#351  
Old 06-29-2011, 11:42 PM
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Originally Posted by Clutch Munny View Post
ETA: :glare: at lisarea. Put that male gaze in your pipe and smoke it.
:nosmoking:

Jesus, Clutch! This stuff tastes like stale balls and paraquat!
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  #352  
Old 06-30-2011, 12:51 AM
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So that's where my paraquat went!

Also, feminists made my balls stale! I blame them!
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  #353  
Old 06-30-2011, 01:58 PM
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Originally Posted by lisarea View Post
So. I read that last article. And I have to agree, since I've thought this way for a long time. It's the reason that I can't take "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" as a paean to strong feminist characters, and that I doubt the credibility of Joss Whedon as a feminist storyteller. And I've gotten some flak for that position. But going down the list of things that I think make Buffy nearly equivalent to whatever Megan Fox was in Transformers, I think I can point out storylines and tropes of enough similarity to make me strongly doubt Whedon is on the up and up in his claims for being pro-feminist. Either that, or he's really trying, and doing very badly at it.

And no, will not discuss particulars here, just wanted to chime in that I have noticed similar issues that the article brings up on my own.
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  #354  
Old 06-30-2011, 02:08 PM
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LOL Dollhouse...I don't think of Whedon as a feminist
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  #355  
Old 06-30-2011, 02:17 PM
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I know,right? I was like WTF? when people were praising Dollhouse.
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  #356  
Old 06-30-2011, 02:20 PM
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I liked the show, but there was nothing pro-feminist about it.
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  #357  
Old 07-01-2011, 01:42 AM
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Google plus is pretty stupid so far, but this part was cool:



I set mine to "Select" of course.
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  #358  
Old 07-02-2011, 01:53 AM
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Well this is an odd little trendlet going around or something. The NYT has a pretty good article on 'strong female characters' today:

A Plague of Strong Female Characters - NYTimes.com

Which leads me to ruminate on my Netflix recommendations. Based on my watching history, Netflix started recommending movies with strong female leads as a category for me, and I'm like, "Yeah, OK. Cool," but then one day, I'm looking at the synopses, and they raping everybody out here! I think it was eight of the top ten recommended 'strong female lead' movies hinged on somebody getting raped.

So, being all raped out and all, I decided that night to watch Smiley Face instead, and of all the lady movies I apparently watch all the livelong day or whatever, that might be the one with the strongest feminist sensibility, because she's just a character doing dumb shit and getting into non-sexy trouble, almost like some sort of a humang or something.

And I really think it'd be pretty great if this nascent little trend of evaluating female characters more critically were to take hold and we could just have more media choices where ladies just get to be people instead of just being sexy bikini fighters and brave victims everywhere except in the special vehicles of the Shameful Love Movies for Ladies Only.
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  #359  
Old 07-02-2011, 04:05 AM
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Quote:
Italian firm's women-only job cull inflames gender controversy | World news | The Guardian

An engineering firm in northern Italy has sparked controversy after making almost half its workforce redundant – and selecting only women.

A union official quoted the company as having reported to the small businesses association: "We are firing the women so they can stay at home and look after the children. In any case, what they bring in is a second income."
Charming
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  #360  
Old 07-03-2011, 01:36 PM
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I tend to like the characters Judi Dench plays. They seem strong at first, but they do have flaws, and they tend to be a bit stoical and only sometimes flighty. Her characters seem to deal with reality without taking much pains to accommodate others for the sake of "being nice". I find them more appealing than women that appear very selfish and can't think beyond the end of their nose. But then, I don't like those types of characters in men, either. I think Judi Dench could be accused of playing strong female characters.
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  #361  
Old 07-03-2011, 06:13 PM
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I know what you mean, like when Judi Dench played Aereon, an Elemental, and she was an ambassador to the Necromongers, busy distracting them from Vin Diesel's Furyan heritage, yet leading them to Riddick so that he could fulfill his destiny in unseating the Lord Marshal?
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  #362  
Old 07-03-2011, 08:40 PM
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Hm. I suppose I should rent Riddick, then. I've no idea if that's what I mean. I liked her in The Shipping News, As Time Goes By, Casino Royal, A Fine Romance, and so on. She strikes me as ofen playing sturdy, stubborn, often taciturn women who say what's at the forefront of their mind.

