Why do males complain about female-led stories or too many female characters when the majority are still dominated by males?
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I was talking about the people complaining about female characters in media lol. Those people are usually males who are often not (chronologically) mature, making it strange to call them men. I guess some of the characters might not be men either. But yeah we could say male characters rather than e.g. "7 characters: 5 males, 2 females" etc. But it could get a little clunky. Also I'm just not sure what the problem with it is, since saying "males and females" has always been acceptable to me and a basic component of language until patterns of differential linguistic treatment were observed between genders: "men and females" etc, which I understand could be offensive on a gender basis and agree can promote sexist attitudes. I already thought it should either be "women and men" or "females and males", using the equivalent terms in the same context consistently (though somewhat interchangeably), but for there to be an inherent issue with using "males" and "females" even when we apply them equally seems like a separate objection that was new and unexpected for me. I'm curious to find out why that is that some people don't like those terms in general, and I think maybe we should question it, because I have a feeling it could be tied to feelings of human entitlement and the problematic (imo) belief that humans aren't animals, as used to justify speciesism. But I could be wrong.
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I saw that as parental instinct since protection of young are not gender coded, but you can read it as maternal for sure as a mirror to the Queens hatred after the egg burning
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It’s so fucking embarrassing I wish I could literally just not be my gender for awhile.
You should probably delve that particular line of thought more deeply, tbh.
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At least when I grew up in the late 80s and 90s both boys and girls read the books and watched the movies with Pippi.
I agree that Hollywood is a blight on the cultural landscape, and you basically have to disregard their movies if you want to find something deeper than a puddle, with exceptions few and far between
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It's not like they'd feel any safer with female superheroine.
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In your examples, I would definitely think we shouldn't use differential/non-equivalent language between different groups of people/members of society, including races or genders. So that includes not saying "white man" and "man who's a black" -> I would think this should probably be "white man" and "black man" or "man who's white" and "man who's black". I think being consistent with our language used to refer to people is important to not promote or uphold discrimination. There could be other problems even if it's consistent, I'm not denying that, but I think lack of consistency of treatment (linguistic or otherwise) is a key issue. I believe in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity to a degree, that language shapes/influences how we view the world & informs a lot of actions & behaviors in society. So linguistic discrimination is a real thing that can lead to or perpetuate more overt (physical/social) forms of discrimination. For the same reason, it should be consistent between genders (and as a side note, I don't view male and female to be strictly biological terms to refer to biological sex, but rather that they can be used for gender identity too, as in MtF / FtM [male to female or female to male], which other sociology institutions seem to agree with as well, in case you thought I was being a "sex absolutist" or transphobic).
The case of using "male and female" for rats in an experiment is interesting because to me it represents a double standard where we are okay with using those more kind of basic fundamental terms for non-human animals, even if we're not okay with using them for humans (and it's not like we have terms like men and women for other animals, so it's somewhat understandable in working within the language). But it also shows that if we only reserve those terms for other animals, it can uphold harmful differential treatment of them (such as conducting experiments/testing on them that they can't consent to–and wouldn't since they're typically cruel in ways we would never do to humans–which could be seen as exploitation/taking advantage of sentient beings), as tied to a belief that humans are superior and are not animals, which is used to rationalize these actions & arguably discrimination (speciesism) of another kind. That's partly why I question if it's really valid for us to be opposed to using terms like male and female for humans, or if it reveals something deeper about how we think of ourselves in relation to other animals- as well as just curiosity about if there is really a problem there, and what/why that might be.
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Scene:
There's a huge monster attacking the city, it blasts a building and it's about to crash on a group of people.
A female superhero flies in and starts rescuing people and placing them out of harms way. Quickly she gets to the incel who stops her with a hand gesture and says "I'm okay I'll wait for the male superhero" -
Patriarchy.
Privilege and with it an overinflated sense of entitlement, which result in the most fragile of egos.
That's at best.
At worst, and on top of the above, is conscious and deliberate misogyny and the unwillingness to give the privileges up.
This is the teeny-tiniest tip of the iceberg, but it sounds like you are willing to challenge your views and perceptions, so jump in, it's a terrifying, but also extremely well documented rabbit hole, just start looking..
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You're really narrowing down a much much bigger issue to try and make it digestible. But the patriarchy is systemic. Misogyny is systemic. Male privilege is systemic. Gamergate is a symptom, and honestly, a mild one at that.
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The people who complain about this shit are running governments and corporations and controlling society, wtf are you talking about?
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First, I don't think I can find anything not perfect about Alien or Aliens, but the "female-led" context there is emotionally strong in very primal sense, liking those movies doesn't prove anything because both movies (especially the second one) just give a new spin to pretty traditional perception of women.
Xena is nice, but uses some stereotypes as well, just more lesbian than traditional, ahem.
