Ain't Feminism Just A Ball?
Mar. 27th, 2008 12:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bliumchikWow, internet debates. It's been a while. Now I consider myself a feminist despite the mis-definition and poor reputation the word has achieved in the public eye, so please view all my arguments through that framework - I defend reason, not sexism!
Nicky linked me to this (warning DO NOT CLICK if you're not in an appropriate mood to see the word rape bandied about willy-nilly and, you know, that particular brand of feminist rhetoric) and I thought it deserved a little more analysis than "wow, what a nutbag" so I replied, and tried to be polite and accommodating and all that. Nobody wants to talk to you if you're criticising them without finding ANYTHING worthwhile in their arguments. In fact I was just reading a study the other day confirming what we all already know - that it's easier to affirm someone's opinion in their minds by arguing with them than by agreeing with them.
I'm trusting that she is not, in fact, a nutbag, but merely someone with a certain political viewpoint that naturally leads to the sort of assumptions she's making. She appears to be an active member of no less than three separateminorities (I meant oppressed groups, women obviously aren't a minority *facepalm*), implying that she's gone through the usual xenophobic gauntlet which naturally isn't going to inspire a willingness to compromise. I guess we'll see if she deletes my comments or not, as far as I'm concerned that's the benchmark. Anyway, just in case my optimistic view turns out to be incorrect, and also because more discussion is always better, I'm posting my response here. It's currently screened so the copy-paste is for early commenters too. If you feel like having a rousing feminist spar (or want to join Nicky in bemused laughter, but PLEASE DO NOT FLAME ANYONE), then head on over to that post and then read my comment and, you know, be insightful!
The Post.
My comment: I'm afraid I'll have to respectfully disagree with a good deal of your points there.
Let me get the unpleasant one out straight off the bat - to say "I have never personally known of a healthy relationship between a white man and a woman of colour" and then extrapolate from that to "all white male/black female relationships are abusive" and from there to "this specific relationship must therefore be abusive" is not a good train of thought for someone who is trying to fight racism, which is full of generalisations that go exactly like that ("look at those black guys in the gang -> I bet all black guys are violent -> I bet the black guy in my office would rape me" = parallel logical position). Both of those extrapolations are huge assumptions that you really can't make about an individual couple, especially since your sole piece of evidence for the last one is that a man enjoys watching his beautiful wife bathe. I don't know about you, but if I was dating someone that hot, I would want to see her naked at every convenient opportunity too! You can view it through the postcolonial lens if you like, but I assure you that appreciation of beauty can be perfectly healthy without exoticising anything, and there are so many blatant and offensive objectification examples out there that you don't need to stretch yourself quite this far, honestly. And other exchanges between Zoe and Wash suggest there's a lot of love and respect there (in fact I'm pretty sure Zoe "wears the pants" in that relationship, excuse the vulgar phrase), I thought it was portrayed quite well as a genuine honest marriage with ups and downs and a lot of humour, but if you're going into it with the assumption that black/white relationships don't work then you're much less likely to see that. (note: I also have a problem with Our Mrs Reynolds and please don't think I'm dismissing your concerns about that episode, because I cringed at the good-little-housewife thing and how Wash implied that he'd like that. On the other hand Zoe was rightfully pissed about that and it clearly wasn't portrayed as an attitude they endorsed, just as one that existed. I think they weakened that by having her serve him dinner at the end, but they obviously didn't intend to say that Zoe went and turned into a good-little-housewife, just made an exception for a special occasion, which ameliorates that a bit.)
Regarding Zoe's subordinate position... frankly if she was a white male you wouldn't be complaining that the character lacks personality - I know it's a paradigmatically unbalanced comparison but my point is that the role of silent stoic second in command is actually very common in scifi and war films and westerns and, basically in action movies of any sort. All Whedon has done is swap out the race and gender, which may have the unfortunate side effect of evoking an unpleasant sociopolitical position but frankly - only if you're looking for it.
Now for your interpretation of Kaylee's relationship with Mal... I'm pretty sure that was intended as an older brother/younger sister sort of deal, apparently effectively as that's how everyone I've spoken to sees it. Now, I don't have an older brother but I do play the little sister in numerous relationships with both boys and girls of my acquaintance, and playful references to violence are pretty much par for the course. Saying "oh my god you are so dead!" is not tantamount to a death threat in my book, and I saw the exchange in that light both the times I watched the episode. I'd wager most people did, and I'm entirely certain that that's how it was meant. Once again, if Kaylee were Little Brother Kay it would not affect the exchange one bit.
