Posts tagged with sexism.
Greg Rucka rips Hollywood and Comics a New One
The folks over at Comicbooked interviewed Greg Rucka where he discusses the treatment of women by Hollywood and DC Comics. Rucka’s discussion of Hollywood comes in reference to the development of his Queen and Country for the big screen. That discussion, as you’ll see, turns into a discussion of the comic book world. Rucka left DC Comics in 2010.
You should go click through to the whole interview and listen to the podcast this was taken from but here are some of the more provocative soundbites:
“There’s an absurd marketing issue which is this conceit that Hollywood labors under and they’ve got studies to back it up, that their market is men 18 to 34, and they won’t go see a woman in an action role, which is utter bulls**t. I mean, if you can think of any demographic that’s more likely to go see women in an action role it’s going to be a guy who’s eighteen! What’s the thing that eighteen-year-old is constantly thinking about? Girls. It’s absurd and the more you look into it, the more the fallacy falls apart….
….The same studies that these guys swear by—‘our demographic is men age 18 to 34, who drive purchasing’—well, alright. Those same studies say it’s women age 20 to 40 who control the income outlay. They control the pocketbook, so why aren’t you marketing to them? It doesn’t make any sense and it’s a fundamentally misogynistic market field and people wonder why we see such negative representations of women or the same consistent galling of women and objectification of women in media and you strip everything away and the only argument that remains is it’s a misogynistic industry—they don’t like women. And you see that all over comics now, too.
These things aren’t going away now and I think in large part the reason they’re not going away is that in particular DC did an extraordinary job of revealing the truth of their situation—they don’t care.That’s what they said at San Diego—not only do we not care but we actually don’t want you here, go away. Well, guess what? That’s a sh***y business model and you’re going to lose money and you’re going to lose readers. It doesn’t make any sense to me from a business standpoint, right? I was lecturing at the University of Oregon yesterday and the only analog I can come up with is if Apple had said, ‘you know what? We’re only selling iPhones to blondes.’ It doesn’t make any sense—why would you just exclude a whole portion of your market? And the combination of arrogance and ignorance is appaling, and people should be angry. And the mere fact that the people who then actually spoke out about it who were threatened—talk about wanting to make ourselves look good. Nice endorsement for the industry, there.”Yeah.I really don’t have anything to add.Except,Preach it Reverend Rucka!My love for Greg Rucka is galaxy-sized and made of kittens and rainbows.
So DC says, damn, we need to boost our plummeting sales. We can either listen to Greg Rucka here or we can tell him so shove it and just, I don’t know, shit on the characters our readers love. They’ll be into that for sure as long as we design new outfits for everyone.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
For attitudes towards rape to change, society needs to drop its sexual double standard
Whereas social attitudes towards racial equality and homosexuality have tended to become more progressive as the younger generation has come through, attitudes towards the sexual assault of women appear to lag significantly behind. A 2008 poll of Northern Ireland university students commissioned by Amnesty International found that almost half of those polled believed a woman to be partially or totally responsible for being raped if she had behaved in a flirtatious manner. And the recent controversy over the website Unilad was perhaps most striking for the fact that the creators of the site did not consider their “banter” to be anything out of the ordinary until they were pulled up on it.
In 21st century Britain, the idea that a woman can dress how she pleases, flirt as much as she wants, and lie in the same bed as a man without being obliged to have sex with him, remains a revolutionary one.
Understanding why social attitudes towards the victims of rape remain so regressive, however, cannot happen without first confronting one of society’s last great taboos: the demonisation of promiscuous women.
Read the whole article here.
(via bowfolk)
This is disappointing. Usually the Oatmeal makes pretty good statements about social stuff in general (albeit with a healthy dose of profanity of various forms), but this one is massive frownyface. There’s a reason why I largely play even MMOs solo, because im not a hardcore uber gamer and because I’m female. I don’t really feel all that comfortable in the male-dominated gaming community at large and prefer to enjoy games at my own pace. Luckily I have a few irl friends nd game acquaintances through said friends (heyo zhagurim!) who game with me and tolerate any amount of my blundering. But I will rarely if ever solicit the company of strangers because I have zero appetite for people making comments on my gender. Girls are NOT coddled in the game community. At best, we’re visitors, sexy sexy visitors, but we aren’t taken seriously, like Matt of the Oatmeal said, but this doesn’t result in favorable treatment. This results in the female player being seen as perpetually an alien outsider, never to be fully accepted as credible and skilled player. At worst, the female player would be told she doesn’t belong on the Internet, to get back in the kitchen, or to instantly be barraged with sexual comments. Myself, personally have limited such encounters simply by avoiding the community entirely. So yeah, it ain’t fun and games for gamers who jjust so happen to be ladies. We aren’t given a carte blanche to suck and we aren’t showered with favoritism. We’re constantly reminded, instead how we will never have an unquestioned place in the community and how our presence is a merely tolerated aberration.[TW: Rape threats, misogyny]
*update from the author*
A lot of people seem grumpy about my latest comic about online gaming as a girl.
