#Sexism in media

[zootopiathingz]

It’s the day after Christmas so I’ll say something controversial now

If Charlie were a male character the entire fandom would be obsessed with her, and if Blitzø were a female character the fandom would absolutely despise him

[rhfffas]

incels trolling the marvels and trying to be objective with “the plot is bad”, DUDE, you’re watching marvel movies where captain america tried to choke a robot and iron man tried to fix ai apocalypse with another ai and hulk can only turn green when hes man paining and thor caused war just because his own stupidity and old man hawkeye can’t deal with grief so turn into a killer for hire

BUT YOU ARE TELLING ME WOMEN SAVING THE UNIVERSE IS BAD?????????

your misogyny is fucking showing

[jackalpants]

Come back to me when you draw orc women with bigger tusks than orc men

Orc guys with big soft cow eyes, dainty little tusks, tall and strong and slim in the hips, and their absolute unit monstrous wife, apple of their eyes, capable of bench-pressing a city bus and deeply unpretty to human culture

Basically this

But orcs

[but-a-humble-goon]

I really need people to understand. When you see some misogynist asshat online saying "female character Y is a horrible irredeemable bitch who deserves to suffer because she's, like, a regular human who's not literally perfect" You countering that argument with "Actually female character Y IS literally perfect actually" Is not refuting the misogynist's premise, it's conceding to it. You are tacitly agreeing with them that female characters who aren't literally perfect do deserve to be hated.

[ranahan]

I just read the Republic Commando: Hard Contact and Republic Commando: Triple Zero novels by Karen Traviss. Republic Commando is Legends now, but here are a few points that struck me about arguments I’ve seen go back and forth here on tumblr. Spoilers for the books!

Several mentions of entire batches of brothers “disappearing” for minor variances & clones being more afraid of the kaminoans than their training sergeants. Kal Skirata drunkenly breaking into tears over the poor boys. Very clear that in Traviss’s books, clones were being decommissioned.

Several mentions of clones dying in live fire exercises on Kamino before being deployed & the training sergeants standing by and doing nothing.

There’s a blurb of a retired commando, chronological age 23, biological age 60. Again, in Traviss’s books, the artificial ageing doesn’t stop when the clones reach adulthood. The main characters are also described as visibly ageing between the two books.

Pretty chilling description of the kind of brainwashing that you believe because you don’t have any reason not to when your entire life so far has lined up with it. I would completely believe these boys could execute Order 66 without the chips & all I could do would be to empathise with them.

Troopers telling their concerned jedi to not worry their pretty little head about what happens to dead troopers. Later a reinforcing mention of no bodybags needed in the GAR.

Vau nearly killing a trooper in training & making the troopers beat each other into a pulp in training.

So again, Republic Commando are Legends now but if anyone wonders where the fandom got the idea that these things happen, here’s your answer. They aren’t fandom inventions.

Other notes and personal opinions:

I mostly enjoyed Hard Contact. There were some bits near the end that fell a little flat, but overall an enjoyable military action/military science fiction novel.

Triple Zero on the other hand, not so much. The pregnancy storyline was just icky. Both in how Etain herself makes it her entire raison d’être, how she makes it the reason for why Darman now has a future, and the lack of consent on Darman’s part. She intentionally gets pregnant without ever discussing anything with him (they’ve been together for two whole weeks at this point), whether he wants kids at all, wants them with her, wants them in the middle of a war, or sees having children in the same light as she does. She’s had the most superficial of introductions to Mandalorian culture and has no idea whether or to what degree the clones or Darman as an individual share those notions—given that they probably have an understandably complicated relationship with Mandalorian culture and especially the notions of children, parents, and legacy. For all we know at this point in the series she could have completely misconstrued the whole thing. But there she goes, and decides that this is how she will fix everything and give Darman a future: a genetic legacy to outlive him.

The force-accelerated pregnancy reads like a bad fan fiction and the whole “go undercover to hide the pregnancy” reads like a Victorian novel.

Etain feels like an odd choice for a point of view character in a military science fiction story. She’s aggressively the-girl-next-door, pointedly unremarkable and ordinary. I guess the point is that readers could have a regular person’s point of view, with which to contrast the commando mindset, and to whom things can be naturally explained without infodumping. But it goes overboard and makes her seem incompetent and immature, so you start wondering what the hell is she even doing in the story or on a battlefield or what does anyone see in her.

There are sexist attitudes straight from the planet Earth. It’s in men and females, how Etain and other female characters are seen through their sex first and other characteristics second, and how they are always “other” in comparison to men. But it’s not just the women, it’s young men—the clones—too where I get this vibe. It’s very bioessentialist. There seems to be this underlying thread of pairing up and reproducing being the most valuable thing a person can do with their life. Which again, seems like an odd choice for a thematic storyline in a military science fiction novel. Like, this is not what it said on the tin.

