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

[JimB]

And it's not like it's ancient history, like this gets dropped in a matter of a couple of decades, either.

Of course not, but comic books aren't language. They're an art form with rapid turnover on creative teams, each creator bringing in new ideas and new viewpoints...and you'll never catch me saying the industry is all the way where I'd like to be, but things are improving. Things are better than they were even in the nineties when I first got into the hobby, and the characters have evolved a lot. Real effort has been put into making the characters more than just "[animal or adjective]man with tits," and that effort shows.

Worse, he takes criticism about the same way as the people who think there's some sort of feminist agenda do.

If you say so. I kinda stopped paying attention to anything he said after the whole "I'm a lesbian trapped in a man's body" thing. I'm sure such people exist, but I don't trust that sentiment coming from someone who frames women the way he does.

 

[Timeless Lavender]

Wow, this is a huge can of worms. I guess some people assume that any character that does not fit in their traditional view of a protagonist, must exist for some ulterior, political or 'evil' reasons.

 

[Darkmantle]

I'd say it's because feminists claim every female lead as a victory. Didn't Anita praise the star wars trailer for not having "a straight white male"?

If feminists claim every female lead, then it follows that people will start to see having a female lead as a feminist statement.

 

[springheeljack]

I think a lot of it is a bunch of reactionary bullshit to a nonexistent problem. I think there should be more diverse characters in all roles regardless of the medium. If the writing is good and the characters are strong then what is the problem? Oh and even if it is not with the rather vast amount of mediocre videogames and movies and books that continue to be spat out what's the problem with the uninteresting and just bad protagonist being a woman?

 

[boag]

For the past several years, several people and sites popularized the "Outrage Culture" by making incendiary click bait articles, saying that "They Patriarchy", "Rape Culture", "Glass Ceilings".

When you continuously erode the middle ground with such purposely inflammatory shit, you are only left with the extremes, because most of the people in the middle ground leave.

Now for the people claiming that "there are too many straight white men in video games" need to play more video games aside from the triple AAA crap that gets shoveled every 3 months, less they be branded filthy fucking casuals.

 

[Parasondox]

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.

@Parasondox

I take umbrage with that. specifically the "it's just a story/game/move/whatever" part. Since we have a thread of at least 11 pages it's clearly not "just a story". If it was "just a story" then why would people be making such a big deal out of a female thor or female ghost busters?

So really, relax.

you should tell that to people who send death threats on both sides of the fence.

Because people take the things they love very seriously. Nothing wrong with that at all until it gets too far and crosses the line. I could have just butt in and said "stop with the Thor nonsense", but I just decided to let the users vent whatever concerns that had about Thor. Female, male, Frog. Like the death threats, assholes need to stop with the anger and "over passion". It's obsession that leads to a very concerning behaviour.

You love something, we get. Even the things we love have flaws and if many can't admit that, then you don't really love it that much.

 

[Zacharious-khan]

She's abrasive, violent, fearful, and a loner in an environment where being alone is a great way to die of falling and breaking a leg or choking on your bread.

>Abrasive.
Is she? She's sort of annoyed with Finn at the beginning but that's really it.
>Violent
Again, where are you getting this? The only violent things I recall her doing were in self defense. Even with apt opportunity. She could have killed the guy who was trying to steal the droid.
>fearful
She want's to go back to Jakku but for a third time I never remember her acting fearful at any point even at times that would call for that.
>loner
I would posit this. One, a loner would have sold the droid instantly were she to want to be alone. Two, Not really a flaw.

I know this is hard for a modern-day American to comprehend because the society we live in rewards specialization and hyper-focus, but the world Rey lives in would punish that brutally. The society doesn't have the infrastructure for something like that. Someone who doesn't pick up as many skills as she can is someone who's going to die, because unlike us, there are no taxi drivers to take her places, no police to call if hired goons start attacking her, no one to cook her food for her in exchange for money. Compare her to Finn, who does come from a hyper-specialized background and was going to die because he didn't have the skills he needed to run.

Wow that's a really back-handed way to make a poor point.
Here is a list of skills/abilities Rey displays, despite having no reason to know/have.
>Intimate knowledge of the the engineering behind the millennium falcon
>Intimate knowledge of the electronics on the millennium falcon
>How to fly a ship better than trained storm troopers
>Intimate knowledge of the transport ship Han was on.
>Jedi mind trick
>Knowledge of the functionaliy and placement of the maintenance hatches on the Star Killer Base
>Force Pull
>Light saber combat

I don't know what you heard people screaming about, but I never heard anyone screaming about her having flaws. I heard them screaming that Joss Whedon is a misogynist for saying women who can't have babies are monsters (which isn't what he said, but that's what a lot of loud people seem to have heard).

