#Native Female Bechdel Test FAILED

[atthebell-moved]

hi, i completely agree that the fandom has a problem with misogyny and often fails at self-introspection. my question is, do you have any resources/tips/thoughts on how to be better about it? even, how to recognize it in yourself the first place? "ok i'll stop being a misogynist now" is a lot easier said than done, especially for people who might not be that educated on the subject, and majority of the people in this fandom are quite young as well.

this is long as fuck and possibly somewhat incoherent bc it took so long to write but i did my best

my biggest tip for people who don't know much about misogyny is to look at your own behavior and learn how to clock what you're doing as sexist.

are you criticizing a female creator? think about why you're doing it, what the actual beef you have with them is. if it seems to be just a sense of discomfort or thinking they're annoying or overly loud or pushy, think about male ccs who act the same way and why you dont consider them annoying. are you annoyed with them for being on a male cc's stream? why? does it feel like theyre taking up too much attention? do you get annoyed with them for talking too much or flirting with guys? for gaming especially-- do you get annoyed with them for not knowing something or being "bad" at a game? think about why that is and why its just funny when a male cc is bad at games or doesnt know something.

a HUGE problem i see in this fandom is the Madonna-whore complex, repackaged as the little sister-racist dichotomy (kudos to @yourlittlemenace for that phrasing).

if a female cc is deemed to be "playing nice" (doesnt talk too much, is "nice", streams with male ccs but doesnt flirt with them, isn't "overtly sexual"), she's the little sister of the group. all the male ccs "protect" her, she literally folds their laundry, she doesnt call out how people treat her, and the fandom pretends that this is a normal and cool way to treat women who are public figures. this also goes for mom/big sister/etc. if you think you haven't done this, think about all the aus where you've forced puffy into some kind of maternal or sisterly role when it made no sense. then think about how pissed people got when she decided not to be the server therapist and was "mean" to Tommy (in lore, with permission. that she didnt even need to get. see that clip i rbed earlier from her podcast.)

if the fandom decides she doesnt play nice, if she flirts with male ccs too much or stands up for herself or points out how unfair it is that she's being treated this way, she gets demeaned, harassed, and shunned by the fandom. consider, again, puffy. consider how niki flirted with wilbur and talked about misogyny and got called a racist for *checks notes* "speaking to schlatt and fundy" and "not being a native english speaker". she got called a slut and a queerbaiter for kissing another woman despite being bisexual.

consider how hard people went down on hannah for having said the r slur several years back versus how hard they went on dream for the same thing. and how people dug it up as a direct response to her being on stream with dream. consider how every time hannah talks about how unfair it is that the mcc subreddit treats her like trash, she has to delete all her tweets bc they harass her to hell and back and act like she's an asshole for pointing out their hypocrisy.

the fandom doesnt do this across the board; i shouldnt have to say this, but its not an everyone versus no one issue. some people do this outright and loud, some dont seem to realize theyre doing it, and a few people dont do it at all (incredibly rare, i can count on one hand the number of people who genuinely seem to try to avoid these issues, which is why im complaining).

in terms of lore, have you ever once done analysis on a female character? why do you think you haven't? the bechdel-wallace test is an (imperfect) way of gauging how a piece of media ignores women and prioritizes men. think about the fact that there are FOUR female ccs on the DSMP and they are continually ignored in favor of male characters. consider that puffy and aimsey both talked about trying to do genuine lore and getting shafted, either because no one was online and wouldn't put in the effort to stream with them or because they received insane amounts of criticism for breaking anything on the server, despite the clear lack of "no griefing" rules and the precedent that you can blow other people's shit up (tommy leveling one of puffy's builds, amongst many other examples).

a quick thing about ships: have you ever wondered why m/m ships are so popular? the general consensus amongst people who care about feminism and are into fandom studies is that for a long period of time, m/m was hugely popular because women are so rarely written as full and complete characters in any media. so people took to engaging with m/m ships and writing about them because they were the most fulfilling relationships, and because misogyny led them to be predisposed to be uninterested in female characters.

