Why do people scream "Feminist Agenda" when there is a female lead?

[JimB]

The character Thor has always been a personification of the gratifying male physique and strength.

Then gender or sex or whatever term you want to use to describe Thor having a vaj does matter to you. Right. Good to have that resolved.

The existing god Thor is male; the comic book character Thor has always been male.

I have about a year's worth of comics that tell me you are factually incorrect he's always been male, and that's not counting the Earth X series.

I'm just about to report you for trolling because I can't believe you so seriously are not reading what I'm saying and putting words or well a vision in my mouth that is nowhere close to what I've told you.

Do not threaten me, Politrukk. Report me if you're going to report me, and if I deserve to be punished then I will accept it, but don't you dare use the threat of siccing the moderators on me (as if they're your trained dogs in the first place) to silence me.

Being male is part of Thor's identity whether you like it or not.

Did someone castrate the Odinson while I wasn't looking?

You can't just change Thor into a woman like that.

I disagree that no one can, but it doesn't matter because what you are describing did not happen. Thor is not the same person as the Odinson. She is a different person who has his first name as her super hero name, and I really don't get why you act like something else is going on.

 

[Erttheking]

To clue you in a bit about one of the first two, there was a big thread [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.871928-New-Overwatch-Hero-Is-a-Response-to-Body-Type-Diversity-Criticism?page=1] about Zayra (Overwatch girl) on the Escapist when she was announced.

Seeing as though it went on for 14 pages you can guess that not everyone was pleased about her inclusion in the game.

Yeah. I still haven't forgotten how someone told me that Zayra was a stereotype designed to pander to Tumblr...because she had pink hair.

I also think that's the thread where I argue with someone who says games "can't represent everyone", therefore games shouldn't try to have any diversity at all. It was an uh.. bizarre argument to say the least.

Also related to what you said, I've seen people call the new League character a "SJW character". Here she is:

Spoiler: Illaoi

She's aggressive and religious, a priestess, her god is basically Cthulhu. Tentacles from her god spawn on the map to help her fight, and she can rip the spirit out of peoples bodies and punch them.

So uh, not too sure what qualifies her as being a "SJW character", but hey what do I know.

It's simple. It makes people who want more diversity happy. That's unacceptable.

That's all this is. Some people can't stand the thought of people with views they don't agree with being happy. Oh they try and rationalize it away, but then again people have always tried to dress up petty hatreds.

 

[happyninja42]

You can't just change Thor into a woman like that.

I disagree that no one can, but it doesn't matter because what you are describing did not happen. Thor is not the same person as the Odinson. She is a different person who has his first name as her super hero name, and I really don't get why you act like something else is going on.

Apparently changing him into a frog is totally ok, but not a woman. xD

 

[Parasondox]

Correction then, sorry I'm still in the old world where gender and sex were interchangeable.

You are still being ludicrous, it has nothing to do with Thor having tits it has to do with the fact that :

THE CHARACTER THOR HAS ALWAYS BEEN A PERSONIFICATION OF THE GRATIFYING MALE PHYSIQUE AND STRENGTH.

He's the paragon of the warrior male, that's part of his identity even if you wish to deny it.

The existing god Thor is male, the comic book character Thor has always been male.

He's Thor, dubs himself Odin's son, he glorifies battle.

I made a full long post to explain it and you still didn't get it.


I'm just about to report you for trolling because I can't believe you so seriously are not reading what I'm saying and putting words or well a vision in my mouth that is nowhere close to what I've told you.



TLDR: Being male is part of Thor's identity whether you like it or not, you can't just change Thor into a woman like that, that's wrong, you can bestow the power of Thor upon a woman no problem but making her into the canonical Thor is just a no-no and for the time being that's what she was advertised as and pretty much has been in her guise.

This is different from all that has come before.

Err... dude/dudette. It's just a story. A piece of fiction. It's not real and not telling of any true event in history. Changes happen. Alternative stories happen. Telling the same story over and over again gets boring. New ideas come to light. Tested and results come up. Good or bad.

So really, relax.

Internet rage is... fascinating.

 

[Redryhno]

I haven't been following this back and forth, been skimming it, but if I've understood this post (and by extension your position?) what you're saying is you think she should be held to a different standard because she's female?

