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So apparently, females of any species (including humans!) are tastier meat than males. Something to do with fat ratios.
Also, rape is ridiculously common in the animal world. It's ALSO common for males to go out of their way to make sexual activity unpleasant for females so they won't have offspring with anyone else.
Excuse me while I curl up in a ball and cry. Someone prove me wrong.
Also, rape is ridiculously common in the animal world. It's ALSO common for males to go out of their way to make sexual activity unpleasant for females so they won't have offspring with anyone else.
Excuse me while I curl up in a ball and cry. Someone prove me wrong.
So if you go up to someone who's cheering on a female character for beating up some male for talking to her or bothering her or whatever (something relatively innocuous, I mean), and you say "How would you like it if the genders were reversed," well, they'd have no defense at all. None whatsoever. If they were okay with a gender-inverted version then you could push them on why they thought it was okay for a boy to beat up a defenseless girl just for bothering him (because the boys in this situation, when you get right down to it, are usually defenseless). On the other hand, if they were not okay with it if the genders were reversed, then the question would become why it's okay for a girl to beat up a boy for bothering her, given that it so clearly isn't okay for a boy to beat up a girl for bothering him.
Analyzing "Shiki's" women
Oct. 10th, 2013 10:03 pmSo in honor of my running a showing of "Shiki" at my school. I've decided to crawl back to it revisit it again, but this time I'll be doing something different: I'll be talking about "Shiki" entirely from the perspective of its women and gender politics.
The reason why I decided to do this is because it seems to me that although the "Shiki" women are awesome, people don't really talk about them. They want to talk about Toshio Ozaki, or Seishin, or Natsuno or Toru or whoever else, but it seems like they ignore all but the most prominent women in the series. Sooooo, I'm going to go through the "Shiki" episodes as they play and talk about its women, and what they do, and how they relate to one another and to the men in their lives; as well as what points I think this makes about gender. Additionally, I've made the conscious decision NOT to discuss the men at any length, unless I can bring them into the overarching gender politics that exist in the series.
So...yeah. Stay tuned.
The reason why I decided to do this is because it seems to me that although the "Shiki" women are awesome, people don't really talk about them. They want to talk about Toshio Ozaki, or Seishin, or Natsuno or Toru or whoever else, but it seems like they ignore all but the most prominent women in the series. Sooooo, I'm going to go through the "Shiki" episodes as they play and talk about its women, and what they do, and how they relate to one another and to the men in their lives; as well as what points I think this makes about gender. Additionally, I've made the conscious decision NOT to discuss the men at any length, unless I can bring them into the overarching gender politics that exist in the series.
So...yeah. Stay tuned.
So a short time ago I was reading this article about something completely unrelated, but one of the things the writer commented on in passing was that Twilight comes under fire a lot simply for being a book for girls. One of the people in the comments put in, quite sensibly, that a lot of people who don't like Twilight are offended by its undeniably offensive messages, to which the original poster replied that although there is, in fact, quite a lot to dislike about Twilight, in practice not everyone who's willing to talk about how much they hate it even brings that up, with many instead commenting on how it's a "stupid sparkly vampire series for stupid girls" (probably not in so many words, but you get the point). I even think this line of thought might be the origin of Mervin's "Hate it for the right reasons" video series (though there's no confirmation there).
I will say this makes the almost-obscene amount of time anti-Twilighters in certain sections of the internet spend comparing Twilight unfavorably to "Hellsing" all the more suspicious, because while "Hellsing" is popular with women and in some respects quite feminist, it's still technically written by a man, for an audience consisting primarily of men, and it shows.
I will say this makes the almost-obscene amount of time anti-Twilighters in certain sections of the internet spend comparing Twilight unfavorably to "Hellsing" all the more suspicious, because while "Hellsing" is popular with women and in some respects quite feminist, it's still technically written by a man, for an audience consisting primarily of men, and it shows.
Shmeiliarockie's videos
Aug. 18th, 2013 05:03 pm So to help me with my Sue-sporking I've revisited a couple of the videos in Shmeiliarockie's "You Are Bella" series.
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You know, I've tried to get into feminist discourse about anime (and to a lesser extent video games) for awhile now, but it often seems like every time I try, I'm disappointed with the way it goes. So, lemme see if I can lay it on the line just what it is about a lot of these discussions that bugs me so much.
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So, a few years ago now I was having a conversation with a friend about women in anime, and he pointed me to Nausicaa (of Nausicaa of the Valley of Four Winds fame) as a good example of a feminist heroine because according to him, she actually felt like a real woman and not just a stereotype or a man in a woman's body.
Now, I'm not about to deny that Nausicaa is a good feminist heroine, but to me that kind of attitude misses the point of feminism because it implies that all men and women inherently act in certain ways, and that if a female character doesn't have enough "womanly" qualities she automatically fails to be a good female character because she doesn't count as a woman, just as a macho man in a woman's body.
What troubles me more is that this attitude is common. I've run across internet commentators who have tried to argue that Revy from "Black Lagoon" fails to be a worthwhile female character because she acts too much like a man to be believable (I, for one, have no problem believing a woman like Revy could exist--at least no more than with anything else in "Black Lagoon"). It just seems like another way of excluding women from discourse about feminism in fantasy, in much the same way as some people seem to think a woman can't be too sexy or cute and still be a good feminist character.
Now, I'm not about to deny that Nausicaa is a good feminist heroine, but to me that kind of attitude misses the point of feminism because it implies that all men and women inherently act in certain ways, and that if a female character doesn't have enough "womanly" qualities she automatically fails to be a good female character because she doesn't count as a woman, just as a macho man in a woman's body.
What troubles me more is that this attitude is common. I've run across internet commentators who have tried to argue that Revy from "Black Lagoon" fails to be a worthwhile female character because she acts too much like a man to be believable (I, for one, have no problem believing a woman like Revy could exist--at least no more than with anything else in "Black Lagoon"). It just seems like another way of excluding women from discourse about feminism in fantasy, in much the same way as some people seem to think a woman can't be too sexy or cute and still be a good feminist character.
Just thought I'd get this off my chest...
May. 8th, 2013 05:38 pm You know, one thing that bugs me a bit is the idea that any woman (real or fictional) who wears any sort of sexy outfit whatsoever is supposed to be taken as evidence that the media promoting her is demeaning to women. Like, I get that the sexualization and sexual exploitation of women is a serious issue, but judging by some of the commentary I've seen floating around, I'm apparently supposed to view any woman who is shown to be sexy in any context for any length of time as shallow fanservice for the male audience, regardless of whether or not I see more in her.
Additionally, tropes like ditzy girls, dead little sisters, women looking for love, and mothers who die in childbirth are the symptoms, not the disease. They're problematic because they're done ridiculously often and tend to be handled in a way that demeans women, but that doesn't mean that every single source that uses any one them is misogynistic.
Additionally, tropes like ditzy girls, dead little sisters, women looking for love, and mothers who die in childbirth are the symptoms, not the disease. They're problematic because they're done ridiculously often and tend to be handled in a way that demeans women, but that doesn't mean that every single source that uses any one them is misogynistic.