Some of the tactical/counterterrorism side in Triple Zero feels inauthentic to me as well. There’s too much being bad boys for shock value and too little professional soldiering for my tastes anyway. But I don’t kick in doors professionally so what do I know.

No sense of numbers for galactic economy. Exhibit A: Qiilura.

Lastly, fandom: can we get more Corr? This is an EOD trooper who gets both of his hands blown off early in the war, gets stuck in a logistics centre duty while waiting for better prosthetics, still determined to get back into action to fight alongside his brothers, gets accidentally adopted by some commandos, and makes a career change from disabling fiddly explosives to kicking in doors. A round of appreciation for Corr!

[babybabymerrychristmas]

I HOPE BLAKE LIVELY MANAGES TO EXPOSE EXACTLY HOW THESE INSTITUTIONS DAMAGED AND HARMED AMBER HEARD TOO IM DYING AT THIS FUCKING RESTAURANT SHE DESERVES JUSTICE AND PUBLIC OPINION TO BE IN HER FAVOR TOO. ESPECIALLY WHEN ITS THE SAME FUCKING PEOPLE IN BOTH CASES PRODUCING LITERAL PROPAGANDA AGAINST THESE WOMEN SO MEN CAN CONTINUE TO RAPE AND SEXUALLY ASSAULT WITH NO CONSEQUENCES.

[thenixkat]

Literally, every time I see the many people in the Dandadan fandom going 'Dandadan respects women/is about women's issues/is feminist' its just, y'all are ignoring or unaware of a lot of fucking shit to come up with that take.

(Like yes, the anime tones down a lot of the fuckshit going on with Dandadan, like cutting down some of the sexual assult scenes and didn't include one of the Serpos putting his hand under Aira's skirt to start exposing her crotch when she was pinned to the wall, but it's not absent of the fuckshit)

Like does Dandadan respect women when it repeatedly gives the audience crotch shots of these teenage girls and finds ways to forcibly expose their bras? Or have girls and women frequently being called gendered insults like skanks or cheap hoes or fugly hags? Or has them just strip down during a fight if it's been several chapters since the last panty shot? Or the random ass shots of female characters just popping up on a frequent basis? Or has an attempted sexual assault happen to the main character that doesn't do shit to do anything for the plot other than show the new group of bad guys are totally super bad (cause them brutalizing the boys or everyone finding out that they buried children alive and do human sacrifice wouldn't have been enough to let us know they were terrible people)? Or when it decided to force a girl into a skimpy bikini that she mentioned made her feel physically ill to wear? Or like when it decided to unnecessarily show the audience the actual picture that a teacher threatening to leak a teen girl's nudes was going to leak? Or when it refuses to let any of the adult women that are supposed to be seen as hot have any wrinkles or look their age even when one is supposedly a grandmother (which is a fucking well known sexist trope that doesn't stop existing just cause Dandadan uses it)?

Or does Dandadan just write female characters as characters and peoples' standards are so fucking abysmally low that y'all will give a bunch of misogynistic shit a pass and overhype how 'progressive' the series is.

[hubillusion]

For all the persons asking what sexism is I have something to show them!

This a translation of the first 20 comments on the L'équipe (the main sport newspaper in France) site concerning the match between Iga and Potapova today versus the ones concerning the match between Djoko and Mannarino at the AO (and I should mention that Nole is one of the most hated player in France).

And as a bonus a little nice comment about Iga's hat because we can't have enough of those:

[vividdreamer]

unfortunately smear campaigns against female celebrities will always work because you guys are so fucking stupid

[shinyasahalo]

A Rambling Account of the Badassery of Xena: Warrior Princess.

[the-path-to-redemption]

Now this could be me and me overthinking it but do you think Cinder would fall under the "Dragon Lady" troupe?

Context: Dragon lady troupe are South Asian or South East Asian who are depicted as strong, deceitful, mysterious, and sexually alluring. They are stereotype as ruthless killers under Orientalist of how Asian Countries are scene as barbic

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DragonLady

https://www.hercampus.com/school/american/the-dragon-lady-the-lotus-blossom-and-the-robot-archetypes-of-asian-women-in-western-media/#:~:text=The%20Dragon%20Lady%2C%20a%20term,of%20the%20East%20as%20barbaric.

To me Cinder feels like she would fall under this troupe as we see her as seductive, ruthless, mysterious, and deceitful.

And before anyone get the torches and pitchforks. Yes I'm fully aware that Ruby and Yang and half Chinese because of their father is Chinese coded.