I wasn’t implying that girls suck at games. I was implying two things:
- When girls play, often times no one takes them seriously.
- If they screw up, often times the room is filled with lonely dudes who say things like “LOL that’s okay! Will you marry me?” If I screw up I get eviscerated.
In short: a terrible female gamer gets away with way more than a terrible male gamer (like me).
This came from my recent escapades playing Left4Dead online.Again, I meant no ill toward lady gamers.
-Matthew
In short: a terrible female gamer gets away with way more than a terrible male gamer (like me).
No. Not really.
I’m rubbish when it comes to multiplayer. If I fuck up, I get called a cunt, or told that I need to go back to the kitchen, or (most frightening of all) informed that the dude would hunt me down and rape me. These are the reasons I don’t play much with others anymore, especially people I don’t know.
Whether we’re good or terrible, women are treated like shit by the male gaming community at large. (I’m likely to get people chiming in with “but not ALL dudes are like that.” I know. Here is me acknowledging that. It doesn’t change the fact that the majority of the people spewing this shit to women are men.)
In…in what universe is this true? I actually cannot play online with a mic because of sexual engrossment. I will not be treated that way, but I cannot change it, so I must avoid the situation. Do you understand? Male jackasses are keeping me from participating in gaming. And you think male gamers coddle women? Can I live in your world? Because it sounds better than the real world.
Hold on a second. Is it me or is the author implying that girls are lucky because people don’t take them seriously? Yeah man, I love to be infantilized and treated condescendingly. It makes my day when someone assumes I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing because I am a woman.
“Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it. This abnormal obsession with women’s faces and bodies has become so normal that we (I include myself at times—I absolutely fall for it still) have internalized patriarchy almost seamlessly. We are unable at times to identify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other girls and women.”
Ashley Judd“
What we found was that in G-rated movies, for every one female character, there were three male characters. If it was a group scene, it would change to five to one, male to female.
Of the female characters that existed, the majority are highly stereotyped and/or hypersexualized. To me, the most disturbing thing was that the female characters in G-rated movies wear the same amount of sexually revealing clothing as the female characters in R-rated movies.
And then we looked at aspirations and occupations and things like that. Pretty much the only aspiration for female characters was finding romance, whereas there are practically no male characters whose ultimate goal is finding romance. The No. 1 occupation was royalty. Nice gig, if you can get it. And we found that the majority of female characters in animated movies have a body type that can’t exist in real life. So, the question you can think of from all this is: What message are we sending to kids?
” Geena DavisALL THE AWARDS
Nah, I’m gonna have to disagree with this.
Just make a fleshed-out, original character with original traits and an interesting story. A Mary-Sue only happens when all the traits you mentioned are piled atop one another, making her the only meaningful or interesting character in the world aside from their inevitable love interest.
file under: why i’m scared to share this dean/ofc fic
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Mary Sues do fucking exist. The even exist outside of fanfiction. Fucking Alice of the Resident Evil Movies is one.
There used to be a Mary Sue litmus test online and one day a bunch of us took CANON characters and scored them per the test. Who scored OFF THE CHARTS?Severus Snape.
I remember a post that circles around every now and then (fantastic post, at that) about Mary Sues that started off by talking about a character who had all of these “tell-tale” Mary Sue traits. You know who that character was? Batman.
Here’s the thing: The term Mary Sue is overused and abused a shitload and it’s usually used towards female characters for any and every reason, ever. It’s used if she’s pretty or if she’s ugly, if she’s popular or unpopular, if she’s intelligent or not, if she’s capable of doing things or not. Fuck, it’s used when “the story revolves around her!” in stories where the character in question is the main character.
And the reason that this is a problem—the reason that this is fucked—is not because it’s terrible to say that you don’t like a character or that you find a character uninteresting or that you think a certain character is just a damn poster child for cliches everywhere; the reason that this is an issue is that male characters are loved and praised for having these very same traits that female characters are bashed for having.
