Do Superheroes Model Damaging Gender Roles to Kids?

Well it's interesting, but they're far from anything conclusive

 

Not really. Many kids just like rough and tumble play - even young animals do, you always see them playfully wrestling each other.

 

I could also see such shows making girls more prone to rough-housing as well...both the boys and girls in my family liked to wrestle around, and get a bit rowdy. I'd like to see more girl superheroes...at least in Teen Titans, of the main 5, 2 were female, which I thought was good to see.

 

Yeah. It's nice to see the genders almost evenly split. It's also nice to see that they can handle themselves instead of being over-sexualized and constantly needing the help of a man.

I do, however, think that some superheroes do project a very damaging stereotype onto men. Guys are often portrayed as being anything from goody two-shoes, high-powered businessmen to misfits and slackers, but they all usually have one thing in common: In addition to being ridiculously muscular and/or trim, everything in their lives is a tool for ass-kicking. So, men, if we want to protect the things that are important to us, we need to develop the ability to curb-stomp anything and everything that might threaten us, and we need to have lots of cool shit that we can use to make that happen.

 

There's already a shit ton of female superheroes. What we need more of are LGBT superheroes.

 

Now that's a good idea!

 

110% agreed.

 

That IS a great idea!

 

What about Wonder Woman? She's a great example of female empowerment and independence. She's even been referred to as a lesbian simply because she refuses to be anyone's bitch.

She was on the cover of a feminist magazine called "Ms."

And, yes. If Wonder Woman ever runs for president, she has my vote.

Ironically, Wonder Woman is my mom's favorite super hero, and she thinks feminism is crazy (she can say what she wants, but I think there's a tiny feminist inside her).

 

Though they're not nearly represented as well as male superheroes in most 'mainstream' media, such as films. I mean, how many Batman, Spider-Man, and other such movies have their been as compared to ones that focus on a female lead character? I'm hard pressed to think of one major film. For instance, why hasn't there been even one Wonder Woman movie?

I also agree it would be nice to see more LGBT superheros, or to discover Peter Parker was bi, & Robin was gay, and having an affair with The Joker.