To elaborate, you think that if Jones were male it would be a bad character, so you can't celebrate Jones being a good character because of that, and think that female characters should be set to a standard higher than the one that Jones is?

That's a really shallow reading of it, sure.

Another is that if you're going to be lazy with the traditional roles(this isn't a full-on negative), I don't give a damn. But if you're going to strive to break those traditional roles being a thing, try not to have less going for it than the laziest of the traditional roles.

This goes for both males and females in non-traditional roles, at the moment though, nobody is really interested in giving men non-traditional roles for the most part, so all I have to go off is female roles, which have quite a fair few number of good examples, but a whole host of poorly thought-out ones(or simply nowhere near as amazing as are made out to be) that routinely get praised for apparently just being in a lead role.

 

[medv4380]

From Mad Max Fury Road to Jessica Jones and now Star Wars, I just see comments about "Feminist Agenda" and how they are trying to...

If you can't see how Max Max turned an other wise normal end of the world Apocalypse into Feminist propaganda then maybe you need to watch Movie Bob's review of it. Fury Road appeals to two demographics. People who like the long unending car chase from hell, and those who like the picture of ... watch Bob's review.

Jessica Jones isn't Feminist propaganda, and Jerry is actually the best proof that it isn't. Sure Jerry is a gender flipped character, and had they done gender flipping like Super Girl then it would have been done in a propagandist way. When gender flipping is done wrong, all positive, or strong characters are flipped to being female if male. This leads the only men in the series to be inept, villains, or both. Which is why the Martian Man hunter being inserted feels unnatural with their first few episodes as an attempt at repairing a very bad position they had put themselves in, but still with no human male character that could count as normal is still a big negative.

Jerry, is Jared, and the character is kept consistent. Both are womanizing, and truly despicable characters. By the end of Jessica Jones you don't think Jerry is a good person even a little bit. You might feel a little tiny bit sorry, but you might also feel that she gets what she deserves. If she was a LGBT propaganda piece they failed because for that they'd have had to make her as moralistically good as possible just as Fury Road did with its females.

Feminist, and LGBT pieces like to try and make all Lesbians or Feminists out to be Good people because its trying to make you think that All Lesbians or Feminist are good which isn't a very human quality.. Jessica Jones makes everyone out to be human, and that's why it isn't a propaganda piece.

As for Star Wars that's Disney's fault. They subscribe to the PR campaign of sensationalism. They purposefully put out a PR piece deriding the Princess Leia Slave outfit knowing full well that it would spark a discussion on both sides against their decision. Even Carrie Fisher spoke out about their choice about that. If you're going to do things to invite attention from the groups that see Feminist Propaganda Everywhere then it's your own fault when they go on a tie raid against your movie. But they did that purposefully as a part of their Advertising so they are getting exactly what they wanted to get. Attention.

 

[Redryhno]

I haven't been following this back and forth, been skimming it, but if I've understood this post (and by extension your position?) what you're saying is you think she should be held to a different standard because she's female?

To elaborate, you think that if Jones were male it would be a bad character, so you can't celebrate Jones being a good character because of that, and think that female characters should be set to a standard higher than the one that Jones is?

That's a really shallow reading of it, sure.

Another is that if you're going to be lazy with the traditional roles(this isn't a full-on negative), I don't give a damn. But if you're going to strive to break those traditional roles being a thing, try not to have less going for it than the laziest of the traditional roles.

This goes for both males and females in non-traditional roles, at the moment though, nobody is really interested in giving men non-traditional roles for the most part, so all I have to go off is female roles, which have quite a fair few number of good examples, but a whole host of poorly thought-out ones(or simply nowhere near as amazing as are made out to be) that routinely get praised for apparently just being in a lead role.

Ah there's your fatal misunderstanding then. People don't want female characters to be held to a higher standard, that's sexist, people just want female characters to be held to an equal standard. Hence why characters get praise for being treated equally, like Jones.

Saying "We should fix X before we start doing Y" (in this case, we should start writing females better before we treat them equally) is a comon diversion tactic. What you should be wanting is Y done first, then fix X for everyone.

Well, I have to say I know your fatal flaw as well because do you read anything people write or do you just assume you know exactly what they're saying and just work from there?