say an m/m ship is incredibly popular, something like, i dunno, john watson and sherlock holmes from bbc sherlock. lets also say the canonical media presents one or both of the characters with a female love interest. how do you think a fandom that prioritizes m/m ships and is primed to be disinterested in women as characters (either because of our society's role in teaching people that women do not matter or because of fandom's history in assuming female characters are not fleshed out) is going to react? if you said theyre going to send undue amounts of criticism her way and act like its an act of homophobia to give a canonically straight character a female love interest, congrats, you've figured out a huge component in fandom misogyny. take this, amplify it over several decades, and add the psychic damage that supernatural gave society. queerbaiting is bad but mistreating female characters in service of nonexistent queer relationships is also bad.

this is relevant in general but i also believe its relevant for the dsmp because of the complete lack of m/f ships. aside from phil and kristin, who are literally married irl and kristin isn't even on the server, there are no m/f ships that involve female creators. this is not, despite what you may think, due to the inherently yaoi nature of minecraft roleplay. this is because the creators, including the male ones, are afraid of the blowback of m/f flirting and how fucking awful people are to female ccs anytime it happens. once again look at niki. as another example, consider how notfounders harassed the living daylights out of mxmtoon for flirting with gnf on twitter. if i was a cc i would avoid it like the plague too considering how happy people are to dig shit up about them or accuse them of being a slut or an attention whore/"pick me girl" for speaking to a man.

one last thing, this is more about fanart than anything else but stop drawing women to look like teenage boys. the amount of fanart i see where i literally cannot tell if someone has drawn niki or tommy is fucking insane. niki has curves. draw her with them. if you cannot draw women or people outside a very specific body type you cannot draw. fatphobia and misogyny have a clear overlap.

i cant think of anything else and ive already spent forever on this. look into feminist media analysis. think twice about how you react to female ccs & female characters. consider not just what characters have interesting stories but who is allowed to have interesting stories. you might be neglecting someone who has a lot going on because you're dismissing a female character as inherently less likely to be interesting. you might not even know someone has an interesting story because the fandom neglects it so completely.

as a final little note: like i said earlier, if you're not familiar with gender & sexuality studies, you may not know this, but homophobia and transphobia are rooted in misogyny. the idea that gender is immutable and rigid is because of the patriarchy. this is why gendered slurs are used against queer people and why queer men in particular get accused of and demeaned for being feminine. your understanding of queerphobia is incomplete without considering how sexism plays a role.

also go read everything rayne fisher-quann has ever written but especially this piece on getting woman'd and listen to you're wrong about

[ladyaj-13]

The Eagle

I watched 'The Eagle' last night, and I enjoyed it - it kept me interested all the way through, which is not a given with a film these days (attention span, where did you go???).

It was gorier than I expected which felt more realistic, and Jamie Bell is always a good shout (what has he done more recently? I need to look him up), but I had three main issues. Minor spoilers ahead.

One, the clear late demonising of the native tribe in order to position the leads together against an uncomplicatedly evil enemy (after setting up quite well, I thought the tensions between different sides of a war in relation to Esca and Marcus). It felt out of touch.

Two, the fact that so much was lost in the pursuit of a bloody statue. I'm sure this is my modern thinking, but I struggled to get on board with that. People died. Quite a lot of people. Over a fake bird.

And three, I don't think a single woman uttered a single line in the whole film. (Or if they did, I blinked and missed it.) This film didn't even get far enough to begin measuring for the Bechdel test. And after a bit of Googling apparently there was a female character in the book, who they decided to cut, so... not great, guys.

I did enjoy it though. I find it entertaining to pull out the failings (what does that say about me?!) but I would say people should give it a watch if it sounds like their kind of thing!

[pass-the-bechdel]

Stargate SG1 s05e18 ‘The Warrior’

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

No.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

One (10% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Nine.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Episode Quality:

Doesn’t quite live up to its potential.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Tried so hard, got so far...

Female characters:

Samantha Carter.

Male characters:

Imhotep.

Bra’tac.

Jack O’Neill.

George Hammond.

Teal’c.

Daniel Jackson.

Rak’nor.

Tara’c.

Yu.

OTHER NOTES:

Check this dumb dude with his chainmail overalls:

“...Backatcha.”

‘K’tano’ questions Carter’s abilities as a warrior, on account of her being female. This is preditcable, really; Teal’c being the one who immediately and unequivocally voices support for Carter’s prowess, I do appreciate.

This episode plays out a bit too simplistic in its concepts and quick and convenient in its action, but I’ll give them this: the actor playing K’tano/Imhotep (Rick Worthy, for those of you playing at home) is commanding as heck.

