TextualDeviance

gorgbus:

textualdeviance:

I still think Warehouse 13 needs to be considered a bible for all writers/directors/producers on how to make something brilliant that also happens to pass the Bechdel test with flying colors, AND includes canon queer characters, older women, people of color, etc. It’s one of Syfy’s top-rated shows, too, so boom go the “people won’t watch it” excuses for making stuff into nothing but sausage fests. It’s doable. If you can’t/don’t/won’t, it’s because you’re shitty at your job, not because audiences won’t watch stuff without wall-to-wall straight, white dudes.

great point. the show is not above criticism as it sidelines and typecasts poc, as well as ignores positioning Steve as an actively gay character. that being said, the show still kicks some serious ass and this post is a super important point. long live the warehouse!

Points taken, definitely (though I think the latter issue may be improved upon somewhat as the rest of this season goes on.) 

I also have to give credit to Joanne and Jaime, for pushing ahead with the Bering/Wells thing even if it wasn’t originally intended to be canon (and still isn’t, technically.) Kind of funny, really, how the show’s biggest fan-supported ship turned out to be f/f, and traditional m/f-leads het shippers are finding themselves in the position slashers usually are. 

Overall, I think most SFF shows these days are doing diversity much better than their mainstream counterparts. There are still fails now and then, both in the stuff I mentioned in the previous post (SPN, DW, Merlin) and in other stuff (why, if Grimm has a gay showrunner, has it had no gay characters? Weird.) But there’s also been some great progress. Honestly, I think that’s why it’s so jarring when stuff like SPN does fail to be inclusive. It’s just not that common anymore for a genre show to be all white dudes, all the time. We’ve definitely made some great steps forward. 

And speaking of steps forward, I do have to put in a plug for a couple of shows about to have their U.S. debuts on Syfy next month: Sinbad and Primeval: New World. The former has a black lead and other prominent PoC characters, and for once is a fantasy set outside of Europe. And the latter has both PoC characters and a canon bisexual (not to mention one of the most realistic women characters I’ve seen in years in Dylan Weir.) Many of Syfy’s other recent shows have been good, too—Defiance, Continuum, etc. (My issues with Lost Girl are a different post, sadly.) 

I think the conventional marketing wisdom is still a factor. Cable shows do still make only a fraction of the ratings of their network counterparts, and goodness knows the biggest ratings of all are still going to trashy reality dreck, instead of quality scripted stuff. Sadly, many women, queer folk and people of color are still blithely watching stuff that marginalizes or even denigrates them, and straight, white dudes are still considered a target demo, even if they don’t make up the majority of viewers and haven’t for a generation. But we are making progress, and I think there are fewer and fewer excuses to be had now for not being inclusive. The target 18-35 demo takes diversity as a given, not a controversy, so there’s no point in trying to pussyfoot around their delicate sensibilities anymore. The people who did care about such things are aging out of marketing sweet spots, so catering to prejudice just isn’t important anymore. 

Now if only the folks with the purse strings would realize that. ;)

I still think Warehouse 13 needs to be considered a bible for all writers/directors/producers on how to make something brilliant that also happens to pass the Bechdel test with flying colors, AND includes canon queer characters, older women, people of color, etc. It’s one of Syfy’s top-rated shows, too, so boom go the “people won’t watch it” excuses for making stuff into nothing but sausage fests. It’s doable. If you can’t/don’t/won’t, it’s because you’re shitty at your job, not because audiences won’t watch stuff without wall-to-wall straight, white dudes.

itisnotofimport:

Misha lays down the motherfucking law. [x]

In which Misha explains—perfectly—why I stopped watching the show. I just can’t get into anything that doesn’t have three-dimensional women, even if it’s a slashfest. This is also why I’m not terribly into Sherlock or Merlin, though I watch them. Every woman in them is a cardboard stand in, not a real person.

He’s also right that many SPN fans would find female characters threatening to their pairings, which is ridiculous. I don’t think a show/movie/book has to be devoid of realistic women in order for slashable pairings to happen. Arrow, for instance, has plenty of slash potential, but also has some great women. And of course my favorites—Primeval, Game of Thrones, Vikings—are swimming in slashbait, yet also manage to pass the Bechdel test at least now and then. When’s the last time SPN, Sherlock or Merlin did that? Hell, DW also doesn’t do it often, which is why I don’t watch that, either. Honestly, if a dudebro bait/slash tsunami like Hawaii Five-0 can manage to include great women, there’s no excuse for a fan-savvy SFF show not to.

