Yeah. In my ER days, I took care of a hell of a lot of victims of domestic abuse. More of them were women than men, and the women's injuries were usually worse--but that was a trend, not a hard-and-fast rule, and men who suffered some truly horrible injuries at the hands of their wives and girlfriends also had to suffer the scorn of medical and law enforcement personnel who really, really ought to have known better.

I'm not really sure I have the words for how angry this made me, and still makes me as I think about it years later. Also other kinds of scorn directed at other kinds of victims, of course, including the old-fashioned "she must have been asking for it" victim blaming in rape cases. Okay, actually, I'm going to try to stop thinking about it now, because I can feel my teeth grinding and blood pressure rising to no good effect.

Agreed that sending balanced messages in children's entertainment is probably more important in the long run. It's just that as an adult, I'd also like more stories, targeted at adults, which handle this problem well. (Which isn't to say that adults can't enjoy children's fare, of course; goth_hobbit and I are rewatching Avatar at the moment and having a lot of fun.) Hopefully as more children grow up on stories which present characters with every possible combination of attributes, as adults they'll turn their hand to telling such stories themselves.