According to Miriam-Webster exploit is a transitive verb (not a noun), short version, 2nd def. down, ” to make use of meanly or unfairly for one’s own advantage.”

People can be exploited for others’ gain. If she’s going to write about issues she hasn’t experienced (I don’t know about Juno, but she’s not plural), she needs to watch how she does it so it’s handled with respect. It isn’t that she’s making movies and shows that deal with, say, adoption and mental health, it’s that with the shows she’s creating a lot of people find enforce negative stereotypes and/or misinformation. Or, bluntly, it’s handled pettily at best. That’s only opinion, but it’s shared by a lot of people in the groups her shows are the subject of. I’ve seen the trailer for her new horror movie – unless it’s radically different from the preview, it’s filled with sexism. It could very well be different, haven’t seen it yet. But Cody is not her movies. To argue that her movies are feminist just because she is is ridiculous. Which is what seems to be going on in the internet at large with the “She can’t be all things to all women” vibe. That’s a cop out. No one is asking her to be all things. No one expects her to present every view – just to handle the things she does put out with research and respect. Which, imo, she did not do, at least wrt USoT. You do not talk to the doctors who rule you to make a sitcom when you have no info about the subject – you talk to actual people.

And if this is a thread to inquire whether Diablo Cody is herself a feminist, that question is moot. She already said she was, she clearly believes in equality. But that doesn’t mean her films – don’t – contain some rather problematic shit.

==== yes… and first we need, and feminism needs to examine the use of the word exploit.

Exploit is a verb which applies to OBJECTS. Always, only, and forever. Objects.
In the term “sexual exploitation” the object being exploited is the sexuality. Not the person.

Situations are exploited,
Weaknesses are exploited,
Characteristics are exploited.

People are not.

I still am a teenager and thing Juno was a crappy movie.

I do wonder if the problem with Juno is that there have been so few movies that even talk about abortion or adoption that Juno is forced to be the center of conversation about those topics, when really it’s just about a single abortion that didn’t happen and a single adoption that did.

Like I said, Diablo is like some sort of Rorschach for feminists – it surprises me how much she polarizes us

What’s a nice way to say “I reject the HELL outta that framing?” Because I do. I knew I didn’t want to comment for this; I only did because Laurel reminded me of all the moments I wasted wincing over that wretched dialogue, and because I wanted to convey, by nodding also at Mar’s comment, that feminism is not a brand. It is not about our brand choices. It is not about which female entertainers we like or which women-centered this, that, or the other thing we consume–excuse me, I mean support. But it had better be about more than what we give two thumbs up to and what we give two thumbs down.

And sweet merciful Jesus, we’ve got other choices besides “feminist ally” and Sarah Maverick Palin.

I know! Pop culture and feminism have intersections! And that’s great, and fun to explore, and why I read Tiger Beatdown devotedly the same as everybody else, but when it gets distilled into the nonsense that we are actually capable of being polarized by Diablo Cody, that we’re that out of ideas, that out of our depths, that shallow, I lose it. A thread about Diablo Cody, Feminist? is probably not the place for me to do that, I admit–especially because my ranting is only going to be held up as more evidence that Diablo Cody is a really polarizing figure, see? Look at that lady cussing away!

That said, “Diablo Cody: Feminist? or former governor of Alaska?” does grate. And in saying it grates, I feel trapped–like any little thing I do to try to kick the machine in the nads only winds up feeding it. Maybe, as someone upthread suggested, she wouldn’t get held up as this polarizing figure if there weren’t so few successful women filmmakers these days.

But yeah, I’m fine with Diablo. I’m sorry that there are so few women’s voices in the mainstream that hers is expected to stand in for everyone, because she just isn’t up to that challenge. In a perfect universe full of diverse successful writers she would seem just fine to me.

K, I watched this with my adoptive mom. She insisted, because it was just so cute and because her brother said the main character reminded him of (42-year-old) me. Ye gods, I should be in therapy….