It's a SIMPLE FACT.

[slemslempike]

There's an interview on Parent Hacks with the authors of The Dangerous Book For Boys. Parent Hacks asked them why they aimed it specifically at boys, what about girls? Their answer:

I suppose you could argue that heroic characters like Douglas Bader are inspiring for girls and boys, but that would be to come at it from the other side. It's not how we parcel them out - it's what works best that matters. The simple fact is that boys are inspired by stories of men being courageous and self-sacrificing much more than Jane Goodall and her chimps. That's part of accepting that boys are different to girls, really. No doubt some heroes are suitable for both, but in the main, boys take their values from stories about the men they could one day be. It's not just Edmund Hilary and Sherpa Tensing conquering Everest, it's the fact that they refused to say who reached the top first. That's what will get a boy, every time.

Yeah. Girls hate stirring human interest stories like that. Why the hell is he comparing Edmund Hilary to Jane Goodall? Could they not have both? Could they not write an interesting and exciting book for all children. Well, of course they couldn't. That would be madness. There is a sort of companion volume for girls, apparently, but it's not The Dangerous Book for Girls, it's The Daring Book for Girls. Arguably slight but important semantic difference there. We can't really strengthen the campaign to make women understand that they must avoid danger or risk attack/rape if we're encouraging them to seek danger. Also, daring is transgressive for girls. Knowing how to change a tire? Man's work! But they might let us play for a while.

If you absolutely squint then you could pretend that he's trying to say something about needing to promote homosociality, and cooperation instead of competitiveness. BUT HE ISN'T. It's the same stupid shit about the "innate" differences of boys and girls, and oh look, it just so happens that boys don't like girls, and girls will have to make do with whatever's left over. And in case we accidentally leave them something good, let's make it so that anything girly is automatically rubbish. Yeah!

Oh I hate everybody. When we went to see Sandi Toksvig and Bonnie Langford, Sandi Toksvig said that she was writing a book about great women in history to try and inspire girls, and the publishers insisted on bringing out an equivalent book for boys. Argh.

Comments

[notmarcie.livejournal.com]

I don't know many boys (as in under the age of 16) who got that book. The people I do know who have it are all over the age of 30, including my boyfriend. I thought it was mainly bought as a joke-y sort of present, just like the Jackie re-issued annual.

I don't know that lots of boys these days are especially interested in Hilary and Mount Everest. It sounds as if they're stuck a bit in the 1960s to be honest.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

It has a bit further up in the interview about how suddenly "we" started overprotecting boys in the 1980s. And that when talking about his parents' influence, his dad told them about being in the army, and "From my mother, we had stories of martyrdom and courage".

They seem to be all over it at Parent Hacks, although there are a number of commenters saying they don't like the gendered aspects, although I don't personally know anyone who has it.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

James Miranda Barry offers to fight a duel with someone or anyone. Codfish at ten paces would work.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I think Boudicca wants a rather pointed word.

[majea.livejournal.com]

I hate everybody, too. This is the logic I face every year when we choose books. We should only choose dark, masculine books because the boys will respond well to those, and the girls will go along with it. If we choose a girl's book, all the poor boys will be bored senseless and will fail.

Fuck 'em. I taught Pride & Prejudice this year, anyway.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I taught Pride & Prejudice this year, anyway.

Well, that's the next generation of men down the drain. No strong characters there! Next thng you know they'll be appreciating wit.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

(here via oursin

Rudyard Kipling was Jane Austen's greatest fan.

No... I must be remembering that wrong.

But I'm not.

The only suitable reply to these bozos is by Kenneth Williams (from "Carry On Dick"): "Any fool can make fatuous generalisations".

[tornyourdress.livejournal.com]

It's not just Edmund Hilary and Sherpa Tensing conquering Everest, it's the fact that they refused to say who reached the top first. That's what will get a boy, every time.