(that grammar seems quite wrong...)
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  #363  
Old 07-03-2011, 10:45 PM
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I was joking, Judi Dench is very talented, but the role and dialogue for her in this poorly written sci-fi action flick are weak.
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  #364  
Old 07-03-2011, 11:37 PM
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Now what would be the odds of that?
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  #365  
Old 07-04-2011, 04:57 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lisarea View Post
Well this is an odd little trendlet going around or something. The NYT has a pretty good article on 'strong female characters' today:

A Plague of Strong Female Characters - NYTimes.com
From the article:
Quote:
“Strength,” in the parlance, is the 21st-century equivalent of “virtue.” And what we think of as “virtuous,” or culturally sanctioned, socially acceptable behavior now, in women as in men, is the ability to play down qualities that have been traditionally considered feminine and play up the qualities that have traditionally been considered masculine. “Strong female characters,” in other words, are often just female characters with the gendered behavior taken out. This makes me think that the problem is not that there aren’t enough “strong” female characters in the movies — it’s that there aren’t enough realistically weak ones.
So what are some examples of... worthwhile female characters who aren't playing to the dominant tropes? Lorelai in Gilmore Girls? Ree in Winter's Bone?

One list from 2005 called Ten Hollywood Movies That Get Women Right discusses the dominant themes for women:
Quote:
The Chick Flick. That 90-minute sitcom you're always stuck watching on the plane. Oh, look, they met in a dog park! But neither one of them has dogs! Wait, they love each other online, but hate each other in real life! Oh no, he/she is a hired escort, but in the end, true love will find a way! More exercises in tabloid wish fulfillment than love stories, the chick flick makes you feel like you need a shower, or at least a wardrobe overhaul.

The Earnest Social Commentary. Norma Rae, Silkwood, Erin Brockovich. In which brave women face down The Man, and let us go home feeling exultant, or at least ready to place our bets in the Oscar pool.

The Cancer Weepie. Terms of Endearment, Stepmom, Steel Magnolias. More brave women share their souls on hospital beds, tearing up photogenically as the sisterhood sweeps them up in tissue-soaked arms and ushers them into the great beyond.

The Action Figure. Catwoman, Tomb Raider, Elektra. All the one-dimensional women in three-dimensional popup bras, who seem pieced together to elicit a collective "You go, girlfriend!" from the audience. As if we all thought heroism -- or rather, heroinism -- should be defined by humorlessness, spandex and a good personal trainer.
Their list of ten movies that get it right is: Alien (1979), All About Eve (1950), Adam's Rib (1949), Batman Returns (1992), Jackie Brown (1997), Auntie Mame (1958), Silence of the Lambs (1991), Fight Club (2000), To Kill A Mockingbird (1962), and Star Wars (1977).

Also, any recommendations of series or movies for the Netflix cue that people here see as having good roles for women?
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  #366  
Old 07-04-2011, 07:34 AM
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Deep Space Nine, with Kira and Dax being pretty darn good examples.

Firefly, particularly Zoe.

The West Wing. CJ Cregg is someone I really, truly admire.
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  #367  
Old 07-04-2011, 07:49 AM
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Jane Champion has some good films, Sweetie, An Angel at my Table. stand out.

Muriel's Wedding

Damn, if I can think of any other films that are made in the US.
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  #368  
Old 07-04-2011, 05:31 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by chunksmediocrites View Post
Also, any recommendations of series or movies for the Netflix cue that people here see as having good roles for women?
I consider it a "good role for women" if it explores something interesting without having to beat the viewer over the head with "WOMEN! Being tough and resourceful just like men! Look here! This is unusual!""

I would rather see "Women! Having problems and working within complex relationships and making mistakes and trying to get through it all and shit like real humans!"

Off the top of my head two come to mind that fit with my druthers
Postcards from the Edge
Parenthood
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  #369  
Old 07-04-2011, 07:11 PM
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This is kinda hilarious, especially the way so many people are responding. She made a fairly low-key comment about some fairly low-key creepy behavior toward the end of a video, and the response is to analyze the whole situation in exhausting, minute, and largely made-up detail, and to exaggerate her response to the point of absurdity.

:dawkins:
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  #370  
Old 07-04-2011, 07:42 PM
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Is there some school somewhere where total dicks learn how they can be even bigger dicks by handwaving away problems by comparing them to the problems someone else somewhere in the universe has?