Because I never said anything about what you're preaching past me with dude. I gave examples of characters I believe to be better written and much more equal, and yet you continue to talk about how I'm being sexist due to holding women to higher standards when I never said or meant to imply any of that.

All I think of with Jones is how boring she is as a character and an archetype in a show full of good characters, both of which would be equally as boring if it was a Jonah Jones, and the same people praising the character would no doubt be complaining about just another boring character and archetype. The only difference here is that there's boobs attached so that somehow makes it so much "better" to these people. Which is not a slam against them, just that their rationalization is lacking in many places.

Hell, the majority of people in here praising have said some variation on "she's a female lead, therefore she's good and praise-worthy", and if you're going to be calling sexist on me saying that a character would be boring either way, you really need to rethink what you're thinking. I gave examples of characters from the present and recent past that wouldn't be all that different with a different set of jiggly bits that I personally think are just as praise-worthy, but are barely given the time of day because they don't have it as a marketing point and still people talk about how rare and unique characters like Jones are(by their standards).

Hell, maybe these people will come around again and realize it themselves after the hype dies down. Same thing happened with Inquisition, The Pre-Sequel, Bioshock Infinite, Frozen, Maleficent,etc. About a month after they were released, the same people singing praises for them realized how silly alot of those praises really were(I'm not saying people can't still enjoy them, just that they have far more short-comings than they do anything positive and the things that alot of those people were saying were "SO GOOD" were then saying "THIS IS SO BAD".). Guess I'll just have to weather the storm again because as much as I love being proven wrong, it seems to be a rare event on the internet. Feel free to keep this saved if you want to shove it in my face if I'm wrong later on.

 

[Something Amyss]

So uh, I guess a "SJW character" can be anything that the person using the word "SJW" unironically dislikes.

That's pretty much what an SJW is in the first place, so it's fitting to assume that it also constitutes an SJW character.

 

[Parasondox]

If you can't see how Max Max turned an other wise normal end of the world Apocalypse into Feminist propaganda then maybe you need to watch Movie Bob's review of it. Fury Road appeals to two demographics. People who like the long unending car chase from hell, and those who like the picture of ... watch Bob's review.

Jessica Jones isn't Feminist propaganda, and Jerry is actually the best proof that it isn't. Sure Jerry is a gender flipped character, and had they done gender flipping like Super Girl then it would have been done in a propagandist way. When gender flipping is done wrong, all positive, or strong characters are flipped to being female if male. This leads the only men in the series to be inept, villains, or both. Which is why the Martian Man hunter being inserted feels unnatural with their first few episodes as an attempt at repairing a very bad position they had put themselves in, but still with no human male character that could count as normal is still a big negative.

Jerry, is Jared, and the character is kept consistent. Both are womanizing, and truly despicable characters. By the end of Jessica Jones you don't think Jerry is a good person even a little bit. You might feel a little tiny bit sorry, but you might also feel that she gets what she deserves. If she was a LGBT propaganda piece they failed because for that they'd have had to make her as moralistically good as possible just as Fury Road did with its females.

Feminist, and LGBT pieces like to try and make all Lesbians or Feminists out to be Good people because its trying to make you think that All Lesbians or Feminist are good which isn't a very human quality.. Jessica Jones makes everyone out to be human, and that's why it isn't a propaganda piece.

As for Star Wars that's Disney's fault. They subscribe to the PR campaign of sensationalism. They purposefully put out a PR piece deriding the Princess Leia Slave outfit knowing full well that it would spark a discussion on both sides against their decision. Even Carrie Fisher spoke out about their choice about that. If you're going to do things to invite attention from the groups that see Feminist Propaganda Everywhere then it's your own fault when they go on a tie raid against your movie. But they did that purposefully as a part of their Advertising so they are getting exactly what they wanted to get. Attention.

No. Not really. I just enjoyed the movie a lot. I dunno. Maybe I am just in the group of people who don't look so deep into a piece of media, which is fiction, and get into a massive non-needed debate about it.

Also, I personally don't look to MovieBob for inspirational blogs... vlogs... whatever.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

What? that's exactly what's being said now! "Only guys should have lousy characters in boring roles!" Guys are in bad roles all the time. If we only had women be good characters, we'd have almost no women in media.

