A Daily Dose of Sexism
New feature for this blog: the Daily Dose of Sexism. A list of the little daily indignities that come from not presenting the right genitalia in the right place at the right time.
1. At Wal-Mart the other day, my bear was looking for a wireless router. I wandered into the HDTV aisle, since we’re also thinking about buying one of those. The male sales person who lived in the HDTV department walked by me several times with a nod and a smile, but never asked if I needed help. Later I went to retrieve my bear and tell him there was an HDTV we might like in that aisle. My bear and I went back to stand at the exact place I had been, and immediately, the sales guy appeared, made eye contact with my bear, and asked if he needed assistance.
2. I needed a business casual suit to wear to an interview with a grant-maker. So me and my bear headed down to Target. I couldn’t find anything in the women’s department even vaguely professional (no, the bright pink suit jacket and mini-skirt don’t count). I finally gave up and decided to just get a white button-up shirt and go to another store to find some appropriate jacket. But, alas, there was not a single white button-up shirt that wasn’t completely and 100% transparent and did not have bows, glitter, or other ribbons of no apparent purpose attached. On a whim, my bear and I went over to the men’s section, where there was an entire rack of nothing but business casual — regular white button-up shirts, jackets, and pants.
3. I was watching trailers for some future video games, specifically, Halo Wars. My first thought was, man, look at that CGI on the humans. They look so much better. Then the first lady appeared. She looked absurdly cartoonish. Okay, yes, of course there were the massive breasts of no apparent basis in reality, but I’m pretty inured to looking at those. They flashed back to a male face, and it hit me. All the CGI men had wrinkles on their faces. Thought lines on the forehead. Crinkles around the eyes. Creases at the corners of their lips. But the female faces were completely smooth, making them look like fucking alien creatures. Or, you know, the covers of magazines. Hey, video game industry, add this to your perplexed list of Why Women Aren’t Buying Your Games. Your animators have spent loads of really good time and ingenuity giving male characters, you know, character, making them look like real human living breathing creatures. They have also spent equal loads of time making sure female characters look like cartoon models. Why aren’t women a bigger market in video games? It’s a constant reminder of how worthless an industry considers you as a living breathing creature when the apparently largest consideration in female character design is how much somebody might want to come on your malformed alien face.
4. Just watched The Ruins. Somebody had told me and the bear that, despite looking like ass, this was actually a surprisingly good movie. I can no longer recall who this somebody was, which is saving them from a significantly effective nut-punching.
(Spoiler alert)
So I’ve developed this habit of reading the Wiki on movies after I’ve watched them. The Ruins was based on a novel, and, as always happens with book-to-movies, there are significant changes from the source material. Most notably, in the book, the women don’t appear to be completely useless. In fact, it sounds like they’re just, you know, regular characters, who happen to have boobs. The movie goes the typical cuntface way. The women whine, nag, complain, flap their arms weakly, wear stupid shoes for jungle-tromping, give handjobs of no apparent purpose, get naked, sob, go crazy, and generally go in the tent and cry whenever anything scary happens.
More specifically, in the book, one of the men becomes convinced he’s infested with the vine and begins self-mutilating, eventually killing another member of the party in his madness. He then begs to be killed, which his girlfriend does. I guess they decided in the movie that audiences couldn’t really cope with a man doing any of that, so they take all that plot and put it on the blonde. Except when she begs to be killed by her best friend, the other woman, she just goes off in the tent to cry while her boyfriend does it.
Keeping the gender roles and character acts consistent wouldn’t have saved this movie from being a shitheap. But it might have crawled to the top of the shitheap of general horror fare, by the pure originality and balls required to make a movie where women aren’t caricatures of spoiled children.
5. A la The Ruins, Sphere. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t go into this expecting it to be a good movie. I went into this because I have Netflix streaming through XBox Live and I was in the slothful bathrobe and whiskey zone.
In the movie, Sharon Stone is a suicidal, crazy mess who is all bitter about her affair with Dustin Hoffman. At one point, the plot requires they drug another character, which is easily done through Sharon Stone’s massive stash of drugs that she keeps around because she is crazytits.
This shit isn’t in the book. Her character has an affair with Hoffman’s character, but it’s a very small point, barely mentioned. She has some suicidal tendencies, but they’re pretty much part and parcel of, you know, being trapped at the bottom of the sea while being pursued by evil underwater creatures of mythical proportions. And when they need to drug a character, they do so (shocking!) by pilfering the first aid kit, not her personal crazytit stash, because she doesn’t have one. But I guess Hollywood didn’t think audiences could accept or connect to or deal with an intelligent, accomplished female character that wasn’t also going on crying jags. Let’s not even mention the fact that in the book she is supposed to be an insanely muscled creature of quarterback proportions, and in the movie she’s Sharon Stone. Oh, yes, I know, movies are going to try to put pretty faces up on the screen. Except, you know, Dustin Hoffman. No offense to the Hoff, I like him, and he’s certainly not an ugly man, but why doesn’t his character get held to the same ridiculous standard? Why did they fill that role with a normal looking man instead of some super sexy hunk?