Or maybe that Ronin guy was really Richard (or let's call him Dick) Dawkins.
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  #371  
Old 07-04-2011, 07:48 PM
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Originally Posted by Watser? View Post
Is there some school somewhere where total dicks learn how they can be even bigger dicks by handwaving away problems by comparing them to the problems someone else somewhere in the universe has?
Yes. Law school.
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  #372  
Old 07-04-2011, 08:07 PM
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Some people are almost entirely incapable of understanding things outside of their own perspective. When those people are members of privileged classes, that parses as an inability to acknowledge their relative privilege. So when a white man like :dawkins: and a lot of the others parses an incident like that, he probably reverses the sexes and pictures a woman inviting him to her room.

I can't find it, but there is a kind of well-known exchange in which some dude said that what men fear most about women is the potential of rejection, and he asked her what women had to fear from men the most, and she said being killed. So :dawkins: is approaching this as some scenario in which the worst case is rejection, and he probably isn't even capable of understanding that a woman being approached in a fairly aggressive way (he'd apparently followed her to the elevator after she'd announced that she was tired and was going to go to her room to sleep) actually is going to be fairly on guard in a situation like that. And he's also missing the point that she was fairly politely pointing that out for the benefit of the dudes who hadn't thought of it from that perspective.
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  #373  
Old 07-04-2011, 08:28 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lisarea View Post
Some people are almost entirely incapable of understanding things outside of their own perspective. When those people are members of privileged classes, that parses as an inability to acknowledge their relative privilege. So when a white man like :dawkins: and a lot of the others parses an incident like that, he probably reverses the sexes and pictures a woman inviting him to her room.
I think that's a big part of the problem. A lot of the time, guys just don't realize the privileges that we take for granted. I've certainly done it on occasion, only to have it pointed out to me, or to later realize it for myself.

No, I'd never do something like follow a woman into an elevator and proposition her after hearing her declare that she was tired and wanted to go to bed. But I can easily picture myself at a conference, meeting some attractive woman and asking her if she'd like to continue the conversation somewhere more private while we were in an elevator, say. Without it ever dawning on me that at the time I asked the question, she was kind of trapped and might feel justifiably concerned that I had chosen the time and place to ask the question for exactly that reason.


I think I've mentioned this before, but a presenter at a conference once asked a rather enlightening question of us. She asked all the men in the audience to raise their hands if they ever think to check for someone hiding in the back seat before getting into their cars. Almost none of us did. Several of us muttered some variation of, "Why on Earth would I do that?"

Then she asked the same question of the women in the audience. Almost all of them raised their hands. As the speaker then pointed out, the mere fact of being male -- and therefore knowing, consciously or not, that you're a whole lot less likely to be targeted by a would-be rapist -- means that you enjoy a lot of privileges that women simply can't take for granted. Such as the privilege of rarely having to worry about the possibility of being sexually assaulted, for instance.

It's very easy to forget that.
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  #374  
Old 07-04-2011, 09:06 PM
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Yes, exactly!

That's the actual disturbing thing about this ridiculous incident. She never said or implied that the guy had any real ill intent. She was just pointing out that certain types of behavior that men tend to think of as benign can parse very differently for women, and I thought pretty politely asking men to take that into consideration. Men might not notice something as subtle as someone being dismissive of their stated intent (in this case, "I'm tired and I'm going to go get some sleep now") but to women, that sort of dismissiveness can be a huge red flag that someone is not going to respect your boundaries. This is a thing that most ladies know firsthand, and most men do not. Men should listen when we explain it to them.

So it's not even so much the original incident that's troublesome. It's the protracted objections to her response, picking it apart, calling her crazy, and outright denying her perspective. And there is no doubt at all in my mind that some subset of the people being so dismissive of her now would, had she been attacked in that elevator, be blaming her for a) drinking, b) getting into an elevator alone with a strange man, and probably c) wearing whatever she happened to be wearing.

And, you know, Dawkins.

The science boys' club strikes again : Aetiology

UnNews:Ugly women are unwanted, study says - Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia

Salty Current: Feminism, Richard Dawkins, and moral progress

He's kinda being a drama queen himself here, too:


At about 5:00 on. I wouldn't have even bothered with this, though, but I did want to quote an insightful and highly rated YouTube comment that apparently sums up the feelings of the highly logical and intelligent men who buy this characterization:
Quote:
Women's ways of knowing? Logic is a tool of domination? WTF is that bullshit? If thats feminism then the female race is doomed.
:sadbye: Female race
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  #375  
Old 07-04-2011, 09:30 PM
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... and to exaggerate her response to the point of absurdity.
wait ... are you saying you have some problem with that manner of argument?
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