Frozen Apart

I listened to Emma Watson’s speech to the UN about gender equality earlier this week, after having been made to watch Frozen on two consecutive days by my two sons.

Now, we went to the cinema to see Frozen – and my response at the end was to compare it to a Barbie movie. You know, the kind they show on Nick Jr.

It was a throwaway comment from a throwaway thought. I thought it was a bit girly.

But why did I think that? Because the main characters are female?

Both of our boys have been through a brief phase of strong aversion to “geeee-uurrrrls” and anything associated with them, but they now seem comfortable with them. Possibly because anything that is “for babies” is the current anathema.

Roger Jr and Tancred love Frozen and are seemingly oblivious to the gender of characters and their positions and roles with respect to one another. Roger Jr doesn’t like me belting out “Let it go” but that is probably because I only know three lines, and repeat them over and over again. 

I’d like them to stay oblivious. But will they? Can their innocence or lack of prejudice stand up to social conditioning?

The white one lays eggs, so must be a girl

Both kids love Angry Birds too. Apart from the birds’ often heavy eyebrows, I can’t see any evidence to suggest that they are all male. So why did Rovio feel the need to release Angry Birds Stella or – as it really ought to be called “Angry Birds For Girls”?

We thought the Lego Movie was great (I preferred it to Frozen). Lego has never seemed “gendered” to me. So why do we now have Lego Friends – or as it ought to be called “Lego For Girls”?

I don’t want my boys to grow up thinking that girls are aliens. Attitudes laid down in early childhood colour everything you come to think subsequently. Reinforcing the exclusivity of gender through toys and culture are the first step on the train towards not being able to speak to women as a teenager and beyond, terminating at the sort of hopelessly fucked-up attitudes displayed by the people who threatened to release naked pictures of Emma Watson for speaking out.

I’m a white, middle-aged, heterosexual man who is a father of two boys. The most valuable contribution I can make to feminism, I reckon, is to try and make sure my sons are kept off the kind of path that leads to being unable to comprehend, to fearing or to hating half the population (the more interesting half, I might add...).

Internet trolls and other species of arsehole are not created overnight. It takes a human being a long time of holding and being reinforced in deeply mistaken and unpleasant views to get to the point where they make rape threats on Twitter.

Everyone has their part to play, but parents – especially fathers of boys – have to do more to stop forcing kids to see the world in terms of gender “us” and gender “them”.

This isn’t something I think constantly about, but when I do I realise that I feel quite strongly about it. 

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and watch Frozen for the third time this week. Have a watch of this yourself if you haven't already. Then let it go...

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