Because these movies aren’t made for or by women. They are made, not with the assumption that women don’t watch movies, but that nobody cares what the fuck they think. And if you ever wonder why women are kind of an angry lot sometimes, it’s because every day we walk around consuming popular culture that is quite evidently made by and for somebody who considers us fuck-holes that cry a lot, and not a whole lot else.
I know that I will put myself into an early grave if I try to detail every sexist movie I have ever seen. But I kind of want to prove a point that, yes, I will put myself into an early grave trying to describe the sexism that surrounds me at every movie theater. Because there’s that fucking much of it.
6. Fallout 3.
Okay, a few disclaimers. I know this isn’t just about Fallout 3. I know this applies to just about every other game. But I have been playing Fallout 3 lately, so it’s what I’m using for my example. Also, I love Fallout 3. It is super fun. And, as video games go, it is ridiculously less sexist. There is a fairly equal proportion of male and female characters. They are in multiple roles (though there are no male whores and, as far as I can tell, no female SuperMutants or feral ghouls). Your strengths and abilities don’t change based on whether you choose to play a male or female character. And the dialogue options don’t change offensively depending on your gender. That is, a skeezy guy who ignored you when you were male may hit on you when you’re female, but an angry guy who called you a moron when you were male won’t call you a bitch or a whore when you’re female.
So, kudos to Bethesda for all that. One thing, though, and seriously, this one thing does bother me a lot.
What the fuck is up with my clothes?
If I’m a boy, I get to put on a raider suit that covers my ass and chest. I get to wear pants that I find in the wild. I get to put on pajamas that are silky and cover my full body.
If I am a girl, everything I wear (with the exception of jumpsuits) immediately morphs into a fucking mini-skirt. I find an outfit that was pants as a boy, that is described as pants when I put it in my inventory, and it turns into a dress as soon as I put it on my enormous disproportionate ass. Why the hell can’t I just wear goddamn pants? And, Bethesda, if I’m a boy, can’t I put on a dress while I roam around the Wasteland? Why are my clothing choices automatically sex-segregated?
Also, please please please, somebody somewhere make me a video game where I can play a female character that doesn’t have an enormous jouncing fucking rack.
Comments are closed.
I agree emphatically with you about that god damn ruins movie, all my male friends said they loved it, I finally realize why I hated that movie, you hit on it perfectly, just so I don’t double post and freak you out, I read your post on when is rape bad, and the touchiness of knowing a rapist, a friend of mine knew someone that was raped by their family member, but didn’t know what to do with the info, I said, “why don’t you tell the mother, or something?” after reading what you wrote, I understand why my advice probably wasn’t perfect, she did just that and the mom said her son wouldn’t of done that…she dropped it after that, but it sucks some situations are helpless. it would even help if the mom could provide help for her daughter, or prevent further abuse…but yes everything you said was spot on.
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Also, please please please, somebody somewhere make me a video game where I can play a female character that doesn’t have an enormous jouncing fucking rack.
Try Fable II. You can dress your character however you want and her body will change depending on what skills you use. If you use a sword, you’ll get a very large, muscly physique!
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Portal. You run around in an orange jumpsuit that is practical, not designed to be peek-a-boo.
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Mass Effect. The main characters from the back (which is mostly how you see them) look remarkably similar whether you’re playing a male or female character. Also, the female characters ALL have character lines on their faces. And all characters wear body armor, which is completely covering.
Yes, there is a lesbian love scene which does NOT come with an equivalent man-on-man scene. But aside from that (and yes, I DO know how big that is) it’s surprisingly equal.
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I agree with the Sphere comment. Read the book, loved it. Watched the movie, hated it. Also, Sam Jackson’s character (the mathematician) was supposed to be a scrawny, tall but thin young man with glasses. Sam Jackson? Not so much.
I’ve got a lot to say about FO3, because I’ve been playing it a lot lately (fellow female gamer here! Yay!).
I download lots of mods, and actually found a nude male mesh, and comes with jocks and men’s thongs and all sorts of bizarre men’s wear, and a romance mod that allows male-male love! So *someone* out there has equality in mind when it comes to modding too. Kudos to them (don’t remember who off hand right now).
I love the fact that tons of the ‘strong’ character types are female. In particular, Sarah Lyons, Knight Reddin, Star Paladin Cross, Sydney, Reilly, Danvers, Brick, Red, Agatha, Scribe Yearling. But the “leading” characters tend to be male: The Overseer, Colonel Autumn, Dad, Three Dog, Elder Lyons, Sheriff Simms, MacCready, Moriarty, Tenpenny. Which kind of pissed me off. Even in Rivet City, Dr. Li is just on a council, with two men.
There are female ghouls, just not many of them. Most of them are in Underworld, and some outside Tenpenny Tower trying to get in.
I also think that as for the feral ghouls, the ones with the tattered remains of shirts are supposed to be female, while the ones that are really topless are supposed to be male. But it’s hard to tell, I usually end up blowing them up before they get that close. ^.^
**Fallout Spoiler**
And the reason the supermutants all appear the same is because they’re asexual. The FEV gives them all roughly equal appearances because it’s a forced evolution with predefined outcomes (via the virus), so it only takes one track if you’re fully exposed (Harold is an exception; he wasn’t fully immersed). And they can’t reproduce. That is revealed in the original Fallout game (back from 1999 or 2000 or whatever) – something about the rapid genetic changes causing sterilization in originally female specimens. That’s why they capture humans instead of kill them and eat them – they dunk “normals” in the FEV to make more muties.