Um, what? DUDE.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

It's pick and mix sterotypes! Boys are naturally competitive, unless you're trying to explain why you wrote a book for boys, in which case they like noble self-sacrifice. And they're not interested in girls, they're interested in animals, unless it's Jane Goodall's gorilla's, in which case URGH.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I spent most of my childhood playing Hillary and Tensing on the stairs with the small girl next door, mostly because her name was Hilary. As far as I know neither of us grew up into a boy.

I think we'd probably have also played Jane Goodall and A Gorilla if we'd heard of her, as it would have been handy when we got chased off the stairs.

Anyway, yes. You are right and they are pushing the whole very tiresome old 'if girls are doing better at school something is wrong with the school, whereas if boys are doing better at school there is something wrong with the girls' agenda.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

You must be remembering that wrong. Girls aren't interested in mountaineers.

Sinsense posted a link to an excerpt about girls in a comment below. I am now even angrier. Apparently girls are different. But it's okay because they might make like nicer for you.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Oh, you are quite right. I think I must be engaged in some form of sad denial that causes me to fail to remember that what Hilary and I were actually doing were making nice cups of tea for some boys who were playing mountaineers, and possibly also cleaning their boots.

[sinsense.livejournal.com]

I managed to work myself up into a white-hot rage yesterday when I read an article about this book for NPR. (Of course, then I googled the book and read more, so I'll admit I brought it on myself.) Of all the foolish gendered misrepresentation! There's also a section on girls, shown in the excerpt here.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Oh my fucking god, that excerpt is appalling. I hadn't seen that before, and I hate them even more than I thought possible before.


Also, I hate flowers. Apparently this makes me not a proper woman.

[sinsense.livejournal.com]

Isn't it? I would kick myself for bringing more hate into your life, but I refuse to bear the burden of their idiocy.

That's what's so fascinating about books like these, for me; there is a certain authoritarian force behind the statements, especially seemingly innocuous statements like "women love flowers." The category "woman" makes this sudden and seemingly common-sense slide from biology to purely socialized behavior. It really is quite effortless. And even idiots can do it, as these authors have proven!

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Yes, the discursive construction of gender identity IN ACTION. If it turns out, as is currently the case, that NO-ONE WILL EVER TALK TO ME, I might see if I can change to looking at these kind of children's books.

[stellanova.livejournal.com]

I have never fancied a boy who plays sports, nor have most of my boy-fancying friends. So apparently we're not real women either! Seriously, these goons seem to live in some sort of parallel universe, not just an outdated one, because girls not fancying hearty rugger-playing types is hardly a new development.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I like a pale computer programmer complexion!

It's such an old-style construction of boys, or rather, what they think boys should be like, based on some strange rose-tinted vision of their childhood. Which includes setting fire to their trainers, but that's not in the book because they're selling the childnood that includes fashioning a bow and arrow from sticks.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

And if so inclined, girls play rugby themselves.

At least in Wales.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

My housemate has a great story that I hope she won't mind me repeating here, that when she was at school, a group of girls approached the sports teacher about starting a girls' football team. He was a bit scathing but said okay, as long as they understood they had to take it seriously and couldn't just wear trainers. She looked at him and said "oh okay, I'll wear my rubgy boots".

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

The bit about GURLS is quite funny. I'm convinced the book is a great big spoof and its authors are being very deadpan indeed. (Convinced for my own sanity's sake.)

[notmarcie.livejournal.com]

I thought it was a spoof at first. I'd read little bits of my other half's copy and thought it was a reproduction of the Reader's Digest Books for Boys type stuff my dad had in the 50s/60s. I'm horrified that this is actually a new book written in this century.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Except that the "World of the Children" book from my mother's family was non-gendered in its instructions on making gunpowder.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

They could so easily have just called this "the dangerous book" and had it non-gendered in instructions. Well, these particular authors seem like they couldn't possibly have done that for fear of their penes mutating into lovehearts, but in general, it is possible as well as desirable not to further reinforce gender lines.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

LOL! If I was a genie I would make that happen to them!

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

That's what I'd always assumed about the book too. The "Girls" bit was so clearly a pisstake, as far as both I and my husband could see. (He knows not to approach me wtih flowers. If he's annoyed me to that extent, he *knows* about crawling over trenches of barbed wife and then rolling over and showing me his belly in abject submission. Honest.)

