Anti-feminism in Winnie the Pooh

[Ihavewelliesbuttheyrenotgreen]

There are barely any female characters. I think I Kanger is the only one and she is a single mum who wears an apron.

Any other suggestions?

I agree wellies. I loved Winnie The Pooh but remember the young feminist in me being very indignant about that.

I seem to remember some quite lively females in AA Milne's poems though.

i think tigger is a paedo

I've always thought james james morrison morrison wetherby george dupree's mother had a lucky escape

I loathe Winne the Pooh.

No, no female characters except Kanga and she exists purely to "look after" Roo and, on occasion, Tigger (if I recall).

'What is the matter with Mary Jane?
I've promised her treats and a ride on the train
And it's lovely rice pudding for dinner again.
What is the matter with Mary Jane?'

I think the answer to that is fairly clear. She's just realised how her choices are going to be constrained by her womanhood under the patriarchy and is understandably pissed off.

Sybil - PMSL!! Bloody brilliant...

Thanks Sybil I knew I was right. And JJMMWGD's mother did have a lucky escape. I do remember being disturbed a bit by that one back in 1965.

And Alice, who's 'marrying one of the guards' is a smug bitch. Always thought so. Of course all CR's nannies are a bit thick and pathetic ( but set free captured creatures like beetles, etc so I have a soft spot for them)

We could always put this one in relationships... what label(s) would you give this type of prick?

I think I see what you did there, well done.

I always used to think that Roo, Piglet and Rabbit were female. So clearly the sexism was lost on me (Although piglet was only female because he wore pink. I'm not sure why I didn't notice that pigs are generally pink...)

You are right Bertie its all a bit amiguous as to whether characters are male or female, so perhaps it can't really be described as ant-feminist

It's not ambiguous - you can tell from the pronouns used!

I think that Winnie the Pooh is very much a story told for one little boy in particular, and the characters in it are largely male because they tend to represent parts of the little boy himself -- his timidity in Piglet, his benign foolishness in Pooh, etc. And the stories are ones in which the little boy saves all these vulnerable parts of himself in fantasy through his own power and wisdom.

That's what we all do as small children, isn't it? Fragment our vulnerability onto imaginary characters our toys etc that represent us, and then protect against that vulnerablity in fantasy by posing ourselves as the all-powerful protector. We need our particular self to be reflected in the stories we hear.

So I don't have a problem with that one story having nearly all male characters, representing the boy himself. The problem is that the same male situation is iterated over too much of literature, children's and adults' literature, whereas if we were in a properly equal culture there would be a range of books -- all-male, all-female, evenly mixed, unevenly mixed, etc.

I don't, btw, mean to say that a child can't see him/herself refected in a character of the opposite gender. Girls have to do this all the time with fiction.

I only mean that it is natural and acceptable to at least sometimes tell a story that is all about the hearer's gender. The trouble is that we don't have a balanced range of stories to make that option as available to girls as to boys.

You can tell from the pronouns Joan but if I recall the pronouns are not used that often (at least in the original AA Milne) but rather the names, which are not very gender specific are used. The characters is also don't seem to have traits which are portrayed as being gender specific. Apart from perhaps Christopher Robin.

Eeyore is quite intelligent, miserable, pessimistic and a bit rude to others, but somehow lovable

Piglit is small with a high-pitched voice, loyal, friendly, quite clever, brave and adventurous, occasionally scared of Tigger

Tigger talks about his self a lot, is boastful, is childlike (and has to be cared for by Kanga), is a fussy idea, is confident, outgoing and friendly though sometimes scares others with his enthusiasm. Talks a lot.

Winnie himself is caring, friendly, comfort eats and puts himself down

I think the main characters have a mixture of traits that are not all generally thought of as particularly masculine.

That is a good point Woodwork I think its true that the characters were based on aspects of CRs personality.

Really? So it would read like 'Rabbit sat down and wondered what Rabbit should do next, and Piglet scratched Piglet's chin. 'let's go and see Owl', said Pooh, 'Owl always knows what to do because OWl is so wise!' Along came Kanga, with Kanga's child Roo.....

I'm fairly sure it uses pronouns about the normal amount, tbh!

Maybe its just my memory of it Joan but I seem to remember that not much was made of the genders of the characters. It may be partly because they were animals and didn't really wear clothes, have jobs and all the other things that add to our impression of gender.

No, they didn't, but the pronouns were used and it was clear to anyone interested which sex each creature was.

To be honest, I think your attempts at satirising feminist close-readings are not working out terribly well, and you haven't proved your point.

Joan, Joan, Joan I haven't been trying to satirise feminist close reading, I have just been trying to see whether it is possible to see various medias as anti-feminist and discussing whether it is ok for things to have some anti-feminist aspects without being unwatchable.

I'm not sure whether I have proved my point because I'm not sure what my point is, I'm just discussing and learning. Surely this is one of the aims of Mumsnet. Its certainly more productive than discussing Slebs or baby names (although I do indulge in these too )

then why not tell people that is what you are trying to see rather than posting threads that look like piss-takes?
you will get a more interesting and focused discussion on the subject if you treat your fellow posters with enough respect to explain to them what you are doing from the off. People do not like being treated like experimental subjects without their consent. In academic research it is considered unethical.

random sample from googling:

"Oh, well then, Kanga can give you some breakfast."
So they went into Kanga's house, and when Roo had said,
"Hallo, Pooh," and "Hallo, Piglet" once, and "Hallo, Tigger"
twice, because he had never said it before and it sounded
funny, they told Kanga what they wanted, and Kanga said very
kindly, "Well, look in my cupboard, Tigger dear, and see what
you'd like." Because she knew at once that, however big Tigger
seemed to be, he wanted as much kindness as Roo.

Another children's story which has a multitude of characters that all represent a part of the child's self is the wonderful Where the Wild Things are. And very strikingly the stormy monsters that represent the child's anger and his too-uproarious aggressive play are both male and female. Lovely.

Small children are extremely flexible about gender and can see themselves easily in both male and female characters. But of course that is made less and less flexible by the confining gender stereotypes that they meet in literature. Other than the Kanga figure, the characters in WtP aren't gender stereotypes, so Winnie the Pooh taken on its own seems harmless. What is not harmless is the cumulative effect of overly male stories.

Sybil I genuinely didn't realise that my threads would look like 'piss-takes'. I'm not genuinely doing a social experiment I'm not taking notes and writing up my find. I'm just interested to see people's thoughts, surely thats the aim of most of the threads on Mumsnet?

you want to see whether it's possible to detect anti-feminism in a variety of different media? Yes, it is.

Cool