Not enough gender stereotypes in Bluey

DD loves it and I genuinely think it's helped her to understand the different needs of people. The grannies are bloody hilarious and DD goes round calling me dearie and mate in an aussie accent. We play some of the games on the way to school. I love that there are not gender stereotypes.

Honestly, this sort of shit in the article is just ridiculous. As mumsnet is fond of saying, they need to give their heads a wobble.

Whenever I relax on the sofa my kids try and make me into "mount mumanddad".

I think it's a wonderful show.

I wish I could parent a bit more like Bluey's parents. They look like so much fun.

Plus my Dd loves it and now wanders round saying 'Namaste Mate' in a crap Australian accent which I find hilarious 😂

I do like Bluey although my DC love to play the magic xylophone game with annoying regularity. DH and I always end up with our fingers up our noses and having to 'wake up and pretend to be surprised 14,000 times in a row.

And please, for the sake of the world, may the article be a spoof...

It's dogs for fuck's sake.

That made me properly LOL. 😁

Wtf is a dog of colour? I'm a 'woman of colour' do I need a fucking dog in the right shade of brown to represent me? Is that not profoundly racist? It's dogs for fuck's sake.

I shouted on my husband to come through and watch Dance Mode, and paused it until he got there. It’s just brilliant.

We were forced to stay “just for this episode” at my parents’ place at Easter because my Dad wanted to (re)watch “Hammerbarn”...if Bluey doesn’t bring people together, I don’t know what will! 🤣

The amount of times my family all burst into laughter at an utterly relatable moment is hilarious.
In Hammerbarn my youngest said “how do they know exactly what we buy in Bunnings?”

Aussie here. I don’t know how to articulate a feeling of calm, peace, amusement, relatability and comfort in a cohesive statement, but basically that’s what Bluey provides. There’s nothing quite like hearing a succession of neighbourhood kids from seperate households scream, “Bluey’s on!”, followed by seven minutes of stillness and muffled giggling throughout the street...for now, at the very least, let the kids have their Bluey, as is. It’s given a lot of families just what they’ve needed to crack on since it premiered

My kids and I are well out of the age range for Bluey but my son and I stumbled on it one day and it’s a show that all of us will watch together, we all love the humour and I have also had tears in my eyes on so many occasions.
It’s such a good, heart warming show without being schmaltzy and it’s also so Australian. Plus the one where they look at the creek and they get leeches totally made my son stop freaking out when he gets leeches on bush walks sometimes.
The dad is so funny, their relationship is loving, equal, kind and warm (The Show, where it’s acted out how they meet is hilarious “Love ya Babe”) and DH and I are always quoting bits from it (“out the way salads”).
Plus, lastly, on my rant on why Bluey is the best show on TV, my kids watch it and it actually genuinely influences their behaviour for good.
Best show ever and I actually do think the characters are pretty diverse as has been mentioned above.

I had never heard of this show ( I’m in the US) but now I’m watching it with DD on Disney +, and we are rolling about laughing. This has been a good MN day.

Bluey is the absolute best TV show. It has so much fun and diversity if you look below the surface. Rusty is my favourite character. He is so accepting of Jack immediately and is incredibly kind even when going through hard times while his dad is away. The pineapple on his hat made us adults laugh a fair bit.
There appears to be single parents and disabilities and many other subjects covered. Even the sickness of grandparents. It’s about how little any of it really matters to the kids and how they accept everyone as exactly who they are. Even the kid who is horrible to Bingo gets forgiveness and understanding. I bloody love this show and have been in tears on more than one occasion.
Anyone who attacks it can kiss my bottom. They are obviously not smart enough to ‘get’ it.

I'm just going to leave my name here...

On #caturday as well!

They have no interest in getting rid of gender stereotypes; they want more of them. Why?? I can only assume it is because they need the boring, generic folk to be heavily steeped in gender stereotypes so we can identify who the cool / woke / right on people are who reject them; and if they aren't able to do that, then we can't identify them as special.