However keep in mind media tends to protray poc coded groups and people as "barbaric savages" who needs to adopted to western traditions and beliefs to save them. The person who "help" these people are white people or people who is half white and half of the "barbaric" people.

It make sound ridiculous and a stretch by considering the fact the RWBY is created by the pink washing capitalist Transphobia pedophile company. I wouldn't be surprise even if Monty was involved with creating Cinder.

Long Post Ahead

Just to preface this, Cinder (from what we see and know) are designed after the femme fatale archetype and has zero indication in the actual canon material or extracurricular materials (books, BTS, etc.) as being Asian coded. The story of Cinderella, while having multiple cultural equivalents around the world, is French if you still keeps it in the context of Cinder's creation. Her wearing or designed in East Asian-esque outfits are not indications of her being Chinese or Asian-coded, as we've seen Raven and Salem designed in a similar matter, and these are examples of Rooster Teeth's orientalism rather than making them representation of Asian characters. She's designed to be very white, with a white name, and a white allusion because they specifically used the "Cinderella" version of the story with the glass slippers.

Moving onto your ask itself, I can see why you would think of this particular trope when examining Cinder's characterization and role in the narrative. It's also very problematic that if Cinder was meant to be Asian coded, unfortunately she very much falls into the Dragon Lady Trope with Salem being the white person who "saved" her, while Cinder herself is the seductress who is the villain.

But I doubt that's the case; if anything, Cinder is one of many examples of RWBY's ill-advised portrayal of female characters, whether they're heroic or villainous; Cinder's role as the femme fatale is played out in very gross ways, mostly just focusing on her being "hot" and the "dangerous" is quite lagging behind (the biggest example of this is her stealth outfit being greatly modified from the concept art to being sexier and the multitude of ass shots).

Cinder is also another example of RWBY's extremely gross way of portraying disabled characters, with her being an amputee and visually challenged (temporarily mute) person who is dependent on a prosthetic of some kind, by making the majority of them bad guys. Specifically, bad guys who's disability strips them of humanity and signifying them as evil in a narrative while the good guys are able-bodied people who are justified in beating these bad guys. Which is a gross ass trope.

TL;DR: Cinder, while not originally designed to be Asian or Asian-coded, is still a very problematic character chocked full of bigoted tropes including, but not limited to, sexism, orientalism, and ableism. While I myself do not think that she falls under the Dragon Lady trope, Cinder is still very badly written and her existence in the narrative of RWBY is a blatant reflection of the writers' incompetent writings that should not be ignored.

[factoidfactory]

Random Fact #6,580

93% of all people featured on banknotes around the world are male.

[rhfffas]

amazon prime video canceled a league of their own, paper girls, the wilds, but red white and royal blue can get a sequel… so i guess representation does matter just not wlw representation😇😇😇

canceling the wlw is happening on tv networks and other streaming platforms too so dont tell me “oh its just amazon”😇😇😇

[iliiuan]

Dune is a decent story. It's also ridiculously sexist. "We women have been trying to breed a man to have emotional powers we aren't capable of."

Excuse me, What?!?!

"The special man will understand both feminine and masculine. Women naturally can only understand the feminine."

You have *got* to be kidding me.

What is it that authors just absolutely cannot conceive a story wherein a woman is the chosen one? Is this why Worm is my favorite story?

[ironpool99]

Does anyone want to help me brainstorm ideas for an essay/study on sexism in omegaverse?

I think it would be interesting to do a deep dive on how sexism in fandom creates an overabundance of omegaverse (as it allows the same dynamics but making it only men) along with how this creates sexism inside the actual omegaverse (omegas are the stand-in for women and are discriminated again).

I think a sounding-board could help, but I'll probably do it no matter what. lmk if you're interested in helping/reading it.

[bookcoversaroundtheworld]

A Tale of Two Titties: A Writer's Guide to Conquering the Most Sexist Tropes in Literary History - US

From the brilliantly funny (and rightfully furious) creator of the viral Men Write Women Twitter account Let's face it, women's representation in literature really sucks. And that's mostly because of the male authors who write female characters like they're nothing more than playthings in their stories. Whether they have breasts like ripe peaches or curves like a racetrack, the literary ladies gracing the pages of bestselling books rarely serve a purpose beyond supporting a male character (or giving him something to fantasize about). But what are you supposed to do about it if you can't even get a foot (or, I guess, a boob) in the door? You beat them at their own game. In this hilarious yet incisive guide, you'll learn how to write women just like a bestselling male author―stereotypes, tropes, objectification, and all―so you can start dismantling the system from the inside. With thoughtful literary analysis, interactive exercises, and commentary that perfectly straddles the line between satirical hilarity and righteous indignation, A Tale of Two Titties is both an illuminating study of women's representation in literature and an absurd (yet accurate) guide to writing through the male gaze.