I also think, in addition to perpetuating the “battle of the sexes” by presenting boys as enemies to girls, the David and Goliath shirts reinforce stereotypes that girls are mean and catty and unpredictably moody. It reminds me, somewhat, of the “I’m a brat” and “PMS=psychosis”-type shirts I see girls and women wearing.

I’m not saying the shirts aren’t sexist toward boys. I’m simply saying the girls don’t benefit from the message at all.

Uuuuh… what?

“Calling stereotypes against men “sexist” doesn’t make sense in the same way as it applies to women’s conditions. There isn’t the same context.”

That said, discrimination based on either sex is, indeed, something of concern.

I think the problem is that for dudes, feminism is often just an abstract philosophy or ideal that they can freely engage with, like liberalism. That’s the power of privilege, it means you don’t have to face certain issues in your day-to-day life. Sexism is something “out there” for men — the closest men get to experiencing it is through the women in their lives, but obviously never experiencing it firsthand means that it’s not the same thing. I think that’s why so often, apparently liberal men want to debate and discuss feminist issues in a very detached manner (or want to play devil’s advocate just because), and are disturbed or surprised when women take things personally.

Three hours of thoughtful, reasonably peaceful discussion later, he admitted that there is quite a bit of combat-related concepts and terminology floating around the whole man-woman ‘thing’, although he still feels that this could be primarily sub- or unconscious, and certainly isn’t being reinforced on purpose by anyone.

And this just amazes me. My husband is fairly liberal sort who probably thinks of himself as feminist-leaning and a true believer in equality. But he’s never thought about this in any detail before, and his knee-jerk reaction is that it couldn’t be true — I must be exaggerating.

Every time he and I talk about these topics, he comes to understand a tiny, tiny bit more where I am coming from. But it takes a lot of time and a lot of careful discussion. I can’t imagine the kind of in-depth one-on-one interaction that would be required to help someone who isn’t already pretty liberal (and also my husband, who is inclined to trust and believe me) get the point.

I’ll toss in the corollary of racial stereotypes for context (see Racialicious.com or Anti-Racist Parent to get the drift here) because it’s an easy way to see a double-standard readily apparent. (e.g. how many times have you heard racial-religious slams/slurs/stereotypes deemed as ‘ok if uttered by someone from that background’?)

The problem is not just the ‘joke’ itself, it’s the perpetuation of a stereotype that won’t snuff itself out. That’s why normalizing cues like these tees, or reinforcing sexist tees like this ‘nipples-tassles-tot’ shirt in the name of ‘satire’ just don’t fly with me. http://tinyurl.com/m5v63g

Yeah, they can easily be shrugged off as stupid, but truth is, kids pay attention to what we value, applaud, reward and moreover, PERPETUATE in society…it’s subliminal and it seeps into the larger cultural context.

After all, kids are dealing with this: http://www.shapingyouth.org/?p=8049 and misogynistic misfires like this: http://www.shapingyouth.org/?p=45 so it’s important to see where the backlash/battle of the sexes takes hold. (I’d hope we could keep kindergartners out of the trenches, rather than putting our adult ‘stuff’ on them so early.)