Which CBeebies White Men Would You Sack To Make Room For Diversity?

And as a parent of boys you ought to have as much interest in them growing up with a sense of fairness as those of us with girls do.

I fail to understand what our occupations have to do with our trying to limit our children's exposure to insidious subliminal messaging (pink, sparkly, manipulative behaviour etc). The very fact that we are here discussing this would seem to suggest that we are not downtrodden by the patriarchy, no?

I was just interested to see if we all practise what is preached. I have boys so maybe do not have the same interest as others do but my 2 seem equally happy to play fairies as they do pirates, they see both parents cooking, cleaning and both with a spanner in our hands. They both enjoy typically male things and female (both sporting sparkly blue toenails at the moment whilst running around sword fighting). I struggle to understand how a TV programme has more influence than examples set by us?

It really doesn't matter what we do does it? The only thing that matters is that we are trying the bring up sons and daughters with equal access to every opportunity to do what they want. And the conditioning to do otherwise, for girls to take a secondary role, is still very much alive and well in the 21st century. So we still have a struggle on our hands.

Not Mr Bloom!!!!!

No, I've been on mumsnet for ages so not trolling. Just all the reactions are about women following stereotypical rolls, are you all mechanics, adventurers etc? Or have some taken up the roll of housewife that isn't the best sports woman etc?

FWIW I feel no compulsion to reveal what I DO to some random ruder on the internet.

Cos MN is full of Bored Housewives. In fact all the small number of women in the world are here. Fact.

Hohlee, what's that got to do with anything? Do you reckon we are all Bored Housewives with nothing to do but whine?

Why?

Out of interest what do you lot do? I wonder how many honest replies there will be?

I was just so aghast that anybody would script such a crass storyline in the 21st century. Just absolutely unfeckingbeleivable.

That was the episode that catapulted me into trying to find someone, anyone, to complain to about the damned programme, before discovering that the only way you can complain about cbeebies programmes is through a management company that only allows 140 character comments. Classic. Did not pursue the matter aggressively enough at the time and the sodding programme is still going. Impossible to find Kay Cargill's email address anywhere online. Does anybody know it? I asked on my original thread but there were no leads.

sgb we loved space pirates too. The girl was like marmalade Atkins. Whatever happened to marmalade Atkins?

I remember seeing an awful episode where Pansy wanted to sing lead and fluttered her eyelashes at Zak, practically begging him to let her sing lead. And I don't think she did in the end [angry}

Big cook, little cook used to drive me crazy.. Cringeworthy to the highest level.
I defo get what you mean about postman pat, surely he should have been sacked by now he cocks up every job haha

Mmm, you see (and I am aware that I am probably overthinking this) given that Dora and Diego come from the same people I am uncomfortably aware that Diego (the "boys'" show) teaches facts (albeit basic) about animals and nature (I think my entire knowledge of the whale shark cones from Diego) while Dora (the "girls'" show) focuses more on stories and the importance of being nice to everybody. Also Dora is getting increasingly princessified in the specials, which is a little reactionary.

I totally agree about the eyelash thing; I was ranting to myself about it while Numberjacks was on just this morning.

Ahhh, it is only slowly dawning on me that we are now pretty much FREE of Cbeebies now that DS is 7. But can I just join in with the Zingzillas-hating for a bit? What a total crock of fucking shit that programme is. And why did it replace Space Pirates, which was the previous introduce-kids-to-various-music programme? Space Pirates was a million times better - while the nominal host was a white male, he was constantly outwitted by his sidekicks Honk and Tonk, of which one (I can't remember which was called what) was a girl; she was the older, smarter one and she looked a glorious mess, generally grubby and wearing big boots and a coal scuttle on her head. The leader of the cartoon-animal band was female, too.
I can't help wondering if they dumped this and put on Zingzillas instead because they were frightened of not having enough programmes ramming home the idea that girls are smaller, dimmer and wear lots of pink. Though I suppose Captain DJ could have been busted for smoking dope or something.

What's not to be horrified about?

Of the main monkeys, the two boy ones present themselves as older and more mature and more in charge than the two girl ones. The female characters are either mute (Drum), say very little (the other one whose name I can't recall), or speak in one voice and only then to support what others have said (the Beach Birds). There are no other female characters. All the authority figures- Todd and that pot-head lemur dude, along with the stone heads etc are all male.

I have to say I am glad to discover I am nt the only absolutely horrified by Zingzillas, although I must admit I noticed the gender stereotyping late, it took me months to get over the fact that someone had thought it appropriate to have a seemingly Carribean island inhabited by monkeys dressed as people. I thought that kind of stuff went the way of the Typhoo monkeys (or was PG Tips, can't remember).
Octonauts annoys in the same way that a number of US programmes we get over here: there are female characters, but they never get to the actual adventuring. They are always the ones manning the computers, staying back at base etc.
My DS loves Dora the Explorer, as do I. He is also taken with Go Diego Go, but I find that programme also falls back on the "women as suppport back at base" crap. I also agree that boys won't watch girls is gender "education" in action and needs to be knocked on the head along with the stupid necessity to identify girls by colour or giving thel longer eyelashes ( I mean wtaf? My DS has humoungus eyelashes that are the source Of comment wherever we go . my DD has short ones..... Where is the justification for longer eyelashes equally girls? If it's bloody make- up I shall scream and scream until I am sick, just like Violet Elizabeth Bott, yet another crappy female fictional model).

The Octonauts could have done with one of the main 3 characters being female. But the 2 that are women are ok. Dashi is a photographer and computer expert and Tweak is an engineer (and built the gups). Shellington ( a male character) is a shit driver so at least they dodged that one :) I really like it that Tunip is genderless.

The 3 main characters do most of the missions (i should get out more).

I really hate 'grandpa in my pocket' all the female characters are shite. Don't get me started on Bubbles.

I seem to remember reading (may have been in a webchat here, actually) that they deliberately had more men on Cbeebies because a lot of their core audience had fathers who had either (a) fecked off completely or (b) worked long hours and didn't see that much of their children, so they were consciously trying to provide role models of men actively engaged with children to redress that balance. That was around the time they got rid of Sue and Nicole and brought in Andy.

I have introduced DS to the concept of the Bechdel Test and do occasionallg bring it up in relation to children's programming (Tree Fu Tom, I am looking at you).