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GaldraChevaliere wrote

We live in the timeline where a victorian fairy tale about the importance of not trusting strange men and giving out your fucking address to them is sexist and discipling or expelling girls for having the wrong texture of hair or for wearing clothes that the teachers leer at them for is building character.

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startrek wrote

Do you have any opinions on the other stories the article mentioned? Or did you just read the headline?

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GaldraChevaliere wrote (edited )

I can definitely see where they're coming from wrt Sleeping Beauty, but I think banning fairy tales of all things that the kids will be exposed to anyway is pointless and reactionary. It'd be a better use of time and effort to make sure they're contextualized properly. Explaining to them for example that the Grimm stories were collected in a much different time and changed to suit the tastes of the rich at the time. Most kids I knew growing up didn't hear the version of Red Riding Hood with the woodsman until much later, because for some reason a little girl and an old woman being eaten alive is less objectionable than a man saving them by slaying the wolf, but the story itself arguably has more teaching value in that telling since it won't assure you that a stranger will always come and save you when you're in danger. I'd just rather see kids be taught the stories and have them explained to them instead of hiding them because the teachers and parents don't want to actually do the work of engaging with the kids.

e: It's also a shitty fix for addressing sexism in the first place. Kids aren't learning to bully girls from fucking Saint George, they're learning from watching their elders and from the social cues their elders give them. Girls are still getting punished by teachers and administrators for failing to adequately perform white femininity and being suspended for shit like having hair that's not the right length, color or texture or for using the goddamn bathroom when they need to. School faculty love being petty tyrants and gender roles are taught and propagated in the school through authority punishing and humiliating kids for failure to conform and turning a blind eye or even tacitly encouraging it when other students follow the adult's example.

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