TV. Your kid is the target of gender-biased marketing every single day, and every day your kid goes out to recess, where I would bet five bazillion dollars that kids are still telling each other what they can and cannot play based on their gender.
For example: I was repeatedly told in the first grade that I had to be the Pink Ranger or the Yellow Ranger every time I wanted to play Power Rangers, even though I would way rather have been the Red Ranger or the White Ranger (because duh, they were clearly the best).
But I was still allowed to say I wanted to be the Red Ranger.
If you're a girl, you can get away with expressing interest in guy things. Which is only true because a lot of women worked really hard for many years to break down gender barriers and make wearing pants and being a tomboy an OK thing.
But this is not true for boys.
I can only imagine what kind of cruel mockery a boy would have been subjected to if he said he wanted to be the Pink Ranger at recess--or worse, showed up at school wearing a skirt.
Boys are still getting the message that certain things (especially princesses) are only for girls, and that it is "weird" for boys to like those kinds of stories. Which not only turns boys away from trying to understand or empathize with female protagonists, but inherently devalues "women's stories" by insinuating that stories about females should only be of interest to females themselves.
I do think there is something to be said for people identifying with characters in stories that are like them (which is why it's so important to publish and produce stories about all kinds of people). But dude: you need to recognize that your kid does not live in a vacuum. He is not free from the influence of society any more than the rest of us are. And society tells us that stories involving male protagonists are obviously, naturally, more appealing to people of all genders.
Harry Potter is a great example. I freaking love Harry Potter. I never gave a second thought to those books having a male protagonist, or to my ability to identify with Harry as a character, because as a girl, I was (and am) constantly expected to identify with male protagonists. And frankly, I think the Harry Potter books are so gob-smackingly excellent that I would love to believe their exists entirely outside the realm of institutionalized gender bias.
But I have to ask myself: would the series have sold so well if the books were about a witch named Hailey Potter, and not Harry? I mean, that's just weird to think about, because Harry is so completely Harry in my brain can't even imagine another character taking his place, not even a female version of him. But seriously--would boys have felt discouraged from reading the series if the protagonist was a girl?
I'm sure the publishers would have thought so. Even with Harry being Harry, they still made my favorite authoress publish as JK Rowling instead of Joanne Rowling because they were afraid boys wouldn't want to read a book about a boy wizard if they knew it was written by a woman.
This sort of shit happens all the time---but GUESS WHAT, PUBLISHERS? Everyone knows JKR is a woman now and NOBODY CARES because Harry Potter is the best.
But what did JKR do when she decided to write a series of adult mystery novels under a pseudonym? She published under Robert Galbraith. (And then everyone found out it was her, anyway, and the books sold a gazbillion more copies.)
Because this is still the world we live in.
To sum up: As long as society still tells young boys that it's not only normal but expected for them to not care about "girly stories," then boys are missing out on the exercise of empathy for characters of the opposite gender that young girls are participating in all the time. Which means nobody is truly free to gravitate toward the stories that interest them, no matter how much freedom you think you're giving your kid.
And as long as "women's stories" are still being given the specialized category of "women's stories" (as opposed to, you know...stories), we're all beholden to the institutionalized gender bias that drives the identity narratives we tell our children.
I hope that this has started to change.
But based on this conversation about your seven-year-old, we've clearly still got a long way to go.
