Feminist rant

[green_queen]

Let's Watch A Girl Get Beaten To Death: Joss Whedon posts on the place of women in the modern world.

I don't know how many of you know this, but I take Gender Studies at university, and I think part of the reason I'm the feminist that I am today is because of Joss Whedon. Feminism is treated as a dirty word in today's society, and I do know a few Lilith House-type girls who have earned the title of militant feminist, but the fact is that the world is not nearly feminist enough. Feminism isn't saying that, Animal Farm-style, women should be more equal than men - it's saying that we should all be treated the same way. I started watching Buffy at the ripe old age of 13, and it totally shaped my adolescence, in ways I didn't even know about until I reached university. The fact is that the way Joss writes, his stories and characters, are a huge part of my psychological makeup. I developed critical thinking skills, learnt about the world and discovered what it really meant to be a woman living in it all while watching Joss on TV. Misogynistic thinking is more ingrained in every one of us than we think; it's a subconscious part of the culture we live in, no matter what country you're from. Joss is one of the people changing that, opening our eyes to the problems with it and affecting an entire generation of (geeky, I grant you) girls and women, and he's a man. How exactly does that work? Where are the strong, intelligent women in popular culture who can be role models and heroes? Women still aren't taken seriously, are seen as inferior and weak and not as capable or intelligent as men, despite concrete evidence to the contrary, and it can be seen not only in the examples Joss mentioned but insidiously in everyday life. Every single television commercial I see is either sexist or amusing or arresting for inverting gender norms. Women sell home products, food, fashion and children's products while men sell beer, cars and tools - unless, of course, they need a sex object to help sell the car. Every single woman seen holding a baby in an ad wears a wedding ring. Have you noticed this? Do you care? It's in every little image, every trope, every marker our culture has, in spite of the way we think of ourselves as culturally evolved.

Man, now I REALLY wish I could go to Can't Stop the Serenity for Equality Now in Sydney. If you want to go and help stop the inequality, ask me how.

Green Queen

Comments

[melissajane14.livejournal.com]

Today in my line of work, the Government Minister for Industrial Relations, Joe Hockey, made an offhand remark that people liked the policies of his Opposition counterpart Julia Gillard because she was "prettier" than he is. This is exactly the kind of crap women in politics have to put up with. If his opponent was a man he would have simply attacked on a policy level, but because it is a woman, he had to comment on her appearance. To her credit, when a journalist asked Julia if she was offended, she didn't even dignify that remark but instead turned it around to say she was offended by his policies.

_{I'm using that icon in a spirit of irony btw}

[morebliss.livejournal.com]

During the last election here in NZ, the candidate for the National Party (Don Brash) was completely outclassed in one of the televised debates by the current Labour Prime Minister, Helen Clark. He claimed the next day that he didn't want to raise his voice to a "woman", because of how he'd been bought up. I'm happy to say that she won the election, and he has since been replaced as Leader of the Oppositon (though he was replaced by another dickhead, John Key).

[killerspork33.livejournal.com]

Serious word to everything that you said here. I'm a information systems major at my university and in all of my computer classes I'm lucky if one other person out of the 25+ students is a girl.

The worst part is one specific computer class I had (were I was the only girl) had a elementary ed math class in it the hour before us. It was entirely girls, not one single boy and it just made me realize how totally stuck we still are. Despite girls going to college there is still a separation between what is a 'man's' career and what is a 'women's' career. And it's not always easy for me to walk into my classes because I know that there are people in there that don't think I belong because I'm a girl, including one prof I had my junior year.

[morebliss.livejournal.com]

This was such a timely post for me, as just today my friend and co-worker prefaced one of her sentences with "I'm not a feminist, but...". My gast was completely flabbered. I know 'intelligently' that there's been a backlash against the 'word' feminist since god was a girl, but when a contemporary of mine says something like that in such a blasé way, it makes me crazy. And in my haze of cold medication I couldn't say more than just "What?... Sorry, what? You don't consider yourself a feminist?" and then we had to go to a union meeting and then she left for the day. I will give her the link you shared with us tomorrow.