Anyway, I wanted to say I've been accused of being such a whiner and screecher about Disney fake Star Wars, and Rey there is just a shitty character.
Star Wars outside of movies has plenty of very cool female characters, and the "conservative fans" Disney accused of being racist and misogynist are supposed to know most of them.
So let's please remember that companies are sometimes trying to do damage control with things that are just bad, by accusing people not liking those of racism or misogyny.
It's a huge difference when you hear just that some movie is not cool and when you also hear that those calling it not cool are very bad people. If you didn't like the movie in question yourself, you might stop telling others it's bad, and even try to reconsider your opinion, probably buying another ticket.
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I would add that hollywood just doesn't know how to write strong multi-women content. It seems like every show or movie that is led by a majority female cast has a bunch of one-note women doing cliche bullshit. They really struggle to write deep, nuanced, flawed women in roles where that's what the story needs. As to why, sure it's patriarchy, but they keep putting out duds and using it essentially say "audiences don't want female-led content"..
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If I've read your comment correctly I think we actually agree on all points, but my hurriedly written comment didn't communicate two of them as clearly as I would've liked.
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We concur that consistency of terms matters, words are the skeletons of thought-processes and therefore biases, etc.
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I realise my emphasising the phrase "biological descriptors" was a bit misleading and strictly speaking actually wrong, but in my partial defence I was trying to avoid more scientific words when not necessary (not wanting to drift into pretentiousness). In light of your observation about biology vs gender identity (which I agree with), probably my point would be more correct if I'd used a phrase like "reductionist differentiation descriptors". Even if accurate that sounds a little pretentious so I'd love any domain-expert to chime in with a more accurate-yet-concise phrase.
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I used the rat example purely as an example of a research context divorced from social/political connotations, not as a human-animal vs non-human-animal differentiator (not implying any double-standard there), hence why I followed it with the example of how paramedics also use it. My point could equally have used a "10 humans..." example.
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As to why, sure it’s patriarchy, but they keep putting out duds and using it essentially say “audiences don’t want female-led content”…
You've answered you're own question - they put it out there so they can say they tried, people didn't like it, so we'll continue as we were, with them (patriarchal entertainment execs and the patriarchal capitalists who fund them) maintaining their positions.
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I complain about popularity of fantasy romance vis a vis non-fantasy romance, and that now most published (or advertised) fantasy books are fantasy romance.
That genre is typically written for women, with female lead and is heavy in certain tropes.
That genre isn't for me.
Am I a person that you're ranting about OP? If not, could you point me to an article or opinion piece that you're talking about, so I can read it and come back here?
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I've always thought that it might be disingenuous. Like they just throw in minorities, lgbt+ people, and women just for the the sake of appealing to the young progressive crowd.
I'm totally fine with it but some movies you can kinda see that it's not done tastefully.
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We don't need to, but I noticed at one point that he's mostly seeing female leads. We read a bunch of the books in your list, many others we avoided because they're no longer in line with current times and a bunch of them are not for their age yet.
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I don't disagree with anything you said.
I describe what I believe to be the reason why there is any attention on it. There are many many ways for hate mobs to express their hatred. So my focus was on why is there their attention.
I mean their hatred is expressed in many ways but e.g. they seem quite focused on e.g. POC in movies (especially Disney movies).
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No.
I've seen a lot of these complaints and it's never about just a woman being in media. acting as if it is, is disingenuous and plain lying
People complain when changes are made for bullshit reasons, like virtue signalling. The problem becomes that a mobile company just switches someone's race to whatever is darker, they'll switch a character from male to female, and tadaaaahhh, we have a great product now, so let's cut investments in writing, good actors, food producers and the end result it shit, yet we're supposed to somehow cheer it because the main character is now an <insert minority group>
Take Ariel, the mermaid. The character who was known to be white with red hair was swapped to a black actress and the resulting product was shit. It ws shit not because of the character being black, but because the movie was a cheap cash grab using virtue signalling to make people care.
It can be done right when, you know, its not done for virtue signalling. Take battlestar Galactica. Starbuck was change to a woman and holy crap, did they kick it out of the park. The actress was awesome, the writing (mostly) was awesome, the production was awesome.
Too many times I've been told that some movie must be great because it's against patriarchy and its just dog shit. If you want to "battle the patriarchy" then just make a good damn movie or show, I'll watch it. I will NOT waste my time watching a shitshow just because "it has more women in it!!" I don't care, just make it good
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I think you're reading too much into intent here. The only reasoning that goes into these decisions is target audience. Who will buy what you are producing? When most of the comics that you mentioned were written, the perception was very much that their readers would be boys.
If there's anything to be mad about, it's that focus testing and demographic targeting makes for shit entertainment. It means companies are trying to make something that sells instead of trying to tell a story.
