Stick figures in drag

Also from The Week of December 15:

"The town of Fuenlabrada [Spain] has clothed half the stick figures on its signage in skirts, as part of a countrywide push for gender balance. And half the crossing lights in town now flash little green women on their walk signs rather than little green men. 'The fact that the image of women is seen appearing on something like this, even if it is just a traffic sign, is important because gender equality is a lot to do with the way we transmit information,' says Rosalina Guijarro, a town council member."

Is it not obvious to these people that they're perpetuating a stereotype? Of course those trouser-clad stick figures can't have been depictions of women as well as men, right? Because everyone knows that women wear skirts, at all times, whether they're home cooking for their men or down on the linoleum birthing new ones. The Fuenlabradians have in fact set the goal of gender equality back a generation with their thoughtless promotion of distinctive "feminine" clothing.

(In case it's not obvious, my outrage over the alleged sexism inherent in skirted stick figures is feigned. But my annoyance over the Fuenlabradians' waste of effort and resources on this nonsense is not.)

Tags: Fuenlabrada, gender equality, political correctness, sexism, stick figures

Comments

[Tom]

1.

One wonders what they do in Scotland.

I always considered the school crossing sign to be the most sexist. It appears to be a boy and a girl with the boy helping the girl across the street, as if girls are incapable of crossing the street by themselves without the steady, guiding hand of a boy to help them. of course it could be an older girl helping a younger Scottish boy across the street.

As to the signs in question, one assumes that they identify women with either a skirt or long hair. None of the ladies in my house ever wear a skirt and my wife has the shortest hair of anyone in the house. (My hair is quite long now. I can even put it in a pony tail.) Perhaps if they used actual pictures of naked men and women there would be fewer questions about whether the signs are sexist or not. It might also help tourism although one might suspect that there would be more traffic accidents.

[Debra Hamel]

2.

I bet the signs in Fucking, Austria (see http://dhamel.typepad.com/deblog/2005/09/councilmen.html) are more specfic about things. Something like this for the men, perhaps: http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/2/26/160px-Mercury_god.jpg