I just don’t get why women would be so heavily into stories that basically erase them from existence or treat them like unicorns or scenery. We’re half the damned population. Why are we only 25% of TV characters?

There are a lot of things about Revolution that don’t quite sit well with me, but I was impressed at them featuring a middle-aged lesbian couple in this last episode. 

(Not only that, but in NBC’s episode synopsis, they referred to Beth as Jane’s wife. Whoa!)

This is one of those one-off things where they could easily have just defaulted to an opposite-sex couple, or some other family member, and in virtually every show, that’s what would’ve happened. They had to make a conscious decision to include lesbians, which is really progressive. The bonus of them being middle-aged, long-term, etc. is even better. Young lesbians and bi women get a fair amount of screentime these days (relatively speaking, of course), but older women, and older lesbians in particular, are very few and far between. Really nice to see.

This season is REALLY proving why Game of Thrones is such a feminist powerhouse. Can you name ANY other currently airing show with so many strong women of so many different types? They span decades in ages, are of many different social classes and professions, are butch, femme and everything in between. There are mothers, sisters, daughters and lovers of men, but they’re rarely defined by those roles, and are different from other women who have the same labels. Cat, Cersei, Gilly, Olenna, Lysa and Dany are all mothers, and yet all wildly different from each other, for instance. And the women warriors are different from each other, too. Arya, Brienne, Ygritte, Asha (Yara), Meera … all different. You basically never see that anywhere else, since most writers assume giving a pretty girl a weapon instantly makes her a strong character. 

This story—book and TV both—is not without its problems, of course, but for something written by an old white dude, the women (and girls!) in it really are phenomenal. And it’s not like a woman writer would guarantee such a diverse group of women characters, either. (In fact, they often default to women with whom the author identifies. See: Girls.*)

It could use more women of color, definitely (though: non-book readers will be pleased to know there are more coming in future seasons, as the story moves to Dorne) and a proper lesbian or two would be nice as well. But really, I continue to be impressed with the female characters in this story, and only wish that would happen in other stories, too. It’s rare enough to have strong women characters in mainstream entertainment. Having so many different kinds of strong women is more or less unheard of.  

*ETA, in case that statement is unclear: My point is that merely being a woman doesn’t guarantee a sense of diversity. The problems modern feminism has with intersectionality should be proof enough of that. Sexism, racism and classism have ensured that most of the women who have a voice in pop culture are white, femme, 30-something, educated urbanites, and unfortunately, they tend to write women characters who fit that same description. 

jazzylittledrops:

So this video started going around my facebook today, with about a dozen of my female friends sharing the link with comments like, and “Everyone needs to see this”, and “All girls should watch this,” and “This made me cry.” And I’m not trying to shame those girls! I definitely understand why they would do so. And I don’t want to be a killjoy. But as I clicked the link and started watching the video, I started to feel a slight sense of discomfort. I couldn’t put my finger on why that was, exactly, but it continued throughout the whole thing. After watching the video several more times, I have some thoughts… 

Read More

Read all of this. It’s brilliant. 

The problem I have with this (beyond the fact that parent company Unilever is a bunch of devils) is the problem I have with all fashion and cosmetic companies that try to “expand” the definition of beauty:

1. They’re only trying to increase the size of their customer base, by easing the boundaries around “beauty” to include more people.

2. There will ALWAYS be people beyond those boundaries no matter how much they expand them, because the success of their product still depends on women trying to improve their looks in comparison to people considered unattractive. 

This is just a modern, milder version of Backlash feminism: re-coding the instruments and paradigms of sexism as empowerment to avoid having companies fail when women realize they’re being swindled. 

The message shouldn’t be that fat/black/age/etc. is “also” beautiful; it should be that the physical appearance of women is utterly irrelevant to our value as human beings. “Beauty” is a word for flowers and sunsets and generous spirits. It should never be the primary label for a person’s physical being.

FTR: This doesn’t mean we can’t find people physically attractive or enjoy what they look like. It also doesn’t mean people can’t play with makeup and costuming for fun. It only means that we mustn’t ascribe virtue and value to things that are dependent primarily on a combination of genes and enormous amounts of money funneled to the Beauty Industrial Complex. 

And it also means that if you yourself are funneling money to those companies, you might want to take a step back and see if there are other ways you can indulge your interests in those things without contributing to a paradigm designed to make people spend money so they don’t feel shitty about the face and body nature gave them. 

Meyllen Djneres (via muffinsandcouture)

This. There is more than one way to be a woman. Hell, there’s more than one way to be a lot of things. Shared identity in large-population groups will necessarily include some commonalities, but the details can vary enormously from person to person. 

