Parenting: A Gender Moment
Jul. 20th, 2017 09:53 pmI was just reading ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
veleda_k's great post on gender in The Lego Movie and commenting on how I worry about how messages like this affect my kids, but it put me in mind of a more hopeful recent gender moment with my son.
I've been reading him The Lord of the Rings, and we came across some line (I don't remember exactly) like whoever has the Ring, it will corrupt "him":
Son: Who's "him"?
Me: Whoever gets the Ring, whoever possesses it.
Son: But it could be a woman.
Me: That's true, but this older English from a time when "he" meant any random person, including women.
(Son looks at me like both I and the world are insane.)
Me: One day I will show you the Blake's 7 episode where Avon uses "he" (actually "his") to refer to a group of one man and two women.
(Son looks even more dubious.)
(Mom's heart is profoundly encouraged.)
veleda_k's great post on gender in The Lego Movie and commenting on how I worry about how messages like this affect my kids, but it put me in mind of a more hopeful recent gender moment with my son.I've been reading him The Lord of the Rings, and we came across some line (I don't remember exactly) like whoever has the Ring, it will corrupt "him":
Son: Who's "him"?
Me: Whoever gets the Ring, whoever possesses it.
Son: But it could be a woman.
Me: That's true, but this older English from a time when "he" meant any random person, including women.
(Son looks at me like both I and the world are insane.)
Me: One day I will show you the Blake's 7 episode where Avon uses "he" (actually "his") to refer to a group of one man and two women.
(Son looks even more dubious.)
(Mom's heart is profoundly encouraged.)