**/Spoiler**
Love the post, I plan on reading more of this blog in the future!
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re: games, you want Beyond Good and Evil. Huge commercial flop, kickass lady protagonist who actually looks human. HMM I WONDER IF THE TWO ARE RELATED.
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The video game shit drives me crazy. In an MMO I play, the only character I truly enjoy playing is the monk like character. Because the guy and the girl both wear a pair of loose baggy martial artist pants and they both wear a sleeveless shirt and arm guard punching things. No freaking miniskirt, no backless shirt or strange breast holder massive cleavage exposing sliced shirt.
And the char model’s breasts? Small. Like you would expect on a fighting monk.
All of the rest of the character models make the girl characters look like stars in a World of Warcraft porno or something. How does it make sense for a knight, a damn knight that rides a dragon and uses spears and swords, to wear a freaking bikini and a cape with armor on her arms, shoulders, hands and lower legs only?
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I’ve just found your blog and read a lot of your stuff and I wanted to say you’re an excellent and insightful writer and I look forward to reading more.
On the subject of games, I just started Oblivion (yeah, I know, it’s so three years ago, but I’m behind). I picked a male because that’s the character I had in mind, but the female characters were fairly realistic looking. Not as much of a problem with the scantily-clad armor. The stats are skewed a bit between the genders (males tend to have more strength, females tend to have more agility) but there’s a mod you can get to equalize them.
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I read quite a bit of the kerfluffle going on about the unequal stats. The unequal stats thing was unequivocally and complete bullshit, all the worse so for the Very! Angry! and also Sexist! defenses of it, but it stood out so remarkably as bullshit because the rest of the game was just this generally not-sexist gem among jiggletits. I played that game to death, stole so many lettuces…
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Uggh, yes, this.
Not from a game, but I’ve been re-reading the Wheel of Time, and RJ -mayherestinpiece- has been *mostly* good about sexism – it exists, but is different in different parts of the world, and one country is even a matriarchy as strong as our real-world patriarchy (men are expected to be pretty for the women, the upper class males never work, and no man makes major decisions), while another always has queens but the rest looks slightly male-dominant but not as strongly as ours, and… well, basically, a lot of the books seem to have a lot of thought put in to get the sexism as a specific cultural thing rather than as something the author just saw as “natural”.
Except for sexuality.
There are a number of polygamous instances, and *all* are multiple women with one man (although it is clear that the women are as strongly bonded in friendship to each other as in love with thier husband). And there are numerous instances of lesbian pairings, both long-term and casual, including one mentioned in a society where it isn’t seen as acceptable. But gay male pairings just don’t happen. It’s not that they happen and are frowned upon because of whatever bigotries exist in the particular culture. They just never happen. And unlike the fantasy world based specific sexism, this appears to just be because the author doesn’t consider it.
I love these books, for the world building and the characters more than the story (which, admittedly, moves at a snail’s pace). But re-reading them has just made it blatantly obvious how much more comfortable the author is writing women in non-”standard” rellationship situations than he is writing men the same.
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: Agree with the major thrust of your RJ critique, but aren’t the Green Ajah supposed to have big harems of Warder-Husbands? (I think I only read 6 books.)
/threadjack
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Definitely agree with your assessment of FO3, though I was at least grateful that the combat armor options for female characters are all fully covering. I prefer to not go into combat with my chest exposed, thanks. But the other clothing options are generally horrible. In a game that is otherwise relatively progressive, failures like that are glaring.
I don’t know if you’ve ever played Mass Effect, but I have the same issue with the Super Mutants as I do with the asari. Both are supposedly single-gender or un-gendered species’ (at least from their own perspective), but they are still heavily gendered in human terms – Super Mutants read as male, and the asari as female. In FO3, all that really amounts to is an obvious lack of female Super Mutants, but in Mass Effect, the romantic sub-plot they include, and most of the prominent asari characters, make it a lot more annoying.
Still, I do highly recommend Mass Effect. It’s got problems, but overall it’s still remarkably non-sexist.
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I admit, the unequal stat-starting never bothered me- I actually rather liked it. The stats could be trained to equal proportions, but they didn’t just start as such, which seemed pretty cool when it came to considering M/F frames and so on. But! Opinion, and I’m not trying to argue mine’s better. I’m just a little amused since it was IMHO, the only thing Oblivion did right.
(WTF! Atronachs are genderless. It is TES book CANON. SO WHY ARE THE FLAME ATRONACHS IN CORSETS AND THONGS AND ALL FLAMEY BREAST MONSTERS AHOY ARGH)..*huff*
Morrowind! NOW MORROWIND HAD PANTS. AND GUARDS WORE SKIRTS. It was a better world..
*is stopping this topic now lest TESgeek ranting get out of hand*
Yes, not really having to do with the point of the post at all, but there you go. In response to post: PROPS.
Exactly. This is why I can’t game without feeling angry and curmudgeonly anymore, dammit.
Let alone shop, or go places, or breathe without some form of “Oh, goddammit, AGAIN?”