Which seems to be pretty much the point of making this argument that a bad female character is somehow unacceptable. Especially on a gaming site, where we routinely celebrate bad characters (provided they're male).

I really can't argue with this. It never really occurred to me until it was worded that way. I mean I was kinda seeing that, but this is put really well.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

What? that's exactly what's being said now! "Only guys should have lousy characters in boring roles!" Guys are in bad roles all the time. If we only had women be good characters, we'd have almost no women in media.

Which seems to be pretty much the point of making this argument that a bad female character is somehow unacceptable. Especially on a gaming site, where we routinely celebrate bad characters (provided they're male).

I really can't argue with this. It never really occurred to me until it was worded that way. I mean I was kinda seeing that, but this is put really well.

That's basically the point when it comes to any character that isn't all of the following: White, cisgender, heterosexual, and male. We can have a white, cis, straight, male character be as bland and as poorly done as possible, or as interesting and amazingly done as possible. People will laud the character either way. It's a MASSIVE double standard when it comes to diversity in character types.

The thing is that it's not only a double standard, but it's also a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation, there is no winning in this situation. Both sides will decry a perfect female, trans, non-straight, and/or racial minority character as pandering, where if the character has even one flaw it becomes shoe-horned, and racism, sexism, transphobia, or/and homophibia. There is literally no way to please people who orbit around the sphere of "social justice" regardless of weather on the pro- or anti- side.

That defaults one side to being accused of pushing an agenda, when really it's just that they can't be satisfied. While the other side says "we shouldn't even bother", partially because they've got unreasonable expectations, but also because different groups being represented is seen as a threat to them. Ideally neither should be listened to and characters of varied race, gender identity, and sexuality, along with regardless of birth sex should be done because they can be done. It's just that the loud ones tend to bark when ever anything takes them outside their comfort zone, or offends their personal hangups. So we get the worst of all of it paired with constant complaints from both sides of the debates, instead of actual progress.

 

[Bombiz]

I get it. Some people really dislike feminism. As soon as that word comes up, out comes the anger, the hate, the colorful words, the paranoia, the "dey tok r jeeeeeeerbs" attitude. A female is the focus of an IP. So what? Whys that a problem? If its the poor writing where writers assume all women suffer the same thing, I understand. It's shitty poor writing. However, if its cause they are getting more screen time and story is developed more then... then calm the fuck down.

From Mad Max Fury Road to Jessica Jones and now Star Wars, I just see comments about "Feminist Agenda" and how they are trying to... control our minds with their powerful vaginas? Damn vaginas. Beautiful but deadly.

I dunno. I just wanted to ask.

@Parasondox
Well to be fair with Jessica Jones their where a lot of news sites praising it as some sort of feminist beacon of hope.
but to your original point idk what it is but I just never seem to find these people who say those types of things on either side of the argument. When I do find people like that it's always boils down to one of 2 scenarios 1) the person is obviously trolling/looking for attention or 2)they're so god damn insane that their opinion shouldn't even be listened to. In either case you should just ignore them.
Really people should just not be assholes.

 

[Callate]

Tangentially, I've been thinking about Mad Max: Fury Road.

Now, Theron's Furiosa? I thought she was great. If there's a "problem" with Furiosa, it's mostly that she renders Max's presence more or less irrelevant. I am absolutely ready to see a movie with Furiosa as the lead if that's what the movie makers want to do, and I'm equally ready to give Charlize Theron the go to star or co-star as an action lead in any other action movie she might want to do. (Something I wouldn't have been as ready to say after, say, Aeon Flux.)

Howev's, the movie's other attempts at feminism... don't bear thinking about, so much.

You see, Immortan Joe's enclave has a lot of awfulness about it, particularly in how it starves the common people for water and apparently uses women as breeding slaves/cows.

But on the other hand, it's also apparently managed to re-launch agriculture. It's given hundreds of young men with nothing more to do than wait to die of cancer a sense of purpose. It's created a sense of structure.

Now obviously, that structure is a weird, hierarchical, quasi-theocratic monarchy that serves to the benefit of a select few. But is it entirely fair to judge that against an egalitarian democracy that no longer seems to exist in a harsh, Darwinistic, post-nuclear wasteland?

