endcomic:

hokuto-ju-no-ken:

Remember kids: if you grow tits, you’re not allowed to fantasy, ever, because it’s support male privilege. — Yeah I’ve seen this. Just kinda sigh-worthy.

Uhhh, normally I don’t really disagree with you on various opinions that you post, but I flat out disagree, here.

As someone who has a daughter and IS a daughter, this issue is a big goddamn deal to me; why should my daughter settle for fantasizing about being a princess—someone who sits around and waits for rescue/marriage—when she could be fantasizing about being the adventurer, about hunting for treasure or exploring a distant planet, or being a goddamn ninja turtle if she so chooses?

Encouraging your kid to aspire to be a ‘princess’ is telling her that her role is passive, and secondary to her male friends who will almost always be the adventurer whenever they’re running around playing make believe. It’s social conditioning that starts young. You may argue this point, but I cannot think of any way to explain the multitudes of women I have met and spoken to through the years who have either not-so-subtly implied or straight up said to me that they’re still waiting on some sort of prince to come riding in on a white horse and sweep them off their feet. These are all interesting, fun women, who are absolutely willing to just sit there on the sidelines and wait, and wait, and wait. Most of them can’t fathom just going out and finding someone on their own, because their prince will come and they are okay with waiting.

But I’m almost thirty, and some of those same women are still waiting. Some of them have not ever dated, or only dated men who have approached them (even if they had nothing in common or no attraction to them).



I want my daughter to look back on her childhood with fondness, and face adulthood with confidence and the knowledge that if she wants something, all she has to do is just take it. I want her to shoot for the moon and find something that she loves and is passionate about, and not feel like her responsibility as a woman is to get married to her prince charming and be a mom.

I spent my childhood running around in the woods building awesome forts, pretending I was a ninja turtle, a fencer, a pirate, on the Enterprise, THE SHARK FROM JAWS. I climbed trees and played videogames and drew pictures and comics. I drew a giant fantasy map and just kept adding to it with 8x10 pieces of papers until it covered half the wall in my bedroom, and I never stopped feeling the pressure from my parents, teachers, friends’ parents, and female friends to be more lady-like. If I didn’t smarten up and accept my passive background character role, how would I ever get a boyfriend? Get married? Have babies?

I did all of those things, but my life as an interesting person with hobbies and passions isn’t over just because I’m a mother. I’m grateful every day that I never bought into the idea that it was my job to sit in the background and wait for someone to rescue me, because that is the most suffocating fate I can imagine—the idea that my happiness hinges on someone else giving it to me is absurd when I can just, you know, make myself happy. My husband didn’t even know I was interested when i asked him out—If I’d sat around waiting, it might have never happened.

I don’t want my daughter to miss out on anything because she let it slip through her fingers while waiting on the sidelines, and NOT instilling her with the idea that she will only be happy when a dude swoops in and sweeps her off her feet is probably the best way to make that happen.