Sexism - It's a Real Thing

[Making Chimichangas]

This is the perfect thread to put in my political thoughts about The Last Jedi...

 

You can go to YouTube and search for "I hate The Last Jedi" and find tons of videos where (mostly) white males rip the movie apart.  As near as I can tell, the over-whelming majority of white males who hate The Last Jedi hate it solely because there are women in the lead roles and many non-whites in other roles.

 

Most white male Star Wars fans have the idea that Star Wars is exclusively theirs.  They see these female leads and non-white characters and their instant, knee-jerk reaction tends to be, "f___ing social justice warriors!"  Or, "SJWs have ruined Star Wars" and "This pro-feminist Stars Wars SJW crap makes me sick!"

 

As Zoogs pointed out, too many white males view the world as a zero sum game.  They believe, erroneously I think, that because women and non-whites are gaining in society that they, by default, must be losing.  Then there is also the notion circulating amongst right-wing sites that "diversity = white genocide."  (Which is so utterly ludicrous it could almost have its own thread.)

 

And @Nebfanatic stated the problem concisely and beautifully.  Most white males do have a tendency to think that because they haven't experienced something that it doesn't exist or the people talking about it are exaggerating it.

 

 

 

[zoogs]

I don't want to make this a "if you didn't like the movie you're a sexist white man" thing to be clear, but I think there's a strong outpouring of love for this film from other corners -- women, PoC, LGBTQ, the intersections -- that is strange for I think *everybody*, because it's just unusual for a major film to be made with such pointed intentions. And as far as "major film" goes, there is nothing that approaches a mainline Star Wars feature. I can't stop thinking about the headline to one of the many reviews I read, which was "This Star Wars is MINE". I feel that, so, so very much.

 

It's not a paean to all the fans of the previous films, it almost certainly tarnishes things they loved and cherished (I mean, the EU was discarded. I have no use for the EU, but I understand this is dear to many a SW fan...) but it's also reached and inspired a very different sort of audience. I'm here for it. I wish everyone would be, but hey, tastes vary!

 

For me personally: I liked SW a lot. I was skeptical of Disney. I had poured over Wookiepedia, read all about the prequel "ring theory" that made me wish they'd let Lucas finish off his opera, and really didn't know what to make of this. I'm truly floored by what they've done. This Star Wars is mine in a way that, as much as I enjoyed previous movies and the whole universe of lightsabers and The Force and everything, as much as I was always on board with the political message at the core of every Star Wars film, itfranchise never was. I can't explain it, entirely, though obviously I've been trying; it just is.

 

FWIW, I do judge much of contemporary pop culture through the lens of feminism. I think it's really one of the tasks of our time, to find a way to balance our perspectives a lot more relative to the world in which we were raised. There was a thread here not long ago about naming your top three favorite TV characters. We went through I think about 50 different names without a single female character. If I hadn't taken note of that, of course some of the first names that would have come to mind would also be male characters, and I can recognize a lot more starring or supporting male roles, period. 

 

In some endeavors, it's not enough to simply "not" take a harmful stance. You have actively ply in the other direction. This is one of those. And it's not just a women's topic or women's issue; it is as much about how men understand how we should move through the world and how we should regard people. The backlash is very real, too. I remember a former member here talking politics. It turns out that Ezra Klein, who heads Vox, is one of the more earnestly feminist media voices out there (in a world of Mark Halperins, this is not a high bar). I was told: "Be careful of Ezra Klein. I'd stay away [from reading him] -- he's bad for men." What a disgrace.

 

--

Also, relatedly...

<3 

 

 

[Making Chimichangas]

I think maybe I should clarify...

 

In the post above when I said "...Most white males who hate TLJ..."

 

I was referring to the majority of youtube videos I saw....not all white males across the board. 

 

Re-reading that made me think I didn't say it right.

[BigRedBuster]

On 12/29/2017 at 11:07 PM, Making Chimichangas said:

Some white male Star Wars fans have the idea that Star Wars is exclusively theirs

Whoa whoa whoa. ....had to fix this. 

[Making Chimichangas]

14 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

Whoa whoa whoa. ....had to fix this. 

 

That's what I meant but obviously didn't say it...apologies.

[zoogs]

Ah, yeah. I try to just mark "not interested" on those videos and hope YT takes the hint ;-) For SW stuff, I like the Star Wars Explained guy. He's quite measured and knowledgeable.

 

Wanted to add: this isn't a TLJ phenomenon; it's been here since the first TFA teaser dropped and there was a (gasp) black stormtrooper. Now we have the first female Jedi to have a SW movie speaking role, and prominent female characters dominate the screen. Of course the fury has grown. There's your people who are explicitly, openly mad about this -- and others who get that same strong sense of "things are not right here" but try to build an auxiliary case for those feelings.