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(I’m female, 21)
I don’t play videogames, but I do tabletop RPG, and the issues with the art are exactly the same. My small town’s one geek gaming store (tabletop manuals, mini models, dice, etc.) has a nice huge rack of rulebooks from many different tabletop RPG series that covers two walls – probably at least 100 books on display. I’d say almost all of them feature both men and women on their covers.
You know which ones didn’t have women painted in embarrassingly servile (and sexualized) positions compared the men? Which ones didn’t have women dressed in hilariously impractical clothing designed to draw the eye towards their sexual attributes rather than their faces first?
The Star Wars RPG.
Yeah, out of 100+ rulebooks, it’s the /Star Wars/ universe (six books at most) that has the most women dressed in sensible clothing and not gazing adoringly up at their male companions. Out of the rest, I found exactly one (1) other book with a female portrayed in full-body armor, with no enticingly positioned cut-outs over her breasts, and her hair tied back in a sober bun. Yeah, I know, sex sells: but even without getting into the cultural issues on /that/ topic, at the very least is it too much to ask for a commensurate sexualization of the males. Noooo, they always get the sensible armor.
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I really enjoy your blog, and you have very insightful and thought-provoking entries, but I do marvel at this bit of cissexism at the very top of your (delightful!) “daily dose of sexism” section. “A list of the little daily indignities that come from not presenting the right genitalia in the right place at the right time”. Gender =/= genitalia. It’s more complex than that.
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I think you might benefit from reading Harriet’s recent posts.
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I’m a little confused, but maybe I have missed something. What do you mean?
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I had to add another comment, since I just had an encounter with major sexism in video games (though not on the topic you originally had mentioned). I play Team Fortress 2, which is a first person shooter and a lot more male-dominated than any RPG I’ve ever played online. Usually I’m the only female on the server – ever.
Anyway I usually play on the same servers where I’ve gotten to know the guys and they are no longer shocked and amazed by the sound of a female voice over teh interwebz. They are also aware I’m not a 10-year-old boy, which is their other assumption. But last night as I was playing (and not even really listening to the chatting) I heard one of the guys insult another one with the comment: “you’re a woman.” That’s all. He meant it as the worst insult ever, like “well I may be a lowlife hacker but at least I’m not a woman,” or something like that. It’s definitely not the worst insult I’ve heard (and I’ll spare your discerning readers from the details of THAT) but it was definitely the most simple and direct.
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“Amusingly”, The Sims 3 females are not -ridiculously- out of proportion. The modding community promptly began to look for ways to increase boobage.
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If you don’t get motion sick easily, I highly recommend Mirror’s Edge. Strong Asian heroine, athletic build, no boobs. Passes the Bechdel test in the tutorial, and several times afterward during the story mode.
Also Fable II.
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I just watched this video on youtube. I couldn’t believe that no one noticed how incredibly sexist this was. Now, I love me a pretty man, so I’m not mad at ‘em for suggesting where attractive women are, but the host recommending that men use the women’s insecurities to manipulate them in to having sex? Not cool. I read the comments, and I’m the only person to even mention it.
Check it out:
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Here’s an exchange I had today on the political blog dailykos.com (I’m skyfox BTW):
men and sex (1+ / 0-)
This is just my two cents…
I think part of the problem stems from a misunderstanding that women have about the way in which sex dominates the male persona. While patriarchy is in part a cultural affectation, biologically men are programmed differently from women. Social construction can only work within the framework biology gives it. (given, it’s a pretty big framework…)
Make no mistake – this in no way condones rape, patriarchy, or anything of the sort. But, access to women and opportunities to procreate are, for men and in market terms, a scarce good that is highly prized. It is, in fact, THE prize of biology. Male status and competition, in the end, all boils down to acquiring this good and, under many circumstances, monopolizing it so other men cannot have access to it. Women, by and large, are the means of their own reproduction – they just need sperm. Men, on the other hand, HAVE to have access to women as a whole to ensure their progeny comes to term and is theirs. As with any competition over a good – very often coercive force and violence are a ‘rational’ way to respond to market conditions by market participants.
If we think reproduction is a basic, overriding driver of behavior – this explains much. Male psychology and culture, taking its cue from biology, is thus infused with sex for this reason. Jock culture is not about throwing a football or hitting home runs – it’s ultimately about displaying one’s reproductive worth to the opposite sex. Think peacock feathers. Male aggression towards one another? Think ritualized fights between males rams as they fight over a female. Politics is about power. Power is about sex. Sex is about Darwinian reproduction.
Male self-worth, status, and power is thus inherently about and intimately (excuse the bad pun) tied into reproduction – which is why rape is often seen as a ‘power’ crime. Sex, desire power, status, and self-worth… these are not separate things. They are all tied and linked together. Maslow’s hierarchy is not the clear-cut series of steps we would like to think it is.
From this, however, we should not take it that men are inherently rapists – though I suppose the 1 in 6 women raped number that is cited would suggest that… but I think that if ‘patriarchy’ is to be defeated and rape made much less prevalent then these inherent drives in men need to be dealt with in a more constructive manner.