A male power fantasy is seen as totally fantastically perfect—who cares if the character is kinda an ass or if he’s a little cliche, because we like him anyway and the story is interesting and the writing is good, right?—while a female power fantasy is bashed left and right and it doesn’t matter if the plot is great or if the writing is perfect, because you know what someone will always see in it? They’ll see a woman who is doing things and being things that usually only males have done or have been and they will fucking hate it and they’ll hate her and you cannot say that a shitload of the same people would not be falling over their feet to praise the character if they were male, because that’s what people do: They love it when dudes are smart and strong and a little unrealistically awesome and they hate it when women are exactly the same.
So, yeah. This post? Not bullshit.
There are crappy characters out there—characters that are uninteresting and boring and just blah (though that is all subject to opinion)—and I don’t think anyone is disputing that, at all, but there is a huge fucking difference between someone saying that they don’t like a character for whatever reason and a great many someones hating a character for the fact that they’re disrupting this status-quo that we’re in where female characters are just generally treated like shit and hated for the very things that we praise male characters for.
(Source: fanaticality)
“
From birth we’re taught that we’re owed a beautiful girl. We all think of ourselves as the hero of our own story, and we all (whether we admit it or not) think we’re heroes for just getting through our day.
So it’s very frustrating, and I mean frustrating to the point of violence, when we don’t get what we’re owed. A contract has been broken. These women, by exercising their own choices, are denying it to us. It’s why every Nice Guy is shocked to find that buying gifts for a girl and doing her favors won’t win him sex. It’s why we go to “slut” and “whore” as our default insults — we’re not mad that women enjoy sex. We’re mad that women are distributing to other people the sex that they owed us.
Yes, the women in these stories are being portrayed as wonderful and beautiful and perfect. But remember, there are two ways to dehumanize someone: by dismissing them, and by idolizing them.
” David Wong, 5 Ways Modern Men Are Trained to Hate Women (via chirart)(Source: cracked.com, via ktempest)
On the "Fake" Geek Girl
A little while ago we posted a video making a joke out of the stereotypical but not universally true awkwardness of male geeks, particularly around women, and the comments on the post exploded. For every guy who came in to say, reasonably if perhaps with little humor, that all dudes aren’t like that; there was a guy there to tell every woman who’d commented to say she’d known guys like that once that herpersonal experience and anything she’d ever done based on it was wrong. It was a clusterfuck of anecdotal experience and gendered slurs, and the only thing it really made me want to do was get all the commenters in a room and say, loudly and clearly:
“I’ll make a deal with all you dudes who are angry because this is how your demographic is portrayed. You let me have this one video making this one joke, and I will let you have theentire “fake geek girl” meme, comprising hundreds of jokes, many of them misogynist, that perpetuate the idea that women never do anything you like unless it is to “get attention” and then betray you when they get it. This should seem more than fair.”
Because that’s what the idea of the “fake geek girl” is all about, right? “Oh, she’s just doing that for the attention.” Which, by the way, is also a thing said when women claim they’ve been raped, or beaten by people close to them; it’s one of the foundational assumptions behind the reasoning that women lie or will lie about being raped to get abortions; it is the idea that excuses the behavior of a society that minimizes the concerns of women.
Tara Tiger Brown blames the acceptance of geek culture into the mainstream for the rise in the Fake Geek Girl phenomenon in her post Dear Fake Geek Girls, Please Go Away, yet another article that (like Patton Oswalt‘s) wallows in a get-off-my-lawn view of changing geek culture, and laments the fact that celebrities are coming out as geeks.
She says:
Girls who genuinely like their hobby or interest and document what they are doing to help others, not garner attention, are true geeks. The ones who think about how to get attention and then work on a project in order to maximize their klout, are exhibitionists.
And I wish, I really wish, that we as a society were capable of honestly evaluating this sort of thing when it comes to women expressing themselves, and expressing themselves in the internet and other male-dominated arenas. But we’re not. We’re not, when we call Sandra Fluke a slut for talking about birth control. We’re not, when we assume that Megan Fox was just being “sensitive” when she quit the Transformers movies because she felt Michael Baytreated her like a prop. We’re not, when it’s practically a Reddit meme to tell any woman who posts a picture of an object of interest that includes her in the frame that she’s “karmawhoring.”
I hate the idea of the “fake geek girl.” And I hate it the most because it is so pervasive and subtle I personally find it very difficult to keep it out of my interactions with other geeks.
