Sexuality In Children's Cartoons.

Figured this was best to ask in P&R.

I don't have kids, so I don't watch any of the new-ish children's programming. People with small kids....

Is there rampant heterosexual PDA going on these past few years in children's cartoons or something that the industry feels the need to toss in outwardly bi-sexual characters to, "even things up?" Back when I was a kid, aside from that pervert Pepe le Pew, who I am pretty sure looking back now was a date rapist, cartoons didn't really focus on heterosexuality at all, even in ones with male and female humanoids like Thundercats. Are all the new Disney line-up cartoons just, little creatures getting it on or something?

This is why I am asking this.

gotta be inclusive otherwise you get targeted by some group or another.

Well, honestly I would at least be able to wrap my mind around that, that's why I'm wondering is there just a ton of hetero "sexual activity" going on in today's cartoons that would necessitate, "even representation?"

everything needs to be sexualized. from tooth paste to toy cars. we gotta include everybody and pander to every group ~ side note ~ i bet if they reduce how many advertisements are being played throughout kid shows we'll have lower ADHD rates

I'm not sure I'd saying kissing and dancing at prom are sexual activities, but yes. There absolutely is plenty of hetero PDA in cartoons. At the very least, in those aimed more at teens.

Really? Any examples? I don't recall any of that in cartoons back in the day.

And this, what would you consider sexual activities then (in the frame of mind of children's cartoons)? I'd say kissing is pretty blatantly expressing a sexual intent (unless they are kissing their mom or pet on the cheek or something), not so much dancing though. I don't recall a ton of intentional "kissing" going on in Scooby Do.

Plus, what teenagers watch Disney cartoons? Maybe just the animation of Owl House is throwing me off, but it didn't appear to be "teenager" content. Owl House has a Y7 rating, so that tells parents kids around 7 or slightly older are meant for that cartoon. If my 7 year old was thinking in terms of sexuality, that's a big problem and not up to a network or animator to expose a child to. That's up to parents.

I know most anime is more for older teens and adults and that's a completely different story, but if I had a 15 year old still watching Ben 10, I'd more than likely be kicking his/her butt out into the yard.

I was very naive as a kid (still am) but I really didn't see most of the sexual/romantic stuff as such. I was really oblivious, to me it was just funny/random ***. I noticed most of it in my 20's.

But stuff like Sailor Moon and others made me realize that things other than heterosexuality existed and that it was part of life. That being said, growing up in France in the 90's exposed you to a lot of stuff, so you didn't really need cartoons to tell you about homosexuality and what not.

It was everywhere else so I guess they didn't feel the need to inject it in cartoons as much as they do nowadays. Which is pretty paradoxical considering how it's even more everywhere than it used to be due to internet's impact.

Right, like I said, anime is a different pill, so to speak. Like Bleach, for example. It has that one red head girl who is constantly trying to grope Orihime's huge..."eyes." But IMO, and maybe I am wrong, most of those anime are truly not meant for children, from not only a sexuality standpoint but violence as well.

This Owl House (and others similar) on the Disney channel really is/are geared for small children. I'm just really not understanding why we as a society feel the need to start exposing our young children to such topics at such a young age. Humans have their entire lives to delve into their sexuality, it shouldn't even be on their minds at 7 and if it is, that kid may have some issues that may lead to bad things in their young life, such as depression or worse. Just wondering when Disney decided it was their right to subject small children to such subject matter. It would be like small children's cartoons suddenly deciding to inject specific religious beliefs and teachings into their story lines in order to sway the thinking of the young viewers, which would not be cool to many (me included).

And like you said, in the now, today, there are many, many more avenues for children to be "exposed" to such topics, so no need to interject such things into cartoons. I guess I'm just old school and think these kinds of things should be left up to parents.

cartoons back in the day also had messages. it wasn't even uncommon to have some sort of conclusion at the end to underline the moral of the story. however it was mostly basic stuff like you shouldn't steal, crime doesn't pay off or fair play and so on.

today you have all sorts of subtle messages regarding religion, sexuality and politics, not just in cartoons but also toys or books made for children that try to push a agenda.
school books for grade 1 or 2 pupils that used to use names that are most common in their country, had to be reprinted to replace some of those names with ones that are common among ppl of the most recent imigration wave.