In other words. Sex and STRONG desire for access to any and all women are not going away in men. This is biology…. and cultural attempts to restrict male access to women often are just as tyrannical to men as they are to women. The key is to channel these drives/desires in a way that satisfies the needs/desires of both men and women in a constructive manner that does not rely on unduly subjugating one sex or the other.
I have no idea how to do this. From the perspective of market competition – anything that lessens scarcity of supply will naturally reduce competitive conflict of the type that makes violence an acceptable solution. Perhaps this means the ‘sex positive’ position of some feminists is the way to go. Maybe I’m a retarded male pig. Flame away.
But I think attacking all men for rape and demonizing male sexual desire/power simply ignores the problem in an ideologically pleasing, but ultimately truthful, manner that ignores the underlying biology driving male behavior.
Sponge Bob, Mandrake, Cartoons. That’s how your hard-core islamahomocommienazis work.
by Benito on Tue Oct 27, 2009 at 01:00:54 PM EDT
[ Reply to This | Recommend ]
Women and their bodies are not “goods.” (8+ / 0-)
Your phrasing of this issue couldn’t be more horrifyingly incorrect. There is no “scarcity of supply”. Men are not entitled to “access” to women. I don’t give a rat’s ass what his biology is screaming at him. And thank goodness, many men don’t think like this.
And what do you mean by “sex positive”? From what I understand, it means that we stop demonizing women for engaging in and enjoying sex. That we don’t just assume that all sex workers are helpless victims. That we don’t maintain the purity myth about girls and women (the idea that a woman’s worth is attached to her virginity). That we no longer demonize homosexuality.
It does NOT mean increasing supply (aka access to women’s bodies) in order to “reduce competitive conflict”.
Women are not commodities.
by skyfox on Tue Oct 27, 2009 at 01:44:50 PM EDT
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* [new] your response was a (1+ / 0-)
knee jerk reaction to a not very well worded but insightful response to this diary.
by bluedavid on Tue Oct 27, 2009 at 02:12:43 PM EDT
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* [new] Not very well worded – exactly (0+ / 0-)
Typed out in about ten minutes. Given the subject, I’m not sure anything can be ‘nice’ – but, words can be truthful. That’s what I was aiming for.
Sponge Bob, Mandrake, Cartoons. That’s how your hard-core islamahomocommienazis work.
by Benito on Tue Oct 27, 2009 at 03:08:47 PM EDT
[ Parent | Reply to This | Recommend ]
If this is what you call insightful… (0+ / 0-)
then I understand why this problem is so difficult to solve. There was nothing insightful about Benito’s argument. At best, it was terribly misguided.
by skyfox on Tue Oct 27, 2009 at 06:00:32 PM EDT
[ Parent | Reply to This ]
* [new] Of course not (0+ / 0-)
But that doesn’t mean that the basic point isn’t correct or that the issue can’t be understood in this way. It may be crude and cold, but understanding sexual dynamics in this way is important for understanding what is driving behavior. Rape and oppression of women is common, with varying to lesser degrees, to all societies. Why is this? Saying men are simply pigs or are evil doesn’t really help in solving the problem. At best it creates shame that doesn’t really lead to anything or resentment that can actually lead to a backlash.
Saying something is ‘awful’ or ‘immoral’ doesn’t make that awful or immoral thing from going away on its own. If behavior is to change then the underlying system of incentives producing the behavior need to be understood. In this case, pointing out that vicious intra-gender competition for reproductive access can lead to inter-gender violence as a viable competitive strategy on the part of some or many men is no small part of the problem. It happens in the animal world all the time. We are no different.
Heterosexual men are always going to desire to have sex with as many women as possible. They will always objectify women because that is what they are programmed to do. Simply commanding this not to be so is like Canute demanding the sea to go out. Cursing it or demonizing it is pointless, and efforts to battle it lead to exactly the type of tyranny we all abhor. Better to channel this basic drive into a system of incentives that leads to the adoption of non-violent strategies.
Here’s the rub – if we lived in a poly-amorous free-love society in which all were free, sovereign, and yet brother/sister/husband/wife to one another, would rape be nearly as common as it is now? No, I don’t think so because the basic intra-male competition for mates would have been significantly reduced in such a society. It’s a pipe dream of course – but heading in that direction seems a more viable way of ‘ending rape’ or ‘ending patriarchy’ than anything else.
My point is that modern feminism has written a narrative about the male and male oppression that denies the reality of his biological makeup for what are purely ideological reasons. It’s a power grab that has the implicit goal do to men what men have long done to women. Rape is bad – but is demonizing men as all being potential rapists really the solution to the problem?
Sponge Bob, Mandrake, Cartoons. That’s how your hard-core islamahomocommienazis work.
by Benito on Tue Oct 27, 2009 at 03:39:53 PM EDT
[ Parent | Reply to This | Recommend ]
First of all…. (1+ / 0-)
I never generalized by saying that all men rape nor have I demonized male sexuality (hetero or homo). Men wanting to have sex with women is not the issue. Men forcing themselves on women is. I completely disagree with the idea that a “poly-amorous” free-love society would end rape. It is not like women and men aren’t having sex with multiple partners now. There will still be choice.
A woman can choose to sleep with whoever she pleases NOW, but can still be raped. Access has nothing to do with it.