The Fake Geek Girl has been with me ever since I was eleven and found that I really likedBatman: The Animated Series, when my fear of being labeled a fake geek girl said that if I didn’t become an expert on Batman, the moment I made some kind of mistake or omission I’d be branded as “fake” by the person I was interacting with. Not a novice, a learner, someone who was worth teaching and bringing into the community, but a fake, a poser, somebody who deserved to be kicked out. Where was the “geeks in the mainstream” discussion fifteen years ago when I was getting into Batman? Right, it wasn’t there, because geeks were not getting into the mainstream at that time. But the Fake Geek Girl idea was there.
These days, the idea of geek cred is so prominent in my mind that I have to consciously force myself to not instinctively dismiss outright the opinion of the person who gets my Cylon jokes but doesn’t pick up on the Portal ones. The person who runs several table top games but says things like “Didn’t they already make The Avengers? It had Uma Thurman in it.” For the record, both of those real-life examples are dudes.
So yes, I understand the desire to weed the “posers” out of your personal life and interactions. But I have never, actually, in the flesh, met a “fake” geek girl. Or guy. I don’t think those people actually exist outside of painful daytime news segments, the occasional job interview (where, in this economy, I’ll excuse anybody for trying to be a little bit of something they’re not), and internet memes. But I understand.
But who are you to say that a stranger, someone you’re never likely to meet, is not genuinely interested in the thing they appear to be interested in? Who are you? I just… what? I’m rendered incoherent. Here at the Mary Sue, when an actress goes on a talk show anddescribes her personal affection and involvement and enjoyment and FANDOM for geek properties, we take it at face value. Why? Because we don’t actually have a reason not to. Because the alternative breeds a closed community of paranoid, elitist jerks who lash out at anyone new.
The proper response to someone who says they like comics and has only read Scott Pilgrim is to recommend some more comics for them. The proper response to someone who appears to be faking enthusiasm is to ignore them and not project their actions on an entire gender or community. The proper response to someone who appears to want to be a part of your community is to welcome them in. End of story.
Let me love on this post until I die.
I want this post framed on my wall.
Erving Goffman, a distinguished sociologist, deduced (as can be seen in the plethora of marketing and advertising media we are daily bombarded with) that the female form, when photographed, is often displayed in a compromising or submissive situation. These attitudes suggest a certain vulnerability, inviting a voyeuristic gaze, which in turn creates an aura of sexualisation.
This image crudely displays such a phenomenon. Using a male model in a typically feminine postures, the viewer’s mind is startled by the indistinctive image. We are forced to consider what has become the social norm (the vulnerability of woman) when presented with such material.
(Source: englishpearl, via bowfolk)
Papers are refusing to run this week’s Doonsbury. It should be seen.
It’s good to know that there are newspapers that have carried it.
Like I said yesterday. I love Doonesbury. I love that they are not afraid to take on big topics. I was impressed with how they handled MST. That papers won’t run this is shameful.
They can run articles and editorials about the legislation, but a cartoon depicting the results is TOO MUCH.
I don’t even have anything to say.
Ah, the whole week’s worth!
so quality
Hey, if you run a newspaper and this isn’t in it because it’s so controversial, remove yourself from said newspaper staff and make sure you use a copy to get papercuts on your eyes.
Everything. Everything in these strips is perfect. The fact that newspapers aren’t running it makes my blood boil. These strips aren’t controversial for the sake of being controversial. They humanize the victims of these cruel, unnecessary laws. These strips should be everywhere. Everyone should print it out and mail it to their legislator.
I just can’t with this “Oh we don’t want to run a comic that shows the actual effects of real laws that are currently being passed” bullshit.
-Jess
(via tachiagare)
“Though no one would ever think of using the term honor violence (we reserve that descriptor for brown people who live somewhere else, motivated by religious something-or-other or tribal something-or-other), one-third of women murdered every year in the United States are killed by their intimate partners. In 2005 that amounted to 1,181 women, or three women every day. To put that in perspective, the UN estimates there are 5,000 honor killings every year in the entire world. 5,000 in a world of 6 billion versus nearly 1,200 in a single country of 300 million. In other words, a woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.”
How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Feminists. (via popmuslim)
gonna staple this to the shirts of everyone who tries to equate domestic violence solely with a nationality or a religion or a culture and not let them take it off until it sinks in.