Here's where we come to the individual nature of offensiveness again - if Kaylee were a rape/assault survivor that joke would almost certainly be inappropriate, and I notice that nothing like that is repeated after the bounty hunter actually does tie her up in the hold (although I found that parallel quite personally unpleasant and I wish there was less sexualised violence in the media, but given the amount of sexualised violence in LIFE anything less would be sort of idealistic. I like idealistic, but Firefly is not that. Nevertheless, they could have definitely toned it down a lot more and kept the gritty edge, so you do have a point on the "pornifying male violence" issue.)
I'll have to trust you on the frequency of male/female speech as I haven't counted - although I'm curious as to whether you counted occasions or ratios, ie whether it's that there aren't enough women or whether the women that are there don't have enough voice. In any case, that's quite a common phenomenon in predominantly male-written/oriented genres and needs fixing. There was an interesting article linked on Feministe? I think? Maybe AlterNet, anyway, it was about children's media specifically and a study that showed something like 3 times more boys than girls (including anthropomorphised animals) in children's cartoons and movies, a higher ratio than in adult media which is also quite unbalanced. Also the ones that were there were more likely to be The Girl and more likely to be hyper-feminised than boys were to be hyper-masculinised, eg secondary sexual characteristics on cartoon animals (lizards with breasts = DISTURBING). This is a real issue that's a fairly constant malaise and shows Whedon up as not being a lot more feminist than the average scifi writer (not active misogyny, though - just patriarchal conformism, and that's an important distinction to make if you're going to go spitting venom at people) and I fully intend to do my part to remedy that as an aspiring writer - thank you for drawing attention to it.
I won't go into the prostitution issue in this comment because it's too charged and I'm told things have gotten heated and been deleted, so if that happens I don't want to lose valid discussion along with it.
In conclusion, I think that you have some excellent points which I would love to bring up with Whedon and co, because I don't think they are rampant misogynists - based on this show, I think they're well-meaning and simply focused on the scifi over the feminism. I think Whedon in particular would be capable of learning from a reasoned discussion that doesn't throw the word rapist around like confetti, and adapting for future works.
Go for it! And do not, I REPEAT, DO NOT FLAME ANYONE AT ALL. I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR TRAFFIC, GUYS, PLEASE MOCK PRIVATELY. Or at least subtly, if you must.
Nicky linked me to this (warning DO NOT CLICK if you're not in an appropriate mood to see the word rape bandied about willy-nilly and, you know, that particular brand of feminist rhetoric) and I thought it deserved a little more analysis than "wow, what a nutbag" so I replied, and tried to be polite and accommodating and all that. Nobody wants to talk to you if you're criticising them without finding ANYTHING worthwhile in their arguments. In fact I was just reading a study the other day confirming what we all already know - that it's easier to affirm someone's opinion in their minds by arguing with them than by agreeing with them.
I'm trusting that she is not, in fact, a nutbag, but merely someone with a certain political viewpoint that naturally leads to the sort of assumptions she's making. She appears to be an active member of no less than three separate
The Post.
My comment: I'm afraid I'll have to respectfully disagree with a good deal of your points there.
Let me get the unpleasant one out straight off the bat - to say "I have never personally known of a healthy relationship between a white man and a woman of colour" and then extrapolate from that to "all white male/black female relationships are abusive" and from there to "this specific relationship must therefore be abusive" is not a good train of thought for someone who is trying to fight racism, which is full of generalisations that go exactly like that ("look at those black guys in the gang -> I bet all black guys are violent -> I bet the black guy in my office would rape me" = parallel logical position). Both of those extrapolations are huge assumptions that you really can't make about an individual couple, especially since your sole piece of evidence for the last one is that a man enjoys watching his beautiful wife bathe. I don't know about you, but if I was dating someone that hot, I would want to see her naked at every convenient opportunity too! You can view it through the postcolonial lens if you like, but I assure you that appreciation of beauty can be perfectly healthy without exoticising anything, and there are so many blatant and offensive objectification examples out there that you don't need to stretch yourself quite this far, honestly. And other exchanges between Zoe and Wash suggest there's a lot of love and respect there (in fact I'm pretty sure Zoe "wears the pants" in that relationship, excuse the vulgar phrase), I thought it was portrayed quite well as a genuine honest marriage with ups and downs and a lot of humour, but if you're going into it with the assumption that black/white relationships don't work then you're much less likely to see that. (note: I also have a problem with Our Mrs Reynolds and please don't think I'm dismissing your concerns about that episode, because I cringed at the good-little-housewife thing and how Wash implied that he'd like that. On the other hand Zoe was rightfully pissed about that and it clearly wasn't portrayed as an attitude they endorsed, just as one that existed. I think they weakened that by having her serve him dinner at the end, but they obviously didn't intend to say that Zoe went and turned into a good-little-housewife, just made an exception for a special occasion, which ameliorates that a bit.)