Feminism claims that cultural memes about men, women, and sexuality greatly influence rape. Not this idea that women want to subjugate men.
“They will always objectify women because that is what they are programmed to do.”
This statement proves that you don’t get it. Desire does not equal objectification. To objectify someone is to debase them, make them less human; like objects. I desire men, but don’t objectify them. They remain whole complete autonomous beings, worthy of respect and safety. I submit that women are entitled to the same treatment.
by skyfox on Tue Oct 27, 2009 at 05:58:13 PM EDT
[ Parent | Reply to This ]
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In my experience, anybody using the phrase “just my two cents” is about to or has just concluded saying something really stupid. They’re called disclaimers for a reason; nobody uses them if they’re don’t suspect they will have to immediately distance themselves from the shit what just fell out of their mouth.
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Verbera, I didn’t see anyone say that gender was determined by genitalia.
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REFRESHING.
Here is a double dose of Racism AND Sexism for you to consider:
http://coedmagazine.com/2009/11/16/thanksgiving-poca-hotness-2009/
I came across this atrocity earlier today while curiously investigating the most popular blog on this website.
“Squaw”? Really, people? Sickening.
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I’m late to this post, but I just discovered this blog and I adore it. I especially like the spot-on, no-holds-barred description of why I hate a lot of mainstream movies, ESPECIALLY if they are based on a book I liked. It’s just frustrating and tiresome and like you so rightly said, I try not to drive myself to an early grave by avoiding stuff I know will just piss me off.
Looking forward to more of the writing…good stuff!
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Yes… but in Mass Effect, if you notice (and this is a pretty small quibble), the male/female scars change drastically. If you’re a duder, you can have MASSIVE fucking scars on your face, and look totally badass. If you’re a ladyface, you can only get the most piddling, pathetic scars I have ever seen. Seriously, I have worse scars from cat scratches and oven burns.
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Oh, if we’re still talking video games, Dragon Age: Origins. Not only do you not have a ginormous rack, and don’t have to be all pretty, but you can be gay or lesbian (or, come to think of it, bi) and it’s NOT AN ISSUE in the game. NPCs make the same kind of comments about your same-sex relationship as about your opposite-sex relationship. There is at least one quest that clearly involves a gay male couple (Herren and Wade, for those of you who have played). It’s a nice change.
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Thanks; fascinating read. I saw this after I read the Google Buzz article. That was scary too.
This sort of sexism has happened to me my entire life; I’m 50 years old. Here is a short list of recent occurences:
Like you, when my spouse and I were looking for HDTVs and I was in an aisle alone, a salesperson was nowhere in sight. When my spouse rejoined me, two men walked up and starting telling HIM about features and prices. Was I just too physically alluring or too mentally dull on my own for them to approach me?
When we were in a motorcycle store last year – we had bought one, gotten licenses and were looking for suitable helmets – no one even asked me how I was doing until the spouse appeared at my side. Suddenly, swarm. I guess I couldn’t translate what the macho dude explaining helmets was saying, even though my husband and I did roughly the same research and had the exact same questions for the sales person. I ended up walking out without buying a helmet, and bought mine online instead. At a discount. Different company.
When we bought a house, I asked our attorney to put my name on the title first. He looked at me as if I had asked him to slice his own throat. Finally he asked “Why?” I said, “Because I’m putting down the deposit.” I was using my own savings from a previous pension cashout. I continued: “I’ll be buying a larger share of the home, so we both agreed my name should be listed first.” Thank goodness I’m married to a man with intelligence!
Our lawyer countered: “Why would you want all of the useless literature people will send you about house improvements in the mail? If your name is listed first, you’ll get all that crap. Wouldn’t you rather HE got that?” Delivered with a little wink. I said no, I would rather my name was listed first, junk mail notwithstanding. It was a matter of principle. After some back and forth cajoling and insistence that the title company may have trouble with it (as though their apps are computed to only recognize a male name first?!), he finally gave in.
When the Chicago Tribune listed our house in the real estate section a few months later, as they always do when a house is bought and sold in Chicago, they listed it under my husband’s name. Not only was my name not first in the paper, it was not even listed! I was an invisible owner. I called my attorney, livid. He insisted it was the newspaper’s fault. I called the newspaper about it but my call was never returned.
This is the type of shit women go through each day. It’s as if we don’t exist unless a man is standing next to us to validate our existence. It sickens me when I see women blithely accept this fate, or even encourage it because it allows them to be lazy or ‘taken care of’ financially. I know we’ve made strides in this arena – my mother told me about when she tried to apply for a credit card in 1971 and was told no, but to bring her husband with her next time if she wanted an account – we are still SO pitifully far from equal treatment.
When I bring this up I’m treated with hostility and derision, as though I am being disobedient in some way. I can’t tell you how many ‘Don’t you realize how lucky you are compared to other women in the world?’ arguments I’ve had to slice through in my life.
I grew up during the 1970s, at the tail end of the women’s lib movement. I remember the intensity of that era. I thought that certainly by the time I was 50 this sort of treatment would be behind us! Instead it seems to be spiraling backwards. TV shows like Mad Men reinforce the sterotypes and encourage nonsensical treatment of women by men. Extremely disappointing to this 50-year-old.
