Tuesday, August 11, 2009

How gender stereotypes hurt men

It's only a minor irk, but an irk none-the-less.

While traipsing through the Times website I came across two stories about men, one was featured in the women's section and the other firmly placed in the mens.

The first article, Same sex adoption: our new life as Dad and Daddy, is just a really wonderful article written by one of said Dad's. The article follows their adapting to life with a new, it bursts with love and pride and all these good things. But it's in the women's section. A story about two men, about fatherhood, is deemed of no interest to men? Or is it simply that a story about families is of better interest to a female readership? It just seems like a missed trick to show the diversity of men, that it's not all cars, sport, fashion...

The second article, We Can't Help Staring!, is not only total gender stereotyped drivel that hopes to firmly place men in their place as misogynist, idiot sex droids, but is illustrated with the ill-famed image of Obama supposedly checking out a young ladies arse... which, you know, he wasn't

It would seem the Times are pretty sure how they want their men, and that is entirely tied up in tired old stereotypes that forge the tired old idea of women, the occasional nags who should know how to please all men or suffer lonliness and ridicule.

Charlotte

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