#Sexism in media

[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

[ae-neon]

One thing about being a woman (and in particular a black woman) is always being burdened with the expectation to remain resilient and gracious, to remain strong through struggle

That's why I love female characters like Nesta Archeron and Felisin Paran, who are bitter, who are broken and exist in sharp shards, who cut even the people who try to hold them because that is simply the form they exist in.

Through simple proximity they cannot help but hurt the ones they love, even though they don't want to

That is the realest, most human shit ever

But fandoms will always despise this in female characters because they expect them to have a sense of grace, a certain level of acquiescence, and an overt kindness to those around them

Fans often expect these characters to perform according to their expectations of femininity and completely ignore or brush over the internal struggles or moral values of these women. It is not enough for these characters to think or act for the benefit of others if it doesn't feel like a direct apology to the often male characters who are important to the audience

Fans ignore how words or actions may hurt these characters while magnifying how the characters words or actions hurt others.

There is no empathy for unkind female characters and straight up contempt for 'ungrateful' ones

[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!

[lilyginnyblackv2]

I made a comment about how the lack of shoujo, josei, and female aimed series in the Crunchyroll Awards is due to sexism within the anime industry and community on a Youtube post critizing the Crunchyroll Awards for being so Battle Shonen heavy (among other things), and some of the comments I've gotten...

One dude called shoujo an "ancient genre," even though shoujo series are created and made every day, and shoujo is a demographic marker - not a genre.

Another stated that "shoujo are polyamory shows which males aren't in to and can't relate to."

???

I wish shoujo series were polyam shows, that would be so cool! But, polyam in anime barely exists. The ones that I have heard of existing are usually male targeted harem series (where the male MC ends up with all the female love interests), Otome Youkai Zakuro (one dude ends up dating twins) which is a seinen, or Star Driver which is an anime original series that also had a seinen manga adaptation.

Where are all these shoujo polyamorous anime!? lol I would like to know.

Anyway, having these discussions with these men make it painfully obvious how...unaware many (not all, of course, but far too many) male anime fans are of shoujo, josei, and other female aimed series like BL, etc. While most female anime fans are highly versed in all the different genres and demographic markers. This is, of course, all largely due to systemic sexism based issues in the anime industry and community, and in cultures and societies in general.

[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:

[ileftherbackhome]

"elon's daughter called him an incel after he offered taylor swift a child" no, he threatened to rape her.

i cannot stand the watered down language of today's media outlets. he literally threatened to fucking rape her. get it fucking straight. he's an incel because he fucking threatened to RAPE. HER.

[shinyasahalo]

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

[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”😇😇😇

[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.

[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.

[a-river-of-stars]

Gundam Wing: the Winner women, utterly unessential to the narrative.

Written in response to https://www.tumblr.com/ikuzeminna/718480468058718208.  I didn’t want to add this to @ikuzeminna’s post in case it wasn’t welcome.  Hopefully this doesn’t kick any hornets’ nests...  😳

Since we’re talking about women being used for manpain and to further men’s storylines, I think the women of the Winner Family deserve an entire post of their own.  While I don’t blame Quatre for this at all--he’s a character ffs, he certainly doesn’t get to control how the writers choose to write other characters!--it does seem to me that the women in Quatre’s family only exist to further the stories of the men connected to them.

First, there’s Quatre’s mother Quaterine.  She seems nice enough, and I’m sure fandom could build up a solid character for her, but the simple fact is that she’s never given the chance to be an actual character in the source material.  She serves no purpose in the story other than to deliver us a male protagonist; then, task completed, she promptly dies and never even rates a mention in the original tv series. You can’t even say she dies for Quatre’s manpain because in the original series he never thinks about her so he CAN feel manpain about her.  She is never brought up at all.  Thus, unlike Relena choosing to carry on her father’s legacy or Wufei choosing to carry on Meilan’s, and regardless of the alleged similarities between Quaterine and Quatre, Quatre isn’t motivated to carry on Quaterine’s legacy.  She doesn’t inspire him.  Think of it this way: Quatre could have actually been born from a donor egg in a test tube (as he was told happened) and the story would have turned out the same.  Quaterine could have just as easily never existed--and in the original tv series she basically didn’t.  Like Meilan, Quaterine only appears in Episode Zero, where the only one who thinks about her as a person is Quatre’s father Zayeed.  Even then Zayeed seems to get more emotional mileage from his relationship with Quatre than from the dead wife to whom Quatre is compared.