I’ll continue to do my part; I know many others will too, and I do mean male and female. Luckily a good share of men (like my wonderful husband) are also appalled at this double standard, and are not afraid to say so.
Enough of my ranting for one day. Thanks for the posts! Please keep fighting the good fight.
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There is a female feral ghoul outside of the museum of history
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Robert Jordan is frequently messed up about sex, full stop. But yeah, I feel you.
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*deep breath* i think im in love with your blog. Some of your posts make me ache but they also charge me up. reading your stuff makes me proud of the way my parents raised me(as a good person and not as a good “girl” or “boy”) but also sad that no one can escape societies daily brainwashing unharmed, especially in a developing patriarchal society like mine.
As a vocal ( and by that i mean, sometimes) feminist i am sick and tiered of being called a dyke (or worse, keeping my mouth shut in fear of being mistaken as one by the guy that i happen to like at the moment) and being patronized for the audacity of even believing everyone is equal. Your blog articulates my anger, my disdain, and makes the tight hot coil of emotion in my chest burn and yet soothes it at the same time. XD
Thank you.
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Regarding points 4 and 5, I would like to quote from an article at Cracked.com:
“Hollywood likes its women like it likes its coffee: shrill, submissive, and stupid. And usually not black.”
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The other day I was in school with my (both guy and girl) friends and we all received a text from a youth worker telling us about a job opening. Because we’re all skimping and saving at the moment due to soon-to-come holidays, prom, uni, just generally liking to have a bit of money rather than having to rely on our parents, yada yada yada, we were all pretty excited. The job was as a washer-upper (exciting stuff, I know) in a local restaurant and hotel.
So it’s looking good until I read the end of the text: “The manager prefers lads as some up the saucepans are quite heavy!!!” So don’t you worry your pretty little heads about it, ladies! You just skip along and get a job picking flowers or knitting baby booties. Ya know, something a bit more…girly. But it’s okay, no need to go all feminist about it. It’s not, like, sexist or anything, cos it’s all triple exclamation mark and stuff(!!!)
And guess what? Nobody else was bothered.
Ugh.
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Recently I was picking up a few things from the drugstore, and I was wearing a t-shirt with text prominently featuring the initials BBDC, in of course the typical location on the chest where text goes on t-shirts. The checkout clerk, an elderly man whose pleasant banter with the 50-year-old birthday-card-buying-father in front of me had actually made me smile in a “look at that, sometimes the world is quite nice” sort of way, grinned at me as he was ringing me up and said “The letters on your shirt are wrong.” I half-smiled and didn’t really respond, not knowing what he meant, and he continued “It should go A, B, C, double-D for you” and winked. I wish I had responded, even if just with a disgusted look and an “Excuse me?” or something; I was too startled (nice friendly pleasant harmless old man!) to really react so I just grabbed my bag and left.
I get propositions, catcalls and wolf-whistles in certain areas of my hometown regularly. (Not that I want to assume it’s all people who live there–in my experience, plenty of the harassers are people decidedly different from the stereotypical ones you’d expect around there, perhaps taking advantage of the fact that young upper-class white women like me probably *have* those prejudices and expect the harassment in those areas so they’ll get away with it.)
Often I sit and watch my boyfriend and his friends play video games (with a good game I find it really interesting and fun to watch, plus they’re hilarious when they get a little drunk and all worked up) and I’ve noticed since I started reading feminist blogs in the last few months how much they use the rape metaphor–everything from yelling “rape! help! rape!” to “ohmygod they just totally raped us” to “Fuck, he just raped me in the ass!” “then stop bending over!” I have a dark and twisted sense of humor but it’s becoming uncomfortable and I’m trying to decide if it’s worth at least talking to my boyfriend about it.
I’ve had two jobs in a row that involved a lot of phone work, including some cold-calling-type stuff, and the times I’ve been patronizingly called dear, sweetie, honey, love, babe, little girl etc. with the insinuation that my gender/sex makes me incapable of competence… numberless.
At dance parties, guys will consistently ignore my refusal to dance with them (whether I explain that my boyfriend’s on his way or not) and call me bitch/slut/cocktease if I respond to their “wanna dance?” with “sure, I’ll dance, but I don’t want anything but dancing”–or they’ll say “hey, that’s cool with me” and then try to initiate makeouts after a few minutes ANYWAY and call me a bitch when I physically remove myself, as if they expected that their dancing skills or their willingness to ‘play along with my nice-girl image’ or something would’ve convinced me.
Of course, the entire vast machine of objectification, madonna/whore complex and slut-shaming, sexism and patriarchy that is the ballroom and Latin dance industry… I love it so, and I will never disengage, but that does not stop me from calling out its faults…
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Having played various videogames, I should be able to help here.
Previous commenters mentioned both Mirror’s Edge and Beyond Good & Evil, and I concur with those choices. As far as I can recall, Mirror’s Edge didn’t seem to have any sexism and it’s refreshing for that as well as for its different gameplay. Faith (the female main character) is indeed strong, determined, skillful and athletic. The vast majority of enemies are either explicitly or implicitly male, but there are some female enemies (well, at least one).