You may have missed it, the "women who can't have babies are monster" is the character flaw since it stops her from starting an intimate romantic relationship with Banner.

 

[JimB]

Is she [abrasive]? She's sort of annoyed with Finn at the beginning but that's really it.

Spoiler

I'd say so. She's strident in situations where tensions are high, which creates friction; for example, when she's trying to get Finn to give her a tool, she keeps pointing at it like an idiot instead of describing to him what she needs from him, which would have solved the problem half a minute sooner.

Where are you getting [that she's violent]? The only violent things I recall her doing were in self-defense.

Spoiler

I'm not saying her violence is immoral or unjustified. I'm saying it's stupid. She sees a dude with a lightsaber and her instinct isn't to hide or to run (both of which are almost always superior options for survival), but instead to shoot at him with a blaster, giving away her position on the nearly miraculous chance she'll be able to shoot a Jedi? Bad decision, and getting captured is totally deserved.

She wants to go back to Jakku but for a third time I never remember her acting fearful at any point even at times that would call for that.

Spoiler

Then you were not paying attention to her face every time she faced Kylo Ren to read the panic on her face that drove her to make bad tactical decision after bad tactical decision, and you were not paying attention when she refused to step up to her destiny and take the lightsaber from...shit, I've forgotten the short little alien's name, but you know who I mean. The barkeep.

One, a loner would have sold the droid instantly were she to want to be alone. Two, Not really a flaw.

Spoiler

Droids aren't people, and it really is a flaw in a world where survival is so far from assured as it is on Jakku. Seriously, all it takes is for her to swallow wrong and she's miles from anyone who can give her the Heimlich. And that's ignoring that her job as a scavenger suffers because two people could work more efficiently to share profits.

Wow that's a really back-handed way to make a poor point.

And that is a rude attempt to dismiss my point about specialization versus generalization without ever actually addressing any of the support I offer for it, thinking insulting me is close enough to presenting a logical argument. For the record, the attempt at deflection is not working.

Here is a list of skills/abilities Rey displays, despite having no reason to know/have.

Spoiler

>Intimate knowledge of the the engineering behind the Millennium Falcon
>Intimate knowledge of the electronics on the Millennium Falcon
>How to fly a ship better than trained Stormtroopers
>Intimate knowledge of the transport ship Han was on
>Jedi mind trick
>Knowledge of the functionality and placement of the maintenance hatches on the Star Killer Base
>Force pull
>Lightsaber combat

Spoiler

Rey's boss is the one who was modifying the Millennium Falcon. I don't one hundred percent remember if she explicitly said she was involved in the work (though I feel like she did), but I'll treat her as if she didn't and we'll just have to assume that she was involved based on that knowledge.

And yes, Stormtroopers can't fly. They are specialists. I already said this in the paragraph you insulted me for. They are trained and bred to die, so they lack life skills. Rey was not trained to die, and it was already established in Episode IV that Luke being able to fly the hovering equivalent of a pickup truck equates to being able to fly an F-14 in combat situations with no training necessary, a fact which no one in the Rebellion comments on or thinks is odd, so this is clearly a universe where being able to pilot one kind of vehicle translates to being able to fly any kind of vehicle, even in a dogfight.

Rey did not have intimate knowledge of Han's transport ship; you are just making that up. She had to guess where the circuits she wanted were and crawl around in search of them, and she was wrong about which ones she thought she was closing.

Similarly, you are making that up about the knowledge of hatches on the Star Killer base. She didn't jump over the edge of the cliff because she knew a thing she needed was there; she did it because Stormtroopers were going to catch her if she didn't jump. That a hatch she needed was right there was nothing more than what they at Cinema Sins would (rightly) call a sin of convenience.