The same is true of Quatre’s 29 sisters.  They are less characters of their own than they are an informed trait of Quatre’s (much like having a character say “X is very smart” but then never actually showing X saying or doing anything smart).  Only one of Quatre’s sisters ever appears or is given a name in the text.  You could cut the mention of the other 28 sisters and it would have zero effect on how the story plays out.  Irea, the only sister that matters in the slightest, exists strictly to further Quatre’s story: to help heal him up physically and mentally, to transport him to the male character (Zayeed) that is Actually Important™ to Quatre’s story, and then to get hurt/seemingly killed so Quatre can have his big meltdown over her injuries and over Zayeed’s death (but really mostly over Zayeed’s death).  Such a glorious role.

Note also that Quatre has seemingly never even met any of his sisters.  Quatre doesn’t know who Irea is until the conversation with Zayeed.  It’s very telling that Zayeed keeps only his male heir on the same colony with him and sends all of his daughters away.  Zayeed’s desk has exactly ONE photo on it, featuring only ONE child: the child he actually gets to see on a regular basis rather than all the ones he sent away to live on other colonies.  I would like to think that the absence of Quatre’s sisters is a result of Zayeed removing them from his presence because his daughters all painfully remind him of his dear dead wife, but the original text doesn’t support that conclusion.  Rather, in the text Zayeed only ever thinks of QUATRE as being similar to Quaterine (calling both Quatre and Quaterine “the strongest and most noble of all” in Episode Zero).

While it’s possible that FT may have changed the dynamics, the original source material from the 1990s is stunningly dismissive of the women in the Winner family.  Perhaps this is meant to illustrate the sexism inherent in the culture of Quatre’s family.  If that is the case, no one in the family itself seems to have a problem with it.  No outside scrutiny is given by any other character, either.  The only explicit criticism of sexist tendencies in the Winner Family is leveled against Quatre by Heero; ironically, it comes when Quatre is commenting on how he feels women must look down on men for only being able to resolve their problems through violence.  Heero’s responding accusation that Quatre doesn’t believe women enjoy violence is a very bizarre way to suggest that Heero is the feminist in this situation and that Quatre is the sexist.  While Quatre’s comment does perhaps point to a certain idealization of women--to Quatre putting women on a pedestal of perfection rather than seeing them as potentially problematic humans like himself--it seems that criticism might be more usefully aimed at the wider culture that allows 28 women to go unnamed and functionally banished from their home for the crime of not being born male.  Frankly, since that culture (or possibly just Zayeed) deprived Quatre of the opportunity to interact with all those women, it’s not necessarily a surprise that all Quatre has to go on are idealizations.

[ileftherbackhome]

thinking about that stupid review article again but why the fuck did he bring up g eazy just to shame her for being more famous than him????? who was thinking about g eazy during this album???? he brought it during lonely is the muse so like does he think she's talking about him?????? nobody is thinking about that man but frankly this song reads more as a condemnation of society who cannot help but link women artists to their public love affairs but mostly about the type of men she decides to date reduce her to just a body in their bed, a thing to write songs about but as soon as someone new catches their eye, it's over.

i think it's ironic he did the very thing they were calling out in this song in the first place. it's about how inescapable misogyny is and how being famous does not save you from it in your personal relationships. instead of seeing the lines about them reducing their own value down to "just a couple of" diamonds as something that was done to them by the total apathy their romantic partner displays from the moment they meet him [the opening line is so good] this man is so offended by the implication that men are so sexist it affects the way they treat their girlfriends that he decides to take a weird shot at halsey about how they're more famous than their famous ex boyfriend so like stop playing victim?????

it is so fucking blatently sexist what the fuck is wrong with men.