There was a long discussion in the comments at Guys Lit Wire following my post on whether or not boys are emasculated by YA literature that does not allow them to be the hero. Here's the part that really stayed with me in that Glenn Beck/Ted Bell interview:
There are a couple of things that bother me about this discussion (between two adult men without a teenager in sight by the way). First it is that for a boy to feel heroic he must rescue a girl - and the girl also needs to be rescued. I'm sure the sociologists would have a field day over all this but I can't believe that anyone in the 21st century would believe that such antiquated notions of what it means to be a hero have any place in a worthwhile discussion. Save the world - yes! Save the animals, save the environment, save whatever needs saving in your books. But the girl MUST be saved by the boy for the boy to feel powerful? How do these gentlemen think it makes the girl feel to have to wait to be saved? Have they ever thought about that at all?
There are centuries of literature where the girl is rescued, where she waits to be rescued, where she hopes to be rescued, where she dies rather than be rescued. (I'm sure Little Willow could come up with lists for all of these :) I grew up largely on "girl is rescued by boy" literature; I think one of the reasons why Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time is such an iconic book for many female readers of a certain age is because we remember it as one of the first books where the young female character is heroic in a dangerous situation and saves the day. (Ironically enough, she is the reverse of Beck's assertion as Meg saves her little brother.) I do not believe that boys are more in need of heroic literature than girls; I just think that traditionally more of it has been written for boys and so perhaps as a society, we think it is more significant to them. This is graduate thesis territory though, so I really couldn't say one way or the other what the answer is. I just know that it certainly seems unfair and incorrect to assume that the teenage boys need to read about rescuing girls and just as significantly, need to not be exposed to stories in which the girl does the rescuing.
Why must this heroic business be so one-sided?
Having said all of that, I used an extreme example in my post (and I knew it was extreme at the time) of Dua Khalil who was the victim of an honor killing. She was beaten to death by a group of men (some of whom were members of her own family). Joss Whedon wrote a long eloquent post about female victims of violence in which Dua figured prominently. I thought he had a point - I still think he has a point - about why women continue to be victims of such severe acts. It's odd to me that with the deeply entrenched history of heroic literature and stories (both written and oral) that is prevalent in most all of the world's cultures, that there is still so much violence committed against women. If boys grow up learning to save the girl from these stories, then why don't they always do it? Why is it okay instead to harm some women? Is that how a hero acts - ever? It's a big subject and I'm just asking small questions, but I am asking questions. And because of that, I'm getting a bit of heat on my choice of Dua Khalil as a talking point.
I know she died in a Muslim country but honestly, I don't think that matters. I don't think the US (or any western country) is inherently safer than Muslim countries in this larger issues of violence against women. Do we forget Sarah and Amina Said who were killed by their father in Texas earlier this year? Or what about the fact that one in five teenage girls in England admitted to being beaten by her boyfriend? Is Dua Khalil really an isolated extreme example? I don't think so. She is a symbol perhaps, of how awful violence against young women can be in the world today. But is she an example beyond the pale for American girls to consider?
No. Dua Khalil is a dead girl who could not save herself from the forces aligned against her. And what I wonder, is if she knew that saving herself was even an option; if she had a single example in her life of when the girl wins. That's why I think this discussion of boys and girls and heroic literature has some significance. It's not just about learning how to be a man, it's also about believing that you have a chance or more importantly, that you have a right, to at least try and fight back on your own.
[Post pic: "The Rescue of Guinevere" by William Hatherell.]
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June 20
2008
12:45 PM
I was going to suggest that FredTownWard was Beck's publicist but then I realized that he's been spewing ultra-conservative, illogical propaganda all over Omnivoracious.
So not worth your time or energy.