I've been pondering all the ways girls and women are seeing female protagonists they can relate to: strong, capable and accepting their call to adventure, and how often boys and men are treated as set-pieces in those stories.

I get that this is correcting an imbalance. I celebrate stories that are giving women glimmers of their potential.

But if women know the cost of hollow, cardboard-cut-out representation, are they really comfortable with boys and men being treated this way?

Where are the stories of men which complicate simplistic narratives, which dig into extrinsically-imposed expectations, limitations and obligations, and which deeply challenge social/societal masculine stereotypes?

I mean, why are we so comfortable with masculine gender essentialism, after feminine gender essentialism has been so successfully deconstructed?

I believe that for men to flourish as complex humans, we need to stop telling them they're simple.

@sumpnlikefaith i think men need to stop telling themselves they're simple. they need to stop using the male bumbling excuse for anything they don't want to do like child rearing or caregiving or housework. or when they're caught w/ their pants down, stop defending themselves w/ "my dick made me do it" bio essentialism shit.

women & girls have been doing it for themselves. but they needed to shout that they could be more than the 'female box' & then demo it. men need to do the same.

@singlemaltgirl I totally agree with you!

I don't buy that bio-essentialism crap either, but here's the thing: I was raised in it. I was *steeped* in it. In the 80s and 90s, everything from movies to sermons told me as a boy-becoming-a-man I was essentially an animal, with practically nothing between stimulus and response.

I credit feminism for blowing that up for me, and articulately exposing the lie.

So yes, to change reality, we have to tell better, more truthful stories.