
Rebel girls and children’s books: In defense of well-behaved women - fanf2
https://slate.com/culture/2018/06/rebel-girls-and-childrens-books-in-defense-of-well-behaved-women.html
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devereaux
> Parks made history precisely because she was well-behaved, because her image
> was so wholesome and unthreatening, and her protest stood out as an
> apparently isolated act of forgivable “misbehavior” in an otherwise virtuous
> life. She was a much safer heroine than working-class teenager Claudette
> Colvin, pregnant out of wedlock, who had been arrested for refusing to give
> up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus several months earlier

This hits home. Society wants well behaved women -- and men. Heroes they can
rally with, not so much. Just people that the average person think are like
them, living a vicarious life.

But is that the best for the individual and their unique talents?

Personally, I do not want to glorify submission to any cultural value. I want
to forge my own path. While I am sure many men would like well-behaved women,
I do not think we ought to become their idealized version of a human being.
Likewise, I do not want men to think they have to follow some cultural
narrative to 'prove their worth.' They should forge their own path.

I thought we had left these old values in the previous century, but apparently
we haven't.

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sheepmullet
> I thought we had left these old values in the previous century

You are welcome to go forge your own path - but many of us love and cherish
"old values" \- so why should we follow?

~~~
DanBC
Because those old values lead to the misery and needless deaths of hundreds of
thousands of people, for very little benefit.

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dvdhnt
I agree with you. Proponents of “old values” would argue they come with
billion$ of benefit$.

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dzdt
My five-year-old is really into the "Rebel Girls" book. Its format -- one page
biographies -- makes it easy to flip thru and pick stories.

Unlike almost everything else we read it is both _real_ and _edgy_.

The one that she returns to the most is Malala, shot in the head by men who
didn't like her going to school, won the Nobel peace prize.

~~~
mindcrash
"The one that she returns to the most is Malala, shot in the head by
_fundamentalist Muslim men_ who didn't like her going to school, won the Nobel
peace prize."

Fixed it for you.

Or let me explain: The problem here isn't that they are men in general, but
that they follow a set of beliefs - Sharia law - which say that Muslim women
only live to please Muslim men. Which also means that they don't like Muslims
girls or women to go to school.

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nojvek
“Well-behaved women seldom make history”. I love that quote.

~~~
curtis
I think it's rather likely that the vast majority of poorly-behaved women also
don't make history.

