The story so far: A visit with my grandson to story time at the library has made me ponder the many privileges men have over women. Where some of those privileges are able to be viewed as statistics and percentages, the one that is embedded in our language and literature is less often identified. I […]

The story so far: children’s books are biased towards males and the use of the masculine pronoun despite evidence being available for at least the last 40 years that ‘he’ is not a gender-neutral term. I wonder how my own childhood reading relates to this literary privilege for males. I may not have said that […]

The story so far: I’ve taken my grandson to story time at the library, where I am silently boiling as the librarian, as usual, identifies every creature in every game as male. No one else at story time seems to be as bothered as I am by the insistence on ‘he’ in the library books […]

Once upon a time, we didn’t have to worry about gathering in cafes or playgrounds. We could take our grandchildren to story time and listen to the librarian. But there was a flaw in this utopia. My story starts in the distant past of 2019, but quickly reaches the present, when we have the time […]