(via intricate-veins)
(via theangryblack)
“Like most women, I currently live in a society where violence, harassment and scary shit can break out at any moment, just because I told some random asshole “no” without bothering to be nice about it. Doing that is so dangerous that most women don’t dare; after a few scary incidents, they learn to make up excuses, to smile, to be sweet and welcoming, to act as if every single random asshole on the street is a precious new friend that they would just LOVE to stand outside of the Chipotle and chat with FOR HOURS, if only cruel fate had not intervened. That’s what it’s actually like, being a woman: Playing nice with every random asshole, because this random asshole might be the one who hurts you. And then, if he hurts you anyway, they’ll tell you that you led him on.”
Tiger Beatdown (via pnasty)
This is so relevant to everything.
(via mindyshabibti)
THIS THIS THIS.
This is what rape culture looks like.
(via silverqueen)
And so many men fucking do not get this.
(via northerndownpour)
This is relevant to more parts of my life than I can bring myself to talk about. Suffice it to say, it’s true.
(via gqgqqt)
(Source: battleships, via gqgqqt)
“
On a somewhat serious note today because of a conversation the other day:
I am sure every girl can recall, at least once as a child, coming home and telling their parents, uncle, aunt or grandparent about a boy who had pulled her hair, hit her, teased her, pushed her or committed some other playground crime. I will bet money that most of those, if not all, will tell you that they were told “Oh, that just means he likes you”. I never really thought much about it before having a daughter of my own. I find it appalling that this line of bullshit is still being fed to young children. Look, if you want to tell your child that being verbally and/or physically abused is an acceptable sign of affection, i urge you to rethink your parenting strategy. If you try and feed MY daughter that crap, you better bring protective gear because I am going to shower you with the brand of “affection” you are endorsing.
When the fuck was it decided that we should start teaching our daughters to accept being belittled, disrespected and abused as endearing treatment? And we have the audacity to wonder why women stay in abusive relationships? How did society become so oblivious to the fact that we were conditioning our daughters to endure abusive treatment, much less view it as romantic overtures? Is this where the phrase “hitting on girls” comes from? Well, here is a tip: Save the “it’s so cute when he gets hateful/physical with her because it means he loves her” asshattery for your own kids, not mine. While you’re at it, keep them away from my kids until you decide to teach them respect and boundaries.
My daughter is `10 years old and has come home on more than one occasion recounting an incident at school in which she was teased or harassed by a male classmate. There has been several times when someone that she was retelling the story to responded with the old, “that just means he likes you” line. Wrong. I want my daughter to know that being disrespected is NEVER acceptable. I want my daughter to know that if someone likes her and respects her, much less LOVES her, they don’t hurt her and they don’t put her down. I want my daughter to know that the boy called her ugly or pushed her or pulled her hair didn’t do it because he admires her, it is because he is a little asshole and assholes are an occurrence of society that will have to be dealt with for the rest of her life. I want my daughter to know how to deal with assholes she will encounter throughout her life. For now, I want my daughter to know that if someone is verbally harassing her, she should tell the teacher and if the teacher does nothing, she should tell me. If someone physically touches her, tell the teacher then, if it continues, to yell, “STOP TOUCHING/PUNCHING/PUSHING ME” in the middle of class or the hallway, then tell me. Last year, one little boy stole her silly bandz from her. He just grabbed her and yanked a handful of them off of her wrist. When I went to the school to address the incident, the teacher smiled and explained it away to her, in front of me, “he probably has a crush on you”. Okay, the boy walked up to my daughter, grabbed and held her by the arm and forcibly removed her bracelets from her as she struggled and you want to convince her that she should be flattered? Fuck off. I am going to punch you in the face but I hope you realize it is just my way of thanking you for the great advice you gave my daughter. If these same advice givers’ sons came home crying because another male classmate was pushing them, pulling their hair, hitting them or calling them names, I would bet dollars to donuts they would tell him to defend themselves and kick the kid’s ass, if necessary. They sure as shit wouldn’t say, “he probably just wants a play date”.
I will teach my daughter to accept nothing less than respect. Anyone who hurts her physically or emotionally doesn’t deserve her respect, friendship or love. I will teach my boys the same thing as well as the fact that hitting on girls doesn’t involve hitting girls. I can’t teach my daughter to respect herself if I am teaching her that no one else has to respect her. I can’t raise sons that respect women, if I teach them that bullying is a valid expression of affection.
The next time that someone offers up that little “secret” to my daughter, I am going to slap the person across the face and yell, “I LOVE YOU”.
” You Didn’t Thank Me For Punching You in the Face « Views from the Couch (via golden-notebook)(via theraptorwhomurderedlove)