[gillo]

Here via oursin. This is sick. I've glanced at that book and decided it was an overdone joke. That stuff is pernicious. Why was it OK for me to be forced to read A Pattern of Islands and other such imperialist male ego crap when I was a kid, and if girls didn't do well it was our own fault, while now any book with a female character in it is not sufficiently inclusive for poor ickle boys?

Grrr.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

And for the poor boys whose idea of masculinity doesn't fit in with this terribly hearty ideal and might quite like to read about girls, but I suspect that's exactly what the authors want to stamp out. Grrr indeed.

[gillo]

In the school where I teach racism is seen as disgusting, sexism overtly unacceptable, but OK as a joke (don't you women have a sense of humour?), homophobia as rational, and gender stereotypes more or less invisible except to one or two radical feminist harridans. (Including yours truly I'm proud to say.)

Teenage boys in my experience are desperate to conform to stereotypes and what they perceive as the norm, far more than girls of their age. So this crap, offered to them as a norm, is doubly pernicious.

[serrana.livejournal.com]

I always figured they didn't say who'd gotten to the top first because it was the Sherpa, not the white guy. *shrug*

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

You're totally harshing the upper-class male white privilege buzz, dude! Yeah, that was generally my impression. But I'm imagining that the book doesn't contain a particularly sensitive race analysis either.

[serrana.livejournal.com]

Oh, it totally made sense for the Sherpa to go along with it; with the profits from Hillary's books and lecture tours and so forth, they've built schools and hospitals and all kinds of good stuff for the Sherpas. If anything, I've always figured it was a case study in how to manipulate white people for adventure and profit....;>

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

Of course, Jan Morris was the only reporter with that expedition and half-killed herself running down from 22,000 feet with the news so that the Times could get the scoop. A Writer's Life continues the ambiguity about which ascended first, but my belief is they probably did the last three feet together, to avoid precisely those sort of questions.

[sdn.livejournal.com]

gah! horrible. but i am going to buy the book and do dangerous things regardless, the same way i read those kinds of books and did dangerous things as a child.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I think if I read the book I might branch out in to my own dangerous things that might more aptly be termed violent. Some of the things they mention sound great though.

[tiniago.livejournal.com]

OH I AGREE WITH YOU SO MUCH. Imbeciles. (I also hate Roger Scruton and approximately seventy percent of the people on the Big Brother forum. YOU WOULD THINK MY HATE WOUILD BE SPREAD THIN BY NOW. But no.) Although I have to admit that my biggest issue with that book is that IT ISN'T DANGEROUS AT ALL. I leafed through it in Waterstones making sneering noises. It is at best pedestrian. I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure a lot of this stuff was covered in my Brownie guide book. There was more emphasis on housework and making cups of tea in the brownie guide book, mind you. But yes. LAME.

needing to promote homosociality

AHAHAHAHA! I know you didn't mean it like that. But AHAHAHA. *heart*

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Well, I did a bit!

OH ROGER SCRUTON. I am always surprised that he isn't dead. Boo.

The Brownies were ace. I did not get on with the Guides, but the Brownies did good stuff.

You're back! That's great. I am off to look at your pictures.

[serriadh.livejournal.com]

Hey, I found this browsing friends' friends, and I think we've 'met' over on glovelove?

Anyway, I hope you don't mind me chipping in:
What I find utterly hilarious about this debate is the right-on teachers who claim 'The Dangerous Book for Boys' is brilliant because it gets boys reading (because obviously boys' books have to be incredibly macho or boys will be bored), but they don't seem to realise that it is this very sort of book (to be male = to climb trees, kill things, shoot bows and arrows) that leads to the idea that boys shouldn't read in the first place. Reading is for sissies and girls. BOYS should be doing DANGEROUS things.

*rolls eyes*

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Exactly! Have you seen the horrendous ideas on separate sections in libraries for boys? Yes, let's tell them that books aren't for boys unless it's specifically designated otherwise. HATE.