It's worth pointing out that Furiosa, a woman, apparently rose to a position of respect and authority in this setting. She may have gone through awful things to get there, including losing an arm, but it does imply that rising in the ranks on the basis of merit is at least possible under Immortan Joe.

Now, compare that to what we see in the "Green Place".

Immortan Joe and his cronies have taken a limited set of resources- apparently water, gas, and bullets- and turned them into something resembling a functioning, if dysfunctional, society.

The women of the Green Place have watched while a functional place has turned into one more barren waste.

Now, is that their fault? No, of course not. But their response to it is. They haven't scouted afield to find a more suitable place to exist (or they might have had a plausible response to Furiosa's "we go in one direction until we run out of gas" plan.) If they've sought solutions to the diminishment of the Green Place, they never succeeded in finding them.

And if what we see of them is any indication, they've only survived as long as they have through banditry.

(No, seriously... Luring people with a nude woman yelling for help in the middle of the desert? That's the most self-initiated thing we see them do.)

And I can't help but note that the women of the Green Place have no equivalent male counterpart to Furiosa. Not until Max, at least, and there's every indication that without Furiosa's intervention, they would have happily shot him.

But whatshername has those seeds!... Well, bully for her, but as I said, Joe's enclave has actual plants and something resembling hydroponics, so... Without outside intervention, there's little to suggest those seeds would have ever amounted to anything as the matriarchs of the Green Place grew old and died.

Whereas, barring outside intervention, there's little to suggest Immortan Joe's enclave might not have gone on chugging in their fiery guitar warlordy ways for quite some time.

But what of where we leave things? Are Furiosa and the GP matriarchs going to remain in charge with freely available water? Are they going to start rationing or controlling it to control the masses, just like IJ? Are we to believe that the water IJ has been so strictly controlling is an unlimited aquifer? And the farms- should we take it on faith that their fertility can expand to cover everyone "freed" by IJ's downfall?

What about the War Boys? A bunch of them died chasing Furiosa and co. around the dessert, sure, but how are they going to pacify the rest? What kind of life are all those younger boys who were growing into savage warriors seeking Valhalla going to find in the new order?

What's to say that the city-state ruled by IJ and his cronies, now under Furiosa and co., isn't going to become as barren and useless as the Green Place under its new management?

"Who killed the world?" Well, if you want to say warlords, sure, I guess there's that case to be made. But is replacing male warlords with female bandits such an obvious improvement that we should take it as a happy ending without a second glance?

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

All I think of with Jones is how boring she is as a character and an archetype in a show full of good characters, both of which would be equally as boring if it was a Jonah Jones, and the same people praising the character would no doubt be complaining about just another boring character and archetype. The only difference here is that there's boobs attached so that somehow makes it so much "better" to these people. Which is not a slam against them, just that their rationalization is lacking in many places.

Hell, the majority of people in here praising have said some variation on "she's a female lead, therefore she's good and praise-worthy", and if you're going to be calling sexist on me saying that a character would be boring either way, you really need to rethink what you're thinking. I gave examples of characters from the present and recent past that wouldn't be all that different with a different set of jiggly bits that I personally think are just as praise-worthy, but are barely given the time of day because they don't have it as a marketing point and still people talk about how rare and unique characters like Jones are(by their standards).

Well here's the crux of your argument really; you think people are saying she's "better" than other characters soley because she's a female character.

You'll need to show people saying that, because that's what your entire post revolves around here.

If not, you'll realise that people aren't praising Jones for being "better" simply because she's female, that's sexist, people are praising her for being equal despite being female. Being female doesn't make her better, and she shouldn't be held to a different standard because she's female like you want, hence the reason why a character with "bad/boring writing" is getting praise; it's got nothing to do with her being "better".

I think a better way to put it is that in some circles, she's and really any female character is considered superior as an option for characters, because of the fact that the character is female. The basic idea being that a female character is more desirable to have, because female characters, especially in lead roles, are less common. So there is a tendency to forget about quality of characters in favor of quantity, at least where female characters are concerned. Basically the idea that more female characters is far desirable, even if it means that the character quality suffers as a consequence. But when there are a bunch of mediocre female characters, people start complaining that writers don't know how to handle female characters.