Seriously though: the IDEA of this episode is a goldmine; it’s just too bad about the execution.

Ok, so this episode is the first of four credited to Christopher Judge (Teal’c himself), and the only one credited as ‘story by’ instead of ‘written by’, and man, the difference is stark. Not to get too ahead of myself, but Judge’s later episodes which he wrote himself include my personal favourite episode of the entire series (in season six), and two partner episodes in seasons seven and eight which sink their teeth into gender politics in Jaffa society (something which I feel Judge wanted to start the conversation on right here in this episode, based on that little moment re: Carter). The man gets his character, but even more than that, he gets the concept of speculative fiction; using the versatility of the scifi medium to analyse complex real-world themes. Where the exclusively white-male Powers That Be running this show are failing to utilise that versatility, Judge’s narrative ideas are fantastically engaged, and you can see so much of that in this episode: it’s couched in a powerful concept of faith and betrayal based around the eagerness of the oppressed, and how easily ‘freedom’ can be manipulated into a different kind of prison by an opportunistic oppressor. It’s not hard to see how Judge (as a black/Native American man) draws parallels to the struggles of his own people and ancestors whose fight for freedom and equality is continually co-opted by white government trying to ensure that whatever gains are made, it ultimately still gets to maintain control. The conceptual arc of the episode is strong, and honestly, maybe a bit too ‘real’ and serious for the usual tone of this show, but in a very good way; the bad news is that the story idea Chris Judge offered up has then been developed for tv by that white as white as white as white production team who have no apparent understanding of how preserving the intent of the episode is essential to its watchability, paring it down to whichever aspects they can squeeze the most action from without much regard for the pace or tone being created, and it’s a whiplashy result as we bounce from creatively intelligent structural storytelling to amateurish action shorthand. If the sacrifice of this episode’s finer points was the price that had to be paid to convince Chris Judge to write his next idea himself and thus produce my favourite episode of the show, the I guess I can’t be too mad, but. I’m still a little mad anyway. This had everything it needed to be a really great hour of television, and sometimes it nearly gets there despite the hurdles. It’s kinda ironic that way.

[educatingtheotherkin]

Apparently there's a variant of the Bechdel tests for Native and Aboriginal women, and apparently a movie can fail just because the female character has a love interest who is a white male. It doesn't even say that he has to be treated like the hero or something. Even if he's respectful of her culture and they treat each other like equals, and their relationship isn't the main focus, apparently a movie will fail that test just because he's white.

What??? I don’t... people complain about the weirdest things, Anon

[yersina]

soooo i just watched kong: skull island with my family today. which was. interesting. I honestly didn’t hate it that much (I haven’t read anything about it and haven’t experienced like any other opinions or media related to the movie other than the trailers, so idk if any of this opinion is shared by other people). uhhh, my assessment at the end of the movie: it was satisfying, but expected. there were several times in the movie where i literally said out loud what i thought was going to happen next, and I was right, so... i dunno what that says about the movie.

Another bone that I have to pick with it: it doesn’t pass the bechdel test, which is stupid as hell, cause there are two female “main” characters (one main and one side, i guess i should say) and they’re in the same flipping group!!!!!! and they never talk to each other on camera!!!! even once!!!! wtf?? I was literally waiting the entire movie for them to even acknowledge each other and it didn’t happen. it’s bizarre. cause, like, i’d understand it if they were split up between the two groups and then never got a chance to talk, but they spent time together in a confined space??? and like. never communicated. why.

lol another thing. movies have been getting better about this recently, but it annoys me to no end when the movies try to force a romance into a movie. it’s something that i complain about a lot, since i feel like i’m experiencing the relationship develop in... probably about like an hour or so? which is waaaaaaaaaay too rushed by any account. idk, some people like that (or don’t notice it as keenly as i do), i’m one of the ones who don’t. it wasn’t super obvious in the movie, which i appreciate, but it still felt a bit like both of the women were paired off? esp with the failing of the bechdel test, i just feel a bit iffy about that.

overall though, i liked the message that they were trying to convey with the movie. they sort of explained the thinking of both sides (packard wanting to avenge his men and corden? whatever his name was. mal... something too. lol i just watched the movie and i’ve already forgotten their names that’s not good.but yeah they just wanted to get the fuck off the island and leave the delicate balance the way it is, which is nice) so that way it didn’t feel like one side was specifically more justified than the other. well. at least for the beginning. the way that they reacted to the situation felt real, or at least as real as getting trapped on a supernatural island can get. 