 

Politics often works that way; odious impulses are transcribed to benign appeals to reason. "It's not that I resent the government helping black people, I just want personal responsibility". "It's not that I want to jail black people, but INNER CITIES!" "It's not that I'm not feminist, it's just today's is militant feminazis run amok." "It's not that I'm against unions, but this particular one is a bad idea/doing a bad thing." "It's not that I'm against female protagonists, but Rey is a total Mary Sue. It's just bad writing in this particular case!" "I'm on board with more diversity, it's just this time, it's cynical catering to those SJW crazies!" Etc. Oh, yeah: "I'm Nebraska's governor and I support your right to protest, UNL student and activist Michael Rose, it's just the way you are going about it is just beyond the pale. Please stop and let's talk after the SACRED footbawl season." 

 

All this is to say there's a lot of this that is understandable, and forgivable. Everyone has their blind spots, and hopefully some of the folks who don't really get why this film is adored can understand that this is reaching people in a way that the original trilogy reached themselves, but couldn't quite for others. 

 

There's a lot of good stuff in the following:

- http://www.refinery29.com/2017/12/185735/star-wars-last-jedi-cast-women-movie-review

- https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/dec/18/star-wars-the-last-jedi-women-bechdel-test

- http://www.vulture.com/2015/12/star-wars-all-female-lines-excluding-leia.html?utm_campaign=vulture&utm_source=fb&utm_medium=s1 (All 63 seconds of non-Leia dialogue by a female character in the entire, vaunted OT)

 

The OT has a genuine magic about it that they are right to recapture. As for what they're trying to change, for my money, it's the most crucial, urgent, and worthwhile aspect to be focusing on (I'll stop you before "Oh, I agree, only in this case it's just not done the right way"). And I'm thankful that the folks MC and I have been talking about are really a minority. Well. I hope! Still, I find exploring some of the roots of the backlash to be necessary and illuminating. What do they prize? What is it they're anxious is being taken from them?

 

[RedDenver]

Edit: deleted, having trouble with viewing and replying to thread today

Edited January 2, 2018 by RedDenver

[zoogs]

Different topic, good thread:

 

https://twitter.com/amyngyn/status/948220019925647360

 

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/brotopia-silicon-valley-secretive-orgiastic-inner-sanctum

 

 

[teachercd]

Iceland!!!  Good for them!

Edited January 3, 2018 by teachercd

[zoogs]

https://jezebel.com/community-writer-megan-ganz-takes-dan-harmon-to-task-fo-1821743718?rev=1515005651110&utm_campaign=socialfow_jezebel_twitter&utm_source=jezebel_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

 

Oh, man. This was jolting and uncomfortable to read.

[BigRedBuster]

37 minutes ago, zoogs said:

https://jezebel.com/community-writer-megan-ganz-takes-dan-harmon-to-task-fo-1821743718?rev=1515005651110&utm_campaign=socialfow_jezebel_twitter&utm_source=jezebel_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

 

Oh, man. This was jolting and uncomfortable to read.

 

As someone who had very strong female figures in my life and a father who taught me to respect women....along with one of my first bosses being a very well respected woman...then marrying a professional woman and having two daughters who grew up strong, smart, and are moving towards a professional career........this pisses me off.

 

This piece of s#!t is only saying these things and feeling this way because he was exposed and is embarrassed.  

[Landlord]

7 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

This piece of s#!t is only saying these things and feeling this way because he was exposed and is embarrassed.  

 

I disagree, he seems sincere from my perception. Either way, is it really any of our business to interpret internal motivations of people we don't know - at least when they're seeming to be candid and apologetic? 

[zoogs]

It rips me apart because I can (or at least want to) that Dan Harmon is genuinely contrite, but I think BRB is correct. Dan Harmon is interested in Dan Harmon's catharsis. On the other hand, at least he's embarrassed. He could have gone with "she's lying/misinterpreting. I did nothing untoward." And I hope that was instructive for him. Megan was extraordinarily patient.

 

Side note, I started watching Community from the beginning last year and did not expect how much of it to have aged poorly, to put it lightly. I think it's mainly Season 1. The show was clearly pitched as "Jeff's a jerk, but all the girls chase after him, especially the ones he's cruelest to". I couldn't even recognize the show I thought I knew...but by season's end they had the paintball episode, and then started going with a lot more of the wacky parodies in Season 2. Maybe that was them finding their footing -- moderating and then doing away with some of the worst initial impulses. Which, vague as all this is, might make a little more sense to me now.

[zoogs]

The way in which women who aim high are made into villains: her "relentless positioning", "transparently opportunistic", "self-serving play", lack of "genuine", ...

 

Who is this Ciro Scotti guy, to pontificate about what "the larger question" surrounding this 2020 really is? A political columnist? Someone who frequently covers Senators and who has his pulse on the "zeitgeist" to which he so frequently refers? Nah. He writes for finance and business outlets, mostly about fighter jets and US military expenditures. He's a nobody. He posted this article on his Twitter, where when I checked he had under a thousand followers. Not one person liked his tweet, and about twenty people replied uniformly informing him of his folly. It's really something that The Daily Beast, a prominent and very liberally slanted outlet, would see fit to hand the mic over to a rando like this when it decided to talk about Senator Gillibrand.

[BigRedBuster]

I find this whole relationship between Ivanka and Trump interesting.  She is smart enough woman to see what is going on.  But.....I also know that people in relationships can block certain things out and enable the abuser.