Fringe - a study in gender stuff

Watched Fringe last night. I love that series, they manage to make the outrageous stuff going on believable AND it has several interesting plot arcs both for the overall plot and for the characters. Great stuff!

One thing that I particularly admire is the gender role reversal for two of the main characters. One main character is an FBI agent - a strong character that wields a gun and is able to make hard calls. One main character has a brilliant father that needs baby-sitting and there's the emotional issue of them having been estranged for many years while the father was locked away in a psychiatric hospital.

Traditionally, you would expect the strong, gun-wielding agent to be a man and the person baby-sitting their father and trying to repair their relationship to be a woman. But in Fringe it is the other way around. I love that! I think it is great to see characters that are a bit different to the norm. Their gender is obviously part of what makes them who they are, but it doesn't limit them or lock them into stereotypes. Just like real people.

To my mind men and women are different in many ways. Physically and mentally we have different strengths and weaknesses. But the same is true about people in general. Some people are smarter than others. Some are better at maths, some are better at drawing. Unfortunately when it comes to gender there are still issues out there with regards to equal opportunities, equal pay etc. A large TV show having characters that break the gender stereotypes while still being of their gender is a great thing.

When I say "of their gender" I mean that the character is not portrayed as overly being / trying to be like the other gender. Using examples from Fringe, Olivia is a very strong person, she has to be in such a tough job. But that doesn't mean that she has to masculinise herself to do a good job. She has long hair (though usually pulled back - understandably, you don't want hair messing up your aim), wears some make-up - does girly things with her sister and niece. Peter seems to have no issue that Olivia is the leader of their little team. He follows her orders and does not carry a gun. If there is any defending to do it usually falls to Olivia and/or other agents as he is not trained for it. And he is baby-sitting his bonkers dad 24/7. But he is still very much a man.

The more of that kind of thing enters our everyday culture, the better it will be. The more natural it will be for people to assume that women and men are not limited by their gender in what they want to work with / spend their free time doing.

Being a female that likes computer games and gadgets is viewed by many as unusual as they go with the geek stereotype being all male. Out of the people that I know that have such interests I would say that the majority are male, but it is not a huge majority by any means. And it wouldn't surprise me if there are a lot of girls out there that have the interests but keep it private. As with many other things people will make judgements about you based purely on that one facet of your interests.