Saturday, March 13, 2010

The Misogyny of Dr. Seuss

Here's another one of those 'has a point but goes too far' articles, this time about the lack of women in Dr. Seuss' books.

Here are a few of the comments:
I remember "The Cat in the Hat" ... about a boy and a GIRL. And there also were no blacks, gays, transgenders, Chinese, Russians, Germans, Indians, or Japanese. The author of this article is trying so hard to be a victim. Why not pick actual, significant cases of sexism to write about instead of looking for a problem where one does not exist?


I have daughters, I plan to empower them by not whining and moaning about girls not being portrayed in appropriate numbers by a beloved children's author. I guess from now on, we'll need to have special screeners to make sure that each children's book has a suitable quota of girls, gays, blacks and other special groups before being allowed to be printed.


This just proves out, once again, what my mother used to tell me: If you go looking for things to be mad about, you'll sure find 'em.


The funny thing is, thinking back on all those books... I remember thinking quite a lot of the characters looked girly because of their long eyelashes. They just weren't necessarily human. I think women should be honoured, no matter what species. Otherwise that's just... humanist.

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