Balls out.
Most of what passes for conventional wisdom on gender roles in this day and age, whether it’s differently feministed essentialism (“Dragging our scrotums through the underbrush,” says Utah, and I giggle every time. “We’d swing in the trees, and steal sheep”) or prim and proper Puritans, who insist gender is as immutable as sex—which is why we must raise our children well, guarding against the depredations of preverts (sic! sic!) who can derail the purity of God’s plan with a chance remark, or an eyebrow wiggle (wait: whether? or?), well, it all makes me think of an old skit from Mad TV from back in as we like to call it the day: Debra Wilson, doing an infomercial parody for Men Are From Mars, Women Are Also From Mars—Just a Different Part, turns to the camera and very earnestly says, “I’ve learned that when my husband says he’d like me to make him a sandwich, what he’s really trying to say is, ‘I’m hungry.’”
All of which is by way of saying to Professor Reynolds and Kim Du Toit: if you can’t stick your balls to the wall with the panache of a Dave Sim, well, hell. Don’t bother getting out of bed.
(Why, yes. There is a surfeit of bitter irony dripping from the undercarriage of that sentence. —I’m piggybacking off Roy Edroso yet again; I had to add value somehow.)
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I agree most of Du Toit's spiel is fallacious, there are small granules of truth in there. I recently worked on a corporate educational animation project which featured a large cast of characters who explain various concepts to corporate drones. There were characters of all races and both sexes in this project, and I couldn't help noticing that all of the women, blacks, Latinos, and Asians in the series of animated shorts were portrayed as noble, tough, hip, cool, infinitely capable, intelligent and wise, while the comic relief of idiocy, clumsiness, dorkiness, wimpiness, etc., was reserved strictly for the white male characters. Mind you, white males have earned a great deal of payback after years of fucking everyone else over and spreading injurious stereotypes about everybody else. But it seemed to me that this fallacy of perfection that was being created out of politically correct fear in these animated stories was just as bogus as the negative stereotypes the writers were attempting to avoid stepping into. These superhumans were allowed little personality, no real failings (and failings of various types are a basic human trait). Meanwhile, most of the white males in the piece (there was an exception made for an outdoorsy hiker dude who was portrayed as thoroughly hip) were shown as being ridiculous bumblers who were constantly being ridiculed by the other characters, having spectacular accidents, and being physically attacked. (I'm not exagerrating here -- there were four white male characters whose only purpose was to act like idiots, fumble around, fall down, and get verbally abused by the hip, capable women in these animated skits) I didn't feel defensive of my white male status, as there are hundreds of thousands of dorky, idiotic, clumsy white men in my general vicinity, and the portrayal is generally accurate. It just felt a bit forced that the corporate powers that be were so afraid of being offensive that they assigned all negatives to white males and made superhuman demigods out of everybody else.
Funny you should mention the Berenstain Bears. When I was going to school in New Hope, PA, I went trick or treating in '84 to the area homes. Until then, I hadn't realized how many famous arteeests lived there. We got candy at Michner's home and then, next door I believe, we unknowingly came into the clutches of the Berenstain Bears creators. They asked us in (15 to 18 yr old hoodlum types that we were) and showed us lots of artwork (cells, comics, mugs, plates, etc.) that they had done. We tried to politely excuse ourselves but they just WOULDN'T LET US LEAVE. Until that evening, though slightly familiar with their product, I hadn't been aware of how overtly, SCREAMINGLY, Christian it was. They were very nice people and wanted us to see what they had been doing for 30(?) some odd years. But, man, was it creepy. We'd edge towards the door and one of them (creators, not bears) would insert itself 'tween us and the exit. It took nearly an hour to escape their clutches. I have not laid eyes on a Berenstain Bears product since.
I used to work for a few textbook publishers, way back when, and there's a formula and checklists, based on population and demographics.
At least, there is for the 37 states that follow California. The thirteen states that follow Texas wouldn't care if you put all the non-white-non-males in skins, as long as they were floorlength skins.