On the other side of the issue you have people who are uncomfortable with female characters in a lead role. This translates to the idea that a female character has to be absolutely perfectly written, other wise it's pandering to a feminist agenda. The problem is that "perfectly written" in this case is a set of goal posts that is constantly moved, if the character has a flaw, it's always the wrong flaw. Basically there can't be a good example, because flaws makes a female character poorer for her weaknesses, where perfection makes the character a pandering Mary Sue. So you end up in a situation where people keep criticizing characters as badly written because they're either too flawed to be realistic, or too perfect to be realistic, thus it's sexist.

In both situations you get to a point where you literally can't win, because both sides are going to pick apart the faults in portrayal, even if the faults are built into the character. Neither side can be satisfied because they've set up unreasonable standards that conflict with themselves, they want perfection and faults at the same time. They're literally holding women in media to a higher standard than men, especially white straight cis men, really it's a reflection on society anyways, as women are always held to a higher standard than men.

It's gotten this way with characters of racial minorities in the west too, they now have enough representation where people are starting to get choosy about how they're portrayed. Simply, because they're not the "default", they get held to different standards. While it's somewhat true with racial minorities, as they're becoming more and more a default as just "people", with women the bar is still held really high. Honestly in media, we've taken a sprint backwards since the mid 1940's, partially because of the baby boom that happened after World War II. An event that shoved women back into being homebodies with domestic roles exclusively, when women had been, up to and during the war, becoming more career oriented.

Either way being held to a higher standard, even an impossible one is still better than LGBT characters get. Which is generally presented as over sexualized, pandering so people can pat themselves on the back for being tolerant, or just plain offensive and wrong for shits and giggles. That is if not totally erased like asexual, bisexual, pansexual folk, and other sexualities that aren't heterosexual, or homosexual generally are. It's even worse for trans folk, because if a trans person isn't a trans woman, they basically don't exist in media, you never see trans men, or people who really identify outside the binary. All of that generally equates to very limited portrayals, which have to fit into a narrow set of boxes, otherwise they're outright erased and any portrayals in LGBT we get have at best a 50/50 chance of being horribly offensive.

 

[Gengisgame]

Spoiler: Illaoi

She's aggressive and religious, a priestess, her god is basically Cthulhu. Tentacles from her god spawn on the map to help her fight, and she can rip the spirit out of peoples bodies and punch them.

So uh, not too sure what qualifies her as being a "SJW character", but hey what do I know.

Allow me to turn the question back to you: what do you think constitutes a "SJW character"?

The crux of the thread, first off an important fact, no trait automatically makes the character a sjw character. If you have a female character because you find it hot then it's not a sjw or you think it will get you more money it's not a sjw character. What makes a character a sjw character is making or saying you made the character because you thought it was what sj groups wanted, a social justice warrior character is all about intent. Problem is the wells been poisoned, feminist and gay media claiming every character of there group is automatically positive forces the label, hard to remove the stink from openly man hating websites like Salon or Mary Sue praising your character given there click bait prominence

Female Thor is also a prime example of this agenda at it's worse. A female character gets massive country wide praise for REPLACING the male character. This is what feminists praised beyond the introduction of every female character introduced in the last 5 years combined.



It's part of the engineered outrage culture, women are being harvested and men are being fattened. The key is to not give a sh*t but so many people do, bashing Justin Bieber or the Kardashians for there product is the same thing so it's not as rare as you think, sure they may not be the nicest but lets not pretend that's why they get so much hate.

 

[JimB]

Female Thor is also a prime example of this agenda at its worst.

Okay, so according to you, the measuring stick for whether a character is created for an agenda is the creator's intent. Intent cannot be known, since it exists inside the private thoughts of individuals, so it must be inferred from external evidence. What evidence have you to offer that the creator (I honestly have no idea who even came up with the idea) intended to introduce the new Thor for the purpose of pleasing the people you call SJWs? The only evidence you seem to offer is that SJWs are pleased, and that is only proof of their reaction, not of an author's intent. If audience reaction is proof of author intent, then Tommy Wiseau intended the Room to be a comedy.