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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Oh true -- Alien did it pretty good
I do find cartoons the best examples here. Pippi Långstrump is an interesting choice since I think that's aimed primarily at girls, but PepperAnn did it pretty well with an ambiguous audience. Daria (arguably, though she's a bit of a toxic character). Kim Possible maybe? Again probably mostly aimed at valley girls, but the show was interesting enough that anyone could watch it.
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If the story keeps you invested, genders are pretty irrelevant.
This^ When the director/writer throws in a woman's role to try to appeal to everyone while not actually adding to the story it just comes off as a cheap ploy.
I think Dr. Who fell into this trap. Story about a man who travels through time and is reborn as a man for 60 years of TV, suddenly is reborn as a woman ( to fulfil inclusion of women as main character). Their ratings tanked. Not because Jodie Whittaker was terrible, but because the story was altered with no addition of anything better.
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And those things mean they couldn't have just had at least ONE of the 5 boy dogs as an additional girl? I don't see what another show or the race of characters has to do with this.
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In a word: Insecurity.
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There are a lot of female lead movies / tv shows, but on the internet there are also a lot of toxic, misogynistic little bastards. I think you're waking up a bit to the media you consume.
Black swan, alien, death becomes her, million dollar baby, thelma and louise, ghostbusters afterlife, crazy ex girlfriend, orange is the new black, schitts creek (50/50) Buffy, dead to me, xena, just off the top of my head. All massive hits, all majority / equal female presences.
That said, there are screechers and the whiners all over the internet..and they're dipshits being amplified beyond what they should.
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Well humans are animals, maybe we should question why it makes some of us feel uncomfortable to be referred to in the same way we would refer to other animals. It could be ingrained biases of human supremacy/anthropocentrism/speciesism that we use to justify differential treatment of nonhumans that we wouldn't want done to ourselves
just a thought -
I mean, there is definitely a crowd that don't like women as lead characters....
There are always crazies, but I don't think that's a large number of voices. I seriously think that most people just want well written characters that are true to themselves and the situation and don't give a shit if its a man / a woman / black person / white person / pig or sentient blob of jelly.
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Ripley being a woman didn't matter much in the first film. It's crucial to her character in the second. It's her maternal instincts that drive her protection of Newt and that drive her into direct conflict with the alien queen.
The final battle is two mothers fighting for their children.
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Female encroachment on what has traditionally been considered male spaces is not taken well. Female empowerment is considered taking from deserving males.
The problem is that in the context of a "winner-take-all" society it does do that though.
Obviously the general solution is to make a society that is overall more equitable between those who succeed & those who don't.
But if you aren't going to do that then you will get a reaction from those who are losing ground, even if that happening is the morally progressive outcome.
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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.