Tipper Gore called. She said she'd like to help your cause.

Watch old Looney Tunes. They were incredibly racist. Two words: Slowpoke Rodriguez.

they were also incredibly violent. i don't think slowpoke rodriguez is a good example for racism. all characters in that series were portrayed as mexican and slowpoke rodriguez is kinda the opposite of the main character speedy gonzales but despite his drowsy nature he also turned out to have the upper hand.

if anything i perceived rodriguez as a pretty chill and cool side character.

the only ones constantly portrayed as stupid and getting the short end of the stick in loony toons were cats, but don't tell youtube or twitter.

i think disney was the one who had some questionable cartoons in their early days and kept themselfs afloat with war propaganda during the 1940s.


the thing is nowadays its not just a few selected sources like disney that attempt to push a agenda.

I think our perception of cartoons made in the Depression era is kind of clouded by our modern sensibilities. We weren't raised to think of the stereotype "lazy mexican"...but our grandparents were.

Regarding Disney, there have been doctoral papers about the anti-jewish sentiments in MANY of the classics- stereotypical big nosed, greedy evil characters that look a helluva lot like the inside-Germany propaganda around the time of Crystallnacht.

In regarding to current cartoons, again I think most of it comes from our sensibilities that cannot be ignored from the era/regions we were raised. If you choose to see the inclusion of a homosexual character as different than a hetero one, that says more about the viewer than the creator.

One of my sons is an amazing vocalist- he's spent the past 5 years being a classically trained boy soprano, doing work with operas, stage companies, and symphonies. As both myself and my ex-wife, his mother, are musicians, we grew up in a world where being outwardly gay was as common as kissing your wife after a performance. So he's seen openly gay couples at "work" since he was 5. All my kids have. And they're no worse for the wear- in fact they are better off for it. They judge people on what they DO, not what they are.

Lastly, if you want it "in the hands of parents," then have them be parents and turn off the TV if they don't like it. Ratings fix complaints a lot better than protests, even today. If a show doesn't make money, it won't last long.

btw we've had openly gay characters on Cartoons for decades.

ALL OF THE DAMN CUTLERY at The Beast's Mansion in "Beauty and the Beast"

Fred from "Scooby Do"

Robin from "Batman and Robin"

;)

Then you missed my point entirely, as I expected most would.

I don't agree with ANY form of "sexuality" in YOUNG children's cartoons being any sort of focused material. I don't think that is a topic they should need to even be thinking about at 7 and if they are, you may need to watch your kid very carefully. So, my question was, was there RAMPANT heterosexual PDA going on in small children's cartoons that would necessitate the "need" to present all sides of the coin.

The answer is no. Just take the topic of sexuality out of small children's cartoons entirely, regardless of preference (if it is in fact, demonstratively obvious, which I've seen no examples it is...so no need to interject an LGBT character). If for whatever reason a child's parents feel the need to introduce that topic to their children under the age of 10, that should be left up to them, not Disney.

And the cutlery wasn't gay...they were French.

I'm afraid to click on that...waiting to see Hadji dry humping Bandit or something I must have missed as a kid.

And that was your choice, not Disney's. So, we agree.

Also, the "turn the channel" won't work forever. This is a precedent item and if left as is, how the media is clearly dominated by a certain ideology, by 2025 we are going to have cartoons geared for 5 year old with trans people 69ing.

If you rate your programming Y7, for kids around the age of 7...you should gear your programming for the vast majority, not just the "woke" parent's kids. That would be no different if suddenly they decided to make a children's cartoon with openly anti-LGBT Christian characters, just because the Christians screamed they were not being properly represented. All bad.

its safe ~ its the johnny quest intro. Unless you don't trust me ;)

Old school cartoons didn't have much of that as it would of never got the green light to be aired. Producers wanted to put stuff on saturday morning / weekday evening cartoons and sell toys with it, meaning parents would be watching it too and there was a huge taboo against over sexuality towards minors. Those parents are now great grant parents and those producers, in an attempt to worship at the alter of Political Correctness, won't dare red line something for LGBT sexuality.