I do have some issues with a couple of the Buffy storylines/characters in terms of feminism, but Joss has always been very good at addressing those same issues in interviews. I can recognise it as streets ahead of the rest of the telly/popular media out there in terms of empowered female characterisation. (That, and the series kicks serious ass!) Thanks so much for posting this.

[makkabee.livejournal.com]

We have an incredible capacity for self-delusion. With historical examples of capable female leaders from Hatshepsut in New Kingdom Egypt to Margaret Thatcher (whose policies I detest but who did accomplish most of what she set out to do), there are STILL people who question women's ability to run a government, a corporation, or anything larger than a house in the suburbs. There are religions which promise harems, hordes of female sex partners, as rewards for the faithful, but consider female promiscuity, or even anything other than complete female chastity, vile and unforgivable.

What horrifies me even more is how many women buy into it. The Southern Baptist "ladies" wearing T-shirts reading "I'm glad my husband is my master" and such.

There are people who are willing to subsidize Viagra for men but not birth control for women.

In the USA women still only make about 70% of what men do, hold fewer than a dozen Senate seats out of 100, and have never gotten more than 13 electoral votes out of 535 for Vice President or ANY for President.

There's a genre of popular music dedicated to insulting women and treating them as certainly less than equal, if not less than human.

In Africa women are being mutilated, having their genitals hacked up. In America, the government is refusing asylum to women trying to escape this.

I'd like to end this on a positive note, but it's just so frickin' hard right now. We've got what? Angela Merkel?

[green-queen.livejournal.com]

Oh hey RB.

[dekolette.livejournal.com]

Every single television commercial I see is either sexist or amusing or arresting for inverting gender norms. Women sell home products, food, fashion and children's products while men sell beer, cars and tools - unless, of course, they need a sex object to help sell the car. Every single woman seen holding a baby in an ad wears a wedding ring.

You know actually I never really noticed and I don't know why because you are right. The only commercial that I do remember is a german one for the network DMAX and I don't know if the international trailer is the same one but it goes like this (i'll try my best to translate it)

The first human being on earth was a guy and the woman was made out of the guys rib. Who discovered unknown continents? Who invented the letterpress? Men! And the car, the light bulb even the washing machine...all invented by men. 96% of all noble prize winner, 98% of all bellwether and 100% of all firemen are men! We are the biggest athletes in every discipline. Ok we do have to work on the soccer part (female soccer team are world champions)... ... ... (and it goes on like this and in the end it's like) ... Men are the better human beings. DMAX - TV for the best human beings in the world: Men!

This commercial kinda pisses me off even though I had to laugh the first time I saw it in the theater.

What also makes me angry is that the men in the factory my mother is working for are getting more money than my mom even though they make the exact same work. =/

[melissajane14.livejournal.com]

I notice the wedding rings only because I used to work in a jewellery store and I notice jewellery. It's quite insidious really because it only really registers subconsciously.

[dawnydiesel.livejournal.com]

I'm helping with the Can't Stop the Serenity event in St. Louis, Missouri in June. If anyone wants more info on that (tickets, donations, etc...) feel free to point them in my direction.

[gabsy.livejournal.com]

I completely agree with everything you say. I'm a feminist, and I hate hearing people use that as a BAD THING.

[green-queen.livejournal.com]

The word has become so loaded with negative meaning that has nothing to do with feminism. How can you be a woman and not be proud of it?

[gabsy.livejournal.com]

Exactly. How can you not want to have equal opportunities, equal salary no matter your sex (or religion, or colour, or orientation etc)? How is it bad that you don't want to be classified a certain way because you're a woman, or to be seen as strange because you go for the less traditional route?

Equality is far from being obtained. And it won't come magically. It's by people fighting for it, talking about it, spreading the word that the world can be changed.