Totally - I think this is very true and at the heart of why "transgender" as a concept is nonsense. Transsexual (where the person understands they can't literally change sex) does make more sense and I have some sympathy for that, but you can't be "transgender" unless you embrace the sexes being firmly attached to stereotyped "genders", and everyone who isn't "trans" going along with that - which of course they don't, and haven't for millennia.

This is why all kinds of transgenderist books, allies, educational materials etc. go on about "strict gender categories" that some people have a special need to depart from, making them special. They don't want to recognise that gender stereotypes are pretty loose, lots of things don't belong in either stereotype, there are multiple sanctioned ways of stepping outside them, and almost everyone breaks with the strictest definition of them to a greater or lesser degree.

It's like when that non-binary poet caused a furore by going on about not being able to get a haircut because hair salons are so gendered, so masculine or feminine. Except they're not. The person was pushing this idea that there are feminine pink perfumed hairdressers for women and masculine manly barbers for men, so they were left out (being too delicate to just endure something not specially made for them). But it's a total lie – most hairdressers are unisex and I've never seen a pink one. It's also an area where gay men often work and break with gender stereotypes. So a terrible example. But a classic approach by genderists - to basically lie that only special trans people break with a strict binary divide, and all the boring cis normals live in an ultra-gendered world. It's one of many aspects of this that makes me really angry, as I've been GNC all my life.

This is why I have an issue with "transgender" and "gender identity" being some kind of special category. They are not. People need protection from being attacked, victimised, persecuted, sacked etc om the basis of their gender expression, but not belonging to a strict stereotype is not some kind of extra special condition beyond that.

Snickers is a Sausage Dog with little arms and legs, so he often can't do things as fast as his friends.

I've read that the short legs of dachshunds and basset hounds is caused by the same type of mutation as dwarfism in humans. Dachshunds can still easily outrun a person and were bred as hunting dogs, their main physical limitation is inability to steal from tables IME.

#whataboutthecats

You beat me to it.

Jack is a Jack Russell Terrier puppy with ADHD, there's a whole episode about it.
Winton's parents are divorced.
Rusty's dad is in the Army and away a lot.
Snickers is a Sausage Dog with little arms and legs, so he often can't do things as fast as his friends.
Pompom is a tiny Pomeranian who doesn't let her size stop her from doing anything.

I haven't counted the sex ratio of the characters, but I feel like there are more girls than boys, which is really refreshing. I don't know how you would add the gender diversity and dogs of colour (???) into it without it being tokenistic.

Also there's an episode called "Mums and Dads" where Indy and Rusty are playing mums and dads. They get into an argument about who gets to stay home and look after the baby, and who gets to go to work. Rusty says "Mums stay home and look after the baby!" Indy comes back with "No, Dads stay home and mow the lawn!" In the end after Indy can't trust anyone else to watch the baby while she works, she and Rusty get back together and decide it's the weekend so they don't have to work. Nice little episode about stereotypes.

I can’t think of any gay couples on it though tbf

@Artesia - no it’s a little boy, he talks about how hard he finds it to sit still and follow instructions etc

Isn’t Indie’s mum a single parent?

We love Bluey. It could be more diverse with disability but both Bingo and Bluey are girls.

There’s loads of different dog breeds if that shows diversity in ethnicity. I’m a POC and never seen an issue!

Love this show. It’s quite like how we parent tbh.

But at the end of the day... it’s dogs...

Are there any cats in it?

#whataboutthecats

Aw I LOVE Bluey! It’s one of the few programmes my kids enjoy that I also enjoy. I take the point about disabilities and single parents but they do so well on other fronts - it’s rare to see both kids in a tv family be girls - and this is completely irrelevant to the storylines, as someone else said above, it’s hard to notice that. There is a very positive relationship between the parents where they are both responsible for childcare and the dad is seen being very active and playing with the kids a lot which I don’t know if I’ve seen before to such an extent. I also think they may have an episode about what it’s like to be the child in a military family too.
It’s such a positive, kind spirited show generally.