Regarding Zoe's subordinate position... frankly if she was a white male you wouldn't be complaining that the character lacks personality - I know it's a paradigmatically unbalanced comparison but my point is that the role of silent stoic second in command is actually very common in scifi and war films and westerns and, basically in action movies of any sort. All Whedon has done is swap out the race and gender, which may have the unfortunate side effect of evoking an unpleasant sociopolitical position but frankly - only if you're looking for it.
Now for your interpretation of Kaylee's relationship with Mal... I'm pretty sure that was intended as an older brother/younger sister sort of deal, apparently effectively as that's how everyone I've spoken to sees it. Now, I don't have an older brother but I do play the little sister in numerous relationships with both boys and girls of my acquaintance, and playful references to violence are pretty much par for the course. Saying "oh my god you are so dead!" is not tantamount to a death threat in my book, and I saw the exchange in that light both the times I watched the episode. I'd wager most people did, and I'm entirely certain that that's how it was meant. Once again, if Kaylee were Little Brother Kay it would not affect the exchange one bit.
Here's where we come to the individual nature of offensiveness again - if Kaylee were a rape/assault survivor that joke would almost certainly be inappropriate, and I notice that nothing like that is repeated after the bounty hunter actually does tie her up in the hold (although I found that parallel quite personally unpleasant and I wish there was less sexualised violence in the media, but given the amount of sexualised violence in LIFE anything less would be sort of idealistic. I like idealistic, but Firefly is not that. Nevertheless, they could have definitely toned it down a lot more and kept the gritty edge, so you do have a point on the "pornifying male violence" issue.)
I'll have to trust you on the frequency of male/female speech as I haven't counted - although I'm curious as to whether you counted occasions or ratios, ie whether it's that there aren't enough women or whether the women that are there don't have enough voice. In any case, that's quite a common phenomenon in predominantly male-written/oriented genres and needs fixing. There was an interesting article linked on Feministe? I think? Maybe AlterNet, anyway, it was about children's media specifically and a study that showed something like 3 times more boys than girls (including anthropomorphised animals) in children's cartoons and movies, a higher ratio than in adult media which is also quite unbalanced. Also the ones that were there were more likely to be The Girl and more likely to be hyper-feminised than boys were to be hyper-masculinised, eg secondary sexual characteristics on cartoon animals (lizards with breasts = DISTURBING). This is a real issue that's a fairly constant malaise and shows Whedon up as not being a lot more feminist than the average scifi writer (not active misogyny, though - just patriarchal conformism, and that's an important distinction to make if you're going to go spitting venom at people) and I fully intend to do my part to remedy that as an aspiring writer - thank you for drawing attention to it.
I won't go into the prostitution issue in this comment because it's too charged and I'm told things have gotten heated and been deleted, so if that happens I don't want to lose valid discussion along with it.
In conclusion, I think that you have some excellent points which I would love to bring up with Whedon and co, because I don't think they are rampant misogynists - based on this show, I think they're well-meaning and simply focused on the scifi over the feminism. I think Whedon in particular would be capable of learning from a reasoned discussion that doesn't throw the word rapist around like confetti, and adapting for future works.
Go for it! And do not, I REPEAT, DO NOT FLAME ANYONE AT ALL. I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR TRAFFIC, GUYS, PLEASE MOCK PRIVATELY. Or at least subtly, if you must.
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no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 03:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-28 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-28 01:00 am (UTC)Alas, 'twas ineffectual. Now I can call her a fruitcake as much as I want!