Jasmine was a victim of Aladdin’s magic patriarchal carpet.
Is your daughter a victim of male oppression? Blame Aladdin – as well as The Little Mermaid, Pocahontas, The Lion King and Toy Story 2.
Disney cartoons and other G-rated children’s movies are full of “gendered sexuality,” subjecting women to the male “objectifying gaze,” as “heterosexuality is constructed through hetero-romantic love relationships as exceptional, powerful, magical, and transformative.”
These were the conclusions of Women’s Studies professors Karin Martin and Emily Kazyak in their 2009 research paper, “Hetero-Romantic Love and Heterosexiness in Children’s G-Rated Films.” The sociologists examined “all the G-rated films grossing $100 million dollars or more between 1990 and 2005″ and found that these movies convey what feminists call “heteronormativity”:
Heteronormativity includes the multiple, often mundane ways through which heterosexuality overwhelmingly structures and “pervasively and insidiously” orders “everyday existence” . . . Heteronormativity structures social life so that heterosexuality is always assumed, expected, ordinary, and privileged. Its pervasiveness makes it difficult for people to imagine other ways of life. . . . Anything else is relegated to the nonnormative, unusual, and unexpected and is, thus, in need of explanation. Specifically, within heteronormativity, homosexuality becomes the “other” against which heterosexuality defines itself. . . .
Heteronormativity regulates those within its boundaries as it marginalizes those outside of it. . . .
Heteronormativity also rests on gender asymmetry, as heterosexuality depends on a particular type of normatively gendered women and men.
Heteronormativity also rests on gender asymmetry, as heterosexuality depends on a particular type of normatively gendered women and men.
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