“Why are there American Girls books, but no American Boys books?” asked our son last year.
Of course, I couldn’t give him the real answer: “Because, son, you belong to the most discriminated-against class in America: white males.”
If you disagree with that statement, you must either be one of those brainwashed womyn, or one of those men who has assumed the mantle of male guilt which was foisted on you by – yes – one of those womyn.
Because any man who has been through the family law system, or has been counselled at work about all the various things which used to be – you know, pleasantries – which can now get them sued for sexual harassment, or who has even the most rudimentary of observational skills, will tell you: men are horribly discriminated against now.
And if you are a man who can’t claim membership in some minority group to buy you some sympathy – to give you a nationally-endorsed permission slip – you have no excuse at all.
How out of hand has it become?
A few months ago a 6-year old boy was suspended from kindergarten for putting his finger inside a female playmate’s waistband.
Think that would have happened if a girl had done it? Or the waistband had belong to another boy? How about if a girl had done it and the waistband had belonged to a boy? Nope.
How about John Wayne Bobbitt? When wife Lorena gave him the unkindest cut of all, jokes abounded – talk radio, Letterman, Leno, you name it. Everybody was making jokes about the fact that his wife cut off his organ and threw it out the window.
Now imagine what would have happened if roles had been reversed, and he had cut off one of her breasts and thrown it out the window. And if a single talk-show host – or someone at the water cooler – had dared breathe a joke about it? Talk about a lynching waiting to happen. Why is it funny when a woman dismembers a man?
Because, you know, men are disposable.
But women are sacred, and need special treatment.
How sad that the true equality for which the original women’s movement worked so hard has now been perverted into a form of gender-based merit system which infantilizes women more overtly than ever did the old systems. Because now women apparently need special dispensations just for being women – while men are just, well, bad.
As a nation we have been brainwashed into believing that girls need special treatment, while boys need, well, special treatment of another, darker kind.
Or, as an article in USA Today put it, “Girls get extra school help while boys get Ritalin.”
In some schools 10% or more of the boys are on Ritalin, and nationally 80% of the children on Ritalin are boys.
Because they have a “disciplinary” problem.
Their problem is, of course, that they have a Y chromosome.
It’s as simple as that.
All men are potential rapists. Boys? They are just disciplinary problems who haven’t realized their rapist potential … yet.
And nobody ever seems to question an “American Girls” product line, but boy oh boy would there be an outcry against an “American Boys” product line.
Yesterday our son, who objects to the idea of an “American Girl” series of books “because it excludes people”, which we have taught him not to do, told us, with a conspiratorial grin, “It’s ok, I get them back.”
“Oh, how do you do that?”
“I buy them and read them anyway.”
That’s showing them, son.
Your country is, to use the technical term, fucked.
The only question remains, on a comparative scale to other countries, which one is worse?
America with its plague of lawyers (which pharaoh upset which deity?)
Britain with its infestation of CCTV.
Canada with … Canada.
Australia with “Neighbors”.
And thats just for starters.
Annie,
Turn the kid on to Heinlein’s juveniles, they’re a bit dated but still good adventure tales for a young male, though more than a little subversive for those who believe in the “Nanny State”.
JWW
I know you’re addressing an American audience, but… it’s not actually a solely American situation. Neither is “positive discrimination” targetted exclusively at females.
You can’t really talk about it though, without ending up in the rightwing nutter camp.