My take on LGBTBBQWTFOMGTHISISSTUPID is that it's largely an attempt to get attention through ever more exclusionary privileged group associations. Non-heterosexuals, aka LGBTWTFOVER are estimated to be 3-4% of the US Population and almost entirely concentrated in a handful of wealthy liberal cities. That means if a show had ten characters and one was homosexual/bisexual, they would be over-representing LGBT by 2:1, which is the number they accuse Hollywood of favoring white people for lead roles.

Now for the real eye shocker

Homosexuals make more then Heterosexuals

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/married-gay-couples-beat-straight-couples-in-income/

https://qz.com/work/1147659/gay-men-now-earn-more-than-straight-men-in-the-us-according-to-a-vanderbilt-study/

Suffice to say that there is a huge amount of pressure, from a very small minority, to "teach" children to "be gay / whatever".

Personally I don't care what a person's sexual orientation is. One of the best NCO's I've ever had the pleasure to work with was a pretty open lesbian (about as close as you could be during DADT). Everyone, and I mean everyone, knew she liked chicks, and nobody cared. She was an amazing leader and could be counted on to get stuff done. A person should not be defined by their sexuality no more then they should be defined by their race, gender, ethnicity or religion. All those things are ancillaries, side notes to what a person is really about. I genuinely enjoy characters are are introduced and developed as their own entities, with stuff like sexuality being introduced as a side note.

Something like (thought this is a poor example as I suck at writing)
Hey Jeff is an amazing engineer, whenever they is a problem he can come up with effective solutions to solve them. Jeff works hard to maintain his skills while also developing them to a higher level. Jeff has been happily married to his husband Matt for five years.

If you think that the cartoons of yesteryear are bad, then don't look at any anime from Japan in the 1960s-1990s. You might blow a gasket.

Example 1
Example 2

I really have little opinion about sexuality in children's cartoons mostly because I haven't watched children's cartoons in decades but also because I grew up in an age when Donald and Mickey had "nephews."

The current cartoon question I have is what happened to Elmer Fudd's second amendment rights?

Is that an issue?

I would have figured that removal of guns had more to do about promoting violence or something like that than because of the 2nd Amendment.

Please don't cause arguments for arguments sake.

On topic though.

Here is a YT video about the lengths censorship goes.



I find it pretty funny how screwed up shows become due to censorship.

They didn't put an end to cartoon violence, just cartoon gun violence.

I am tempted to make Fudd's second amendment rights an on line money making crusade.

I'm sure that most kids can tell the difference between cartoon violence and real violence.

It's the adults who can't anymore.

I'll trade Fudd's gun rights if they agree to remove all glimmers of sexuality from children's Y7 programming. Any day. Nobody use double-barreled shotguns anymore, anyhow.

Nah I get that, and maybe the fact that I haven't seen the cartoon primarily in question makes me a bad person to comment on this issue, as I don't know whether that character is walking around kissing and fondling other characters, or just them "acting openly gay" is what you are considering sexual.

I feel ya on the former, and can get behind its just not needed in any form. I do think kids need to see healthy non-sexual contact...they need to know that friends can hug and its just friends and doesn't have to mean more than that for example.


I will still stand by that many parents throw on cartoons without ever truly watching what their kids watch for a free and immediate babysitter. I have 3 kids myself, but always made it a point to watch what my kids watched not out of fear for what they saw, but honestly just with the intent of being able to get excited about what my kids were talking about at age 5. I felt it important to be able to talk to them about THEIR stuff, not just mine. The added bonus was that I also could vet what they saw.

I do agree that often when a character in ANY show, be it cartoon, comedy, or drama, is presented as LGBTQ, it often becomes the only defining characteristic of them, which is lazy writing and kinda the equivalent of writing a Black character who is just "the black guy" vs having a personality of their own, and their own storyline. It does come across often as a network saying "look! we are socially responsible!" more than "this angle forwards the overall story of this show".

You can present a character as being non-Binary yet that doesn't have to be all they are, which means you're not focused ONLY on their sexuality. And maybe that's the nuance needed moreso than just avoiding sexuality across the board.


guess I didn't lead that part well enough- I'm quite aware they're french, hence my joke that the only way French are ever presented in cartoons is as being wimpy non-masculine characters with "flair".