One thing I've noticed that I find bizarre is that unless a film (and this goes for those I pay attention to, i.e. not G-rated) is clearly geared towards women, the actors are still always listed men first in all the credits- usually there is more than one male actored listed before any females, almost independently of the significance of their roles. Granted, I haven't formalized this into a study, but I'm quite certain it's pretty true. Fuck PC, we're just clearly not as enlightened as we'd like to think we are.

I'd be interested to see a study that compares the top grossing G-rated films to all G-rated films. Is the issue with G-rated films in general, or is the issue what movies people are paying to go see? And even if it's the former, is it being economically controlled by the later?

And, if it really is that people are simply chosing to see movies with more men than women, is that a problem?

And if it's a problem, is there a remedy?

I don't think it's an issue of choice on the part of audience.

As for any sort of solution to these kinds of problems: well, education is certainly huge, in the sense that I see that as the only real sure-fire way to implement large-scale consciousness shifts. As long as our institutional policies are (bizarrely) controlled by traditionalist fuckwads, this will not happen. And to preempt any claim that it's a big leap from G-rated movies to educational policy, I say that gender is an irreducible binary until it is summarily reconfigured/eliminated over the long term via education. Race is obviously not binary, and may or may not be harder to approach from this angle.

Wait, you want to eliminate gender through education? Can you talk more about that?

Pursuant to Jesse's comment: I know for a fact that who gets top billing is sometimes outlined in the contract. So male leads getting more prominence may just be a function of male leads tending to be better known. (Particularly since Hollywood seems to go through bottle blonde starlets like crazy.)

A very little bit more for now: obviously we won't be just abolishing separate locker rooms all of a sudden or something. And actually my feelings about this kind of thing are a bit fuzzy, because on the one hand I think that the narrow margins of what is acceptable in our society on an institutional level make for a poor situation, but then on the other hand I don't actually want a 'mainstream' analogous to what we have now but simply 'more inclusive' or something. I want long-term transformation on a large scale. But outside the boundaries of institutions people are effecting this in certain ways I think.

I shouldn't have said 'elimination,' as I have no concept of what that would really mean or how it could happen. But I do think 'reconfiguration' is possible. The most obvious place to start from (and of course I don't think I'm saying anything new here): it's beyond taboo to talk realistically about sex, even as a purely heterosexual activity, within educational institutions, and this feeds into the bigger social picture. So to me it's beyond simply whether we teach abstinence or safe sex- that the discussion rests there is obviously reflective of where we're at collectively. To me (and I'd imagine quite a few other people) that's only the bare bones beginning of being able to really open up the complexity of these subjects in a way that would actually impact far more than the issues of STDs and childhood pregnancy.

Okay, back to work.