Additionally, none of us are only one thing, and each part of our identity informs how the other parts manifest. Women of color, queer women, women with disabilities, working class women—and women who are several or all of these things—will experience womanhood differently from women who have different trait sets. Yet they are all women, and all may suffer from gender-based discrimination in sexist cultures. And—importantly—one of the ways in which they may suffer is a construct of womanhood that ignores the other, extremely important parts of who they are.

A short list of ass-kicking women on TV who existed before Buffy Summers:

• Susan Ivanova
• Ambassador Delenn 
• Kira Nerys
• Jadzia Dax 
• Lt. Tasha Yar
• Dr. Beverly Crusher
• Jamie Somers
• Sgt. Pepper Anderson
• Jennifer Hart
• Wonder Woman
• Cagney & Lacey
• Sgt. Lucy Bates
• Kelly Garrett
• Jill Munroe
• Sabrina Duncan
• Dana Scully 
• Julie Barnes

… and there were dozens more in books and movies.  

I wouldn’t call all of those feminist characters, of course—Charlie’s Angels, especially, existed primarily for titillation—but the point is that Joss didn’t do anything new.

I suspect a lot of young women who grew up in the Buffy era missed many of those earlier characters and thus may well have thought she was something new and exciting. She wasn’t. She was just another pretty girl punching bad guys. We’ve had that for a very, very long time. The rise of second-wave feminism in the ’70s and early ’80s actually brought with it a trend of female-led entertainment for a time. Granted that much of it was problematic for various reasons, and getting women behind the scenes is still a struggle even today (Though Amy Berg, Jane Espenson, Gillian Horvath, Shonda Rimes and many others are pushing ahead.) But the point is that we’ve been making progress, albeit slowly, for much longer than some young folks may think. Feminism in pop culture did not begin in 1997, and it certainly didn’t begin with Joss Whedon. 

Again, this isn’t to say that what he does is necessarily bad. There are some seriously problematic things about it, however, and no one should have to feel like they’re committing blasphemy to bring those issues up. His work is not sacrosanct. Like ANY other pop culture, it can, and should, be viewed in context with the larger culture in which it exists, and if found lacking, those shortcomings ought to be pointed out so people—including him—can learn what not to do in the future. 

I get that these characters are very near and dear to people who grew up with them. I feel the same way about many characters I grew up with, too. But maturity means looking back at the things you loved when you were younger and realizing that they might not have been as golden as you thought they were then. Of course, those works must be judged within the context of the era in which they existed, but in this case, as I’m pointing out here, it’s not as if that context was devoid of anything like what he was doing at the time. 

Joss is a great writer. He knows how to write fantastic dialogue, heart-grabbing plots and characters we want to care about. But he’s not perfect, and that’s OK. Pointing out where he’s fucking up is not a personal attack against him or any of his fans. It’s just an attempt to keep the conversation going, so that in the future, there won’t even be a question as to whether there are enough strong women—of many, many different types—in pop culture. 

From One Jane Doe To Another: About the project.

shortsharpsnippydisagreeable:

from1janedoe2another:

This is a partner project with Arming Sisters. Because physical self defense isn’t the only type that survivors of sexual assault need. We have a phone line you can call where your words will be recorded and posted here.

You can leave your name, or remain anonymous as Jane or John Doe. We’d…

Boosting the signal.

Phenomenal.

Franchesca Ramsey on Girls (via andthenwesetheartsaside)

I DON’T KNOW IF I’VE PUSHED THIS INTERVIEW ENOUGH BUT EVERYONE PLS GO READ IT SHE IS AMAZING

(via faganchelsea)

All of this. I’ve actually lost friends over my feelings about this show, and truly, how one feels about it seems to be the dividing line between individualist (read: affluent, white, cisgender femmes having the “right” to do whatever they feel like, even if it harms women with less power) feminism and intersectional feminism.

It’s true that women with privilege are still women, and therefore still subject to sexism, but let’s not pretend that all their other privileges don’t give them a leg up over everyone else who ALSO has to contend with sexism. Merely having one or two aspects of oneself that make one subject to discrimination doesn’t mean one doesn’t have privilege in any other area. Gay men can be sexist. White women can be racist. People with disabilities can be homophobic. “Check your privilege” doesn’t apply only to the rare few people who are lucky enough to have every privilege possible. It applies to all of us. If someone is behaving in a way that abuses their privilege, damned right I’m going to call them on it, even if we share some other aspect that marks us as a target for discrimination. Justice trumps in-group loyalty, every time, and people who cry discrimination to avoid getting called out for being an assgasket aren’t worth that loyalty anyway.