angry* Surviving IN SPACE.
* Surviving IN THE DESERT.
* Surviving BEING BITTEN BY VENOMOUS REPTILES.
* Surviving YOUR SUDDEN AND INEVITABLE POP STAR LIFE.
I...what?
A little context for you, because context is to my crankiness as the Great Pumpkin is to the Sacred Patch: yesterday was Wednesday, better known around these parts as "Seanan goes to the comic book store" day. We went to the comic book store. I picked up my books (new issues of The Boys and Hack/Slash, new trades of Chew and American Vampire), and prowled the shelves, looking to see what else had arrived.
In the "family friendly" section, I found two books I hadn't seen before: Boys Only How To Survive Anything, and its natural mate, Girls Only How To Survive Anything. They were, naturally, somewhat pink and blue, but I don't have a moral objection to pink, and if they were going to be all gendered about things, I supposed having "gender appropriate" colors made sense. I picked up Boys Only and flipped through it.
Surviving disasters, natural and man-made. Surviving conflicts and accidents and on the space shuttle and monsters. Surviving, you know, shit that can kill you. Works for me. I put down Boys Only and picked up Girls Only. Where I learned to survive...
Breakouts. Becoming a pop star (and the inevitable carpal tunnel from signing all those autographs). Saying I'm sorry (with homemade lip balm). Identifying a frenemy. Surviving, you know, shit that generally doesn't leave you dead.
Can you guess when I started seeing red?
Now look. I get that we're a culture that thinks boys and girls should always like different things, and that we start reinforcing that from a very early age. I get that to some degree, on average, boys and girls do like different things. It's by no means universal, but things like the Brony movement aside, you do have gendered majorities for many activities and interests. Fine. But you know where that breaks down? When we tell girls, through implication, that they shouldn't know how to survive in the desert. Knowing how to handle, gasp, pimples is so much more important.
Not every girl needs to know how to deal with venomous reptiles, just like not every boy needs to know how to base jump. Because of differing interests and activities, I could have believed as much as 40% deviation between the books. Teach the boys how to tie a tie, and the girls how to fix runs in the nylons, fine. It's cisgendered and assumes so much, but it makes societal sense, if you're dividing the books by gender (and I'm almost in favor of that, just so that they don't give all the action illustrations to boys, and all the pretty or panicked illustrations to girls). Understand that gendering is problematic and try to be reasonable.
But we are talking 95% deviation. The only activity they had in common? Escaping from a zombie. Because...fuck, I don't know. Because zombies are the only truly gender-neutral threat in the world, apparently. Deserts only fuck you up if you have a penis. Frenemies (how I hate that word) only endanger your reputation if you have tits. But zombies? Man, they will fuck you up, no matter what you've got.
I hate this increasing insistence that boys and girls are alien species, coming together only to do icky romance dances of ickiness, and make more boys and girls to never understand each other at all. Girls can like snakes. Boys can like looking nice for dates. And that doesn't mean a damn thing but "we are all individuals, we will all like and want and do different stuff."
At least we're all allowed to know how to fight zombies.
May 3 2012, 20:58:03 UTC 5 years ago
Sigh. Over 40 years ago I quit Girl Scouts at the jump between the 2nd & 3rd age groups because I'd read the manuals & noticed that the Boy Scouts got to do badges on things like Space & Ham Radio, & I was expected to settle for 6 more years of Cooking & Entertaining (as in throwing parties).
It's infuriating that so little has changed.
May 3 2012, 23:44:12 UTC 5 years ago
May 5 2012, 03:32:02 UTC 5 years ago
Went camping with my family. Worked at a BOY SCOUT summer camp. Girl Scouts camping? Well, at the time, they made the leaders go through certification classes to camp—not inexpensive or easy. No wonder it was a PITA.
May 13 2012, 05:37:26 UTC 5 years ago
May 4 2012, 03:17:02 UTC 5 years ago Edited: May 4 2012, 03:18:10 UTC
I have a Girl Scout manual from 1910's. It has instructions on how to pitch a tent with a blanket, build a fire, and how and where to build a latrine. Even in the 70's I didn't hear of this being in the handbook. What the F happened? When did women become such delicate flowers we couldn't freaking camp in the woods!
When did it become our worst injuries are so minor as to be laughed at, yet we get 'those' lectures of how we mustn't go out at night alone, or don't go to the bathroom alone, or else a man might follow you in? (I actually witnessed this happen in a department store! Thankfully the manager also saw it and ran in faster than I could get there, but not until the young woman was screaming. It didn't happen to me, but it still makes my stomach sick, and I can still hear her screams.)
Yeah, tell young girls they have nothing to worry about that is as bad as a boy.
May 4 2012, 17:16:35 UTC 5 years ago
And this downright intimidating tome is aimed at girls ages 10-15 -- starting well within the upper age range for those &@)#^*! books.
It's stunning how lobotomized the late 1960s version was by comparison. I blame the 1950s.
May 4 2012, 10:26:29 UTC 5 years ago
May 4 2012, 15:02:58 UTC 5 years ago
Plus, now I'm left teaching my 30-something friends how to sharpen a knife, start a fire, and tie knots. Which I'm glad to help on, but darn it these are basic skills that should have been provided to everyone.
Also, apparently Boy Scouts provides you with the ideal skill set to be a serial killer. Um. That's kind of creepy.
May 5 2012, 03:33:29 UTC 5 years ago
This. So much.
"Also, apparently Boy Scouts provides you with the ideal skill set to be a serial killer. Um. That's kind of creepy."
Or survive one.
May 7 2012, 15:33:55 UTC 5 years ago
Primus, yes!
May 7 2012, 15:27:55 UTC 5 years ago
My brother was in Boy Scouts and I was in Girl Scouts. He went camping states away, went canoeing in the Boundary Waters, became competent at all sorts of things, and eventually became an Eagle Scout.
I think I got one overnight camping trip in my time with the girl scouts, and it was "car's right there, carry lawn chairs over to the fire, put up the tent and have a fireside evening the same as we could have in someone's backyard, and if we forgot something, hey, one of the leaders can drive back for it because we're five miles away from home.
Plus, nobody's fucking heard of the Gold Award, which is the Girl Scouts' equivalent of Eagle Scout.
I quit when I was thirteen or so, about at the point where after the troop "earned" the car-maintenance badge and I still didn't know how to change a tire.
August 24 2012, 18:38:10 UTC 4 years ago
September 17 2012, 18:33:11 UTC 4 years ago