Beyond Good & Evil is also pretty good regarding a strong female protagonist (Jade). The game seems to encourage (and at rare points requires) stealth over combat, but Jade can hold her own in combat whenever it is useful or required to progress.
Now that the two that were already mentioned are out of the way, let me try to think of others.
Offhand, I can think of Okami and Starcraft. I don’t know if the two really count, but let me explain.
While Okami uses a occasionally irritating male insect for dialogue scenes, the protagonist (who does pretty much everything excluding the dialogue) is a powerful goddess (in wolf form). There seem to be a few instances of seemingly stereotypical gender roles and unnecessary sexualization, but ultimately I feel like sexism is not that big of a problem in the game. Though the protagonist is female, she is not human, so maybe that is why it doesn’t come up too much.
While Starcraft (the original and Brood War, I have no idea about Starcraft II yet) does predominantly feature male characters and units, there are still female characters and units. That alone doesn’t make it “worthy”, but I am quick to remember the character of Kerrigan. Initially, her role as a female protagonist is noticeable yet minor. After a certain point in the story, she becomes increasingly powerful and important, though her status as protagonist or antagonist becomes wonky. I think it could be argued that Kerrigan becomes one of the most formidable, if not THE most formidable, character in the span of Starcraft and its expansion pack Brood War.
Let me try to delve into some more.
I wasn’t too keen on the 2008 remake of The Prince of Persia, but I do recall some interesting thoughts and observations from it. The player-controlled protagonist is a cocky male, but he soon meets and teams up with a female protagonist. The male seems to be more capable physically, but the female seems to be (at least) equally acrobatically skilled. Additionally, to me, they seem to form two halves of a whole. The male would be at much greater risk of death without the female, and it seems the same would be true vice versa.
Final Fantasy X-2 is loaded with quite a few unnecessarily sexualized clothing choices, but the female protagonists and antagonists are still quite interesting at the same time. It probably loses major points though because the primary goal of the entire game is, more or less, to search for the disappeared love interest of the main female protagonist. (It’s interesting to note that the player DOES have the option of “moving on” at the end of the game.)
I don’t recall any explicit sexualization in Mercenaries or its sequel. Two of the playable protagonists are male, but one is female and the one who coordinates the protagonists’ operations behind-the-scenes is female.
That’s all I can think of right now, but perhaps it will help. (Oh, by the way, I’m male and I also loathe double standards based on gender, as well as inequalities based on perceived differences in general.)
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I am so happy that this kinds of post exist! I am an Asian, my country also has this father/uncle or what so ever male human being that do raped their daughters & little girls relative continuously (even years). And they covered up the story like these kinds of things never happen. All those elder woman like mothers or aunts are scared to defend their youngster and just accept the fate or for the worst, they make a conclusion things happen is the youngster fault. No kidding, this is still the way of Asian people! They admire the male and completely ignore the female existance.
Even now, the Chinese still think a son is better, a daughter is just a waste of money and a stupid produce human machine. They make lots of ‘rules’ (without actual meaning) to prevent a female to act freely by herself when the male are doing what they want even exceed the correct way. They see all female are ‘mother’ (female servant) and a sex puppet. A female life is just inside the kitchen without knowing herself of being an ordinary person. The man see woman as one of their treasures like lust toys. At least I can see from my male relatives that act like that.
I am also a video game player. I dislike JRPG for its male protagonist of having lots of boop girl(s) friend with brainless personality. This world is a money market to satisfied the so call male being for insulting the female to live on. Even when Okami is a female protagonist game, they afraid the rejection of the male market and make the protagonist genderless. And the chinese still think okami is a male protagonist. The other game creators do make game for female. But is just some love and dating sim game with a NO BRAIN FEMALE PROTAGONIST in it. Myself prefer a game with a nice battle system. But that doesn’t mean that I am a tomboy or I am weird. Even the word tomboy is sexist. I do have my ‘brain’ and my personality like any other ordinary human being.
If you are female, you are not important in this world without having children and become a kitchen servant forever. This is how the world works. And I totally hate it.
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“On the subject of games, I just started Oblivion [...] the female characters were fairly realistic looking”
I love the gameplay of Oblivion, really do. It’s one of my favorite games ever. But I really have to disagree on the physical realism of the female characters. They do pretty well with the armor, I’ll give them that. However, the female looks emaciated. I was shocked when I first saw her without clothes on. I assumed it was because she had been in prison and that she could gain some bulk later. But no. Even with all the fighting she does, she never gains any muscle. The male doesn’t change either, so fine. Except that the female is so slight that her ribs are visible. I know that there are women who have this physique, but the average woman doesn’t. And I have to think that a woman with the strength and endurance to carry a crap-ton of stuff around and battle with iron weapons, shields, and heavy armor probably would not have the physique of a fashion model. As a larger woman, it drives me especially nuts. I can never play a character that even remotely resembles me. Fat characters are rare for men and unheard of for women. Even average-weight women are generally non-existent in games. Almost all women depicted are very slim, and Oblivion is no exception.
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Oh, I also forgot to mention Oblivion’s relative lack of pants for female characters. Not the armor, but the actual clothing. There are, I *think*, only three pairs of bottoms that show up as pants for women.
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