Agreed.

And yet, if I just start banning them, somehow I’m the bad guy.

Sorry to get off on a tangent, but since someone mentioned the forums… I’m extremely frustrated with them lately because I swear, it didn’t used to be like this. I’ve been lurking off and on since it was just five people in a dorm room, and for the longest time, it was a really friendly, equitable place. It’s been in the past six months or so that a huge wave of extremely obnoxious new people have come through and drowned out all the good that used to be there. It’s like a punch in the gut, especially after spending so much time lately in the feminist blagosphere, where there may be huge disagreements, but at least the fundamental fact that women are people isn’t constantly questioned.

I’ve been pondering splitting off and making a more explicitly feminist XKCD community for awhile now, but I worry that it’ll either just end up as a big troll magnet, or drain all the good out of the exisiting one and leave it as this creepy privileged white boy echo chamber. D:

We don’t make movies with F/F leads, or F/M leads, because we don’t have proof that movies like that have succeeded before. And in movies with, say F/F/M characters as the core characters, the movie will lead with the bankable names and the billing will most likely be M/F. Partly this is a self fulfilling prophecy, since if we don’t give women top billing in something, we’ll never give them a chance to get acknowledged as a bankable star. Partly its to do with the ageist sexism in the industry, since the average female star will not be given a long enough run to be get to the point where they’re considered bankable.

Additionally, if we’re working within a “historical” context, a lot of genres will ring false with female leads. (Not that iffy historical accuracy seems to concern the producers, writers, or movie-going public all that much(“Shhh. Here come the ninjas”)). A number of genres will require more skillful writing to have a female lead in a present day storyline. (Eg, if you make a movie about a male president, the movie can still go in almost any direction. If you make a movie about a female president, then the fact that the president is female is part of the narrative. Its true of less and less roles as time goes on, but its still a factor).

I say some, because amongst other hobbies, I’m in the SCA, where I’ve encountered a hell of a lot less sexism. There are a few potential influences on this, but I think its mainly the fact that its a nerdy hobby where women aren’t a tiny minority.

I’m going to generalize from personal experience here.

We’re often white, usually male and for the majority of our formative years, we’re bottom rung on the pecking order. We usually get exposed to different religions, different ethnicities, differently abled people in college, and we usually welcome people who share our passions. And almost all male “nerd” passions are heavily gender balanced towards men.

Essentially, and still wildly generalizing here, we get told, or tell ourselves, that our intelligence makes us different, that it sets us apart. This means that its easier to bond with people we see as fellow nerds, and overlook superficial differences, like ethnicities, religions, sexualities, and sex. But meeting female nerds? Rare. Very rare. So for many nerds, women are in the great big category of non nerds, we allow ourselves to think, they’re just not like us.

We lose out socially, we’ve got less chance of having a relationship, probably start having sex later than our peers, and these are both mentally connected to the other negatives of being a young nerd.

I still have occasional problems, when I read a post or a comment that reflects on the posters backgroung going out with a total sexist arsehole of one stripe or another, until they wised up and became a feminist, and I think “I hope you realise, you helped create the problem”. Which is unfair, and mostly useless.

I’m not trying to excuse here, just explain. I think some of these problems are, on one level, likely to be solved, or at least reduced, indirectly. If barriers on women in maths and science and engineering are lowered, if it becomes more ok for women to be nerdy (something that does seem to be happening), way more nerds will be exposed to women as part of the group they consider worthy of not being discriminated against. Other nerds.

What about Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica. That is one of the best character’s on television. She also happens to be the toughest soldier on the show. Plus, Katee Sackhoff rules!

I waded in in the last few comments (discussion is still going). I was going for a PHMT, not a “What About the Menz,” and that’s the way the discussion went (thank God!). I think I’m in love with “Andy.”

Anyway, this is how I wrapped up my last post over there…

I think MY problem with a lot of “women’s movies” is that, um, they are “women’s movies” and not just “movies.” I mean, I like them, but I can only ever watch them when I’m in the mood to think about Issues (which are generally depressing). I’m thinking Mona Lisa Smile here, North Country. I can’t wait ’til we, as a culture, get to the point where a woman can just…be the lead in a movie. Without it being a big deal or creating expectations, a la “chick flicks,” about what that movie’s going to be like.

So yes, I want more River Tams and VI Warshawskis and Junos. I don’t think I’m crazy or a conspiracy theorist or ignorant of the basic facts of life and nature for saying there’s not a lot of well-publicized, high-budget movies about women, but I think it’d be nice if there were, and that they’re not automatically worse than movies about men!

(first time poster, here.)

I think it really does have a lot to do with the idea of women will identify with a male character (and that’s acceptable), but men will not identify with a female character (because that would be like, so gay). And then when you do get a female lead, she’s usually a sexpot sorta character with 1 dimension to her personality. (Don’t get me started on anime, the majority of which is SIMPLY NOT FEMINIST no matter how many chicks you throw in there. Though there are a few that are, and most are kind of old. Just sayin’.)

Another thing I think is that most Hollywood writers are men, and most have NO EFFIN’ CLUE what real women think or talk like. It’s weird. It seems like women can adequately approximate male thinking, but men put forth a kind of caricature of femininity and what it means to be a woman. I guess that goes with the whole social phenomenon of women bothering to pay attention to and understand people, while men don’t …

Yeah… I spend so much time on feminist blogs. Then I go back to the “real world” where stuff like this happens on my campus:

Feminism: A Heated Controversy