Oh! that reminds me: another thing that really bothered me while i was watching it: the fact that the native people let the guy into their community so easily. like, i get that he’s been there for almost three frigging decades, but like. it also felt to me like he was in a position of power, which definitely irked me. it didn’t feel as weird once they left, but while he was interacting with them, it was just. weird. 

but again, the movie itself isn’t horrible, it just got a few flaws. another 3.5/5, i’d say. if they got rid of the whole weird no-girls-interacting thing they’ve got going on, it’d be closer to a 4/5. 

[avaantares]

Kong: Skull Island (spoiler-free review)

It got a bit long, so I’m putting the detailed review after a jump to spare your dash.

TL;DR: It was better than I expected. Not an absolute must-watch, but the cast is good and it was enjoyable. Stay for the after-credits scene.

Overall: While not mind-blowing or deeply intellectual, this was a perfectly watchable monster movie that is less about explosions and more about humanity than you’d expect from the trailer. It definitely missed some opportunities (a native culture is treated as literal scenery rather than a significant part of the narrative; the Bechdel test is well and truly failed, despite the presence of two female characters -- twice the average number for an action movie cast!), but avoids some common pitfalls of the genre (the natives are not beholden to a White Savior; neither of the female characters ends up like Fay Wray in the original King Kong).

There are plenty of light moments that keep the film from being too heavy. The soundtrack embraces the Vietnam-era setting, using pop songs as background almost in the vein of Guardians of the Galaxy (but ultimately with more symbolism). The cinematography is more artistic than many action films, with some beautifully framed shots and interesting camera angles.

Creatures: Like every creature feature ever, the ethology is a hot mess, though this one actually didn’t offend me quite as much as any film featuring wolves a lot of other films. It at least makes an effort by emphasizing the otherworldliness of the ecosystem and attempting to explain Kong’s actions via the human protagonists. (But realistically, 99% of the audience won’t be bothered because they don’t have a background in animal behavior, and therefore won’t realize how implausible the whole central conflict is.)

The effects were quite good overall, with only a handful of spots where I got distracted by the CGI (moments where the motion didn’t look quite right, or the lighting wasn’t correct, or there should have been discoloration and algae on those logs that had been underwater for years but for some reason they were the exact same color as the ones above water, so you could tell they were fake...). The creature designs... well, the Skull Crawlers have major structural flaws and probably couldn’t exist IRL, but the rest of the creatures aren’t bad.

Characters: The characterization felt a bit weak across the board, though a strong cast helps make up for the thin places in the script. TV Tropes would have a field day with the supporting cast lineup (specific tropes eschewed here for reasons of spoilers), but they do have unique characters and plenty of personality, rather than just being a line of additional bodies for fight scenes. Also, the racial diversity is nice.

Tom Hiddleston manages to bring some depth and sensitivity to a role that might have gone to any musclebound action star in Hollywood with disappointing results. (Let’s be honest, Hiddleston is half 76% of the reason I went to see this movie. I have seen him in nearly two dozen roles, and I have yet to be disappointed in a performance. Also, he’s gorgeous and has the sexiest voice in the film industry, which maaay influence my decision to see his films...)

Samuel L. Jackson’s immovable military leader feels more like a product of his motivations than a well-rounded character; he could also have benefited from some more thorough development, though admittedly, it might have bogged down the pacing to spend more time on that. (He does get in a subtle Jurassic Park reference, which is fun.)

Brie Larson’s photojournalist (read: requisite lead female in the party) has the least dynamic arc of the top-billed trio, which is unfortunate, as her characterization started strong and just... didn’t really go anywhere. She’s an active character, but it would have been nice to see her grow or develop more over the course of the film.

I liked John C. Reilly’s marooned airman more than I expected to. I feared the character would be a walking trope (crazy castaway comic relief/convenient local knowledge/guy who lived with natives and is now vaguely mystical), but he had surprising humanity and depth.

Important: Stay for the post-credits scene. Not going to spoil it, but it’s worth the price of admission, especially if you’re a fan of the kaiju film genre.