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

My 3yr old is shit scared of Andy!

Oh dear. I see we have some way to go with you, Tunip.

Yeah, and he still keeps getting his own flipping show!

Well the girls aren't the only ones who are shown as useless, have you seen Postman Pat Special Delivery Service? Every job he has is fooked up!

my DS loves lola from charlie and lola, and his fave character from octonauts is dashi. he also likes minnie mouse a lot and when choosing figures for his castle has included a queen, a princess with a sword, a troubadour(sp?) and a unicorn. he also has a puppy that goes everywhere with him that's a girl.

i think most of the "boys only want to watch boys" is actually adults who force boys into that view by automatically putting down girly stuff. i have found myself as a parent offering boy-ish stuff to my DD and girl-ish stuff to my DS to try and counteract the overwhelming desire from other people for them to conform...

'are you suggesting that Captain Barnacles got the part because he was the best out of a wide field of cartoon marine animals of all genders and levels of physical ability? Because I think it was fixed.'

This made me immensely happy.

FWIW, about voice actors - Bart Simpson's voice actor is a woman, isn't she?

That's two people who have run away after talking to me. Was it something I said?

Will you have a fish biscuit? You will you will you will

You're conditioned to, Tunip. Tis very sad.

Oh don't worry Sue, we like it.
Barnacle biscuit anyone?

Dashi is the dog who takes photos (sauci dog in the books), she's female as is Tweak, the fixit bunny who mends the ships.
The adventurer, medic, scientist, brainy type and captain are all male and they're the ones who go out on missions.

FWIW, I feel the Vegemals are the most oppressed though, poor feckers.

AHA my kind of thread

On Octonauts (my specialist subject for 10)

Tweak and the one who takes photos are female. The one who takes photos is very girly. They rarely go out adventuring.
Tunip the Vegimal is a vegimal. They are vegimals. They do not come in boy type or girl type.

That leave the 3 main characters - you call tell it is them as they are the ones at the start of the theme song:

BARNACLES... KWAZI... PESO (starts to sing)

Plus they are the ones who are usually doing the adventuring and all the action.

Leaving Professor thingy who stays in the octopod and has a huge brain and gives them the missions and is also male. And the shellington chap who does some kind of research.

It's basically 4 male leads doing all the stuff with some of the more minor roles afforded to females and of course the unsexed (is that a word) vegimal. And some more blokes, obv.

However we do have an octonauts book and I have to say the illustrations are really nice

Not sure every programme can be a Benetton ad.

Tokenism just isn't good enough though.
If we were grading CBeebies shows for equal representation Octonauts would get something like a C minus.

As someone has already pointed out, there are at least two female characters in the 'Pod. And Tweak identifies as queer, but Peso's still closeted, so there's a bit of a sexuality spectrum. Also - Professor Inkling is disabled, which is why he doesn't go on missions. So Octonauts is doing ok tbf.

I just had a conversation with my 3 year old where she revealed her conviction that Peso and Captain Barnacle(s?) were both girls. Whereas Zingzillas she was spot-on. I reckon she was helped by that wearning pink, flowers, and hair-twidling that is so undeniably linkied with the XX chromosome.

Elephants, you may be too young to remember the Vicky The Viking cartoons. Vicky dressed like a boy though had plaits, was at the centre of lots of adventurous storylines.... and actually was a boy. Me and many of my contemporaries were never quite sure about his/her gender, but further investigation once the internet was invented revealed he was definitely meant to be male

Octonauts - there are 2 female characters, Tweak and Dashi. Tweak is an engineer who built all the Gups but the two of them rarely leave the Octopod and neither is one of the main three characters (Kwasi, Barnacles, Peso). I always thought the Vegimals (who make the fish biscuits and barnacle biscuits and kelp cakes) were of indeterminate gender but my dcs are currently insisting they are all girls.

Please can we exterminate fire Mr Maker too? I think some older presenters would be nice to see too, and every time I see the annoyingly hyper Mr Maker I wish my kids had the lovely Tony Hart that I loved watching as a child.

However, as my DH pointed out, nearly all the Cbeebies and daytime TV programmes are produced by women so nearly all the men presenters are good looking and non-threatening