As for her Force abilities, sorry, but I can't care about this. Luke did infinitely more impressive things on no training. Yeah, Obi-Wan taught him how to have foresight over the course of fifteen minutes of training on the way to Alderaan, but remember that in the original trilogy, before the power creep of the extended universe and the video games and the canon-contradicting prequels set in, Obi-Wan did not display any telekinetic powers, only telepathic ones. We have to assume he simply didn't possess the ability to move things with his mind in the original movie, and therefore he couldn't have taught Luke how to do so, but Luke nevertheless possesses the titanic, frankly terrifying telekinetic powers to overcome the velocity and inertia of two torpedoes in mid-flight, make them make a ninety-degree turn into an aperture barely big enough to accommodate them without them impacting on the surface like they did when the guy with a targeting computer designed specifically for that purpose did, and then correct their flight to level out so they'd fly down the exhaust port to the reactor. When you think about the energy and the control it takes to do such a thing, no one in any of the six movies that followed did anything half as impressive. Even Palpatine conjuring lightning from the air isn't that impressive, so if Rey has less training but still accomplishes less than Luke did? Whatever. The Force apparently doesn't require that much in the way of training to start with, to judge by how fast Luke picks it up.

You may have missed it, the "women who can't have babies are monsters" is the character flaw since it stops her from starting an intimate romantic relationship with Banner.

I never heard anyone say that. I only heard them bitching about how Joss Whedon clearly thinks any woman who can't get pregnant is a monster (which, again, is not what that scene actually says).

This is more like a woman taking over as manager, but she dresses like Dave, everyone calls her "lady Dave" and nobody considers her as her own person but as a female version of the other manager.

Why wouldn't she dress like Dave? The job has a uniform, after all. And no one is calling her "lady Dave" except for people who one suspects are deliberately missing the point; they're calling her by her job title. If people consider her a female version of him despite that, well, that's on them for refusing to exercise discernment. The woman who took Dave's job cannot be held responsible for whatever weird ideas her underlings hold to.

Sadly I know the character very, very well. I'm a big comic nerd.

Which character? You listed three. Or four, if you're including Thor in that list.

The female version is the inferior one.

On what axis? How is whichever character you're talking about worse than the male counterpart?

Also, the female version is the highly sexualized one.

Yeah (well, not Thor, but as a general rule, yeah), no argument there. The comic industry continues to try to grab male audiences by the boner, no question. But the three (or possibly four) female characters you mentioned are not the same as their male counterparts.

Well, I also think that "black Spider-Man" is a ridiculous publicity stunt.

Then you have ignored or dismissed creator Brian Michael Bendis's stated reasons for creating Miles Morales, who is not just black but black and Hispanic: He stated that he heard Donald Glover, who is black and Hispanic, auditioned to play Spider-Man in the movies but was turned down due to his race, and he thought, "That sucks, he totally should play Spider-Man. ...Wait, I'm writing a Spider-Man book where I can do whatever the hell I want because I've been on it for ten years! I can make Donald Glover be Spider-Man!" So he did.

Does that make me a racist?

What labels you choose to apply to yourself are your own business. I'm just gonna say I'm looking at you funny since your argument as stated seems to say it's okay for Spider-Man to be replaced by a white man.

Black heroes deserve a character who happens to be black, not a recycled white hero.

They do, but that's not how the comic industry works. Marvel went bankrupt in the nineties due at least in part to their continuing to create new characters and publish books for them that there was no audience for and that tanked because of it. Like it or not, the comic book audience doesn't want new characters; it wants old characters, so if a new character wants to get in, he has to spend at least a little while being an old character before moving on.

I'll say it again: changing the race or the gender of an already established character is both lazy and offensive.

And I'm sorry, but it sounds like you're arguing that once a person of a given sex or race has had a job position, it belongs to that sex and/or race forever, which is not a position I can support.

 

[AlphaLackey]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catman_%28comics%29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Boy

http://www.comicvine.com/phantom-lad/4005-12871/

http://www.comicvine.com/wonderous-man/4005-59090/

http://www.comicvine.com/superlad/4005-68713/ (granted, it's simply the Superman -> Supergirl copy going the other way)

http://www.comicvine.com/shadow-kid/4005-47294/

http://www.comicvine.com/quinntets/4060-11401/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_Boy_%28comics%29

All of these characters appeared after more popular female characters, and were explicit derivatives thereof.

Yes, and they suck exactly as much as the female-version of male characters do.

I'll say it again: changing the race or the gender of an ALREADY EXTABLISHED character is both lazy and offensive.

No, that's not what you said. You said quite explicitly that only women characters are gender-bent off of established male heroes, and based on the premise that this only happens to women, the act of doing so in and of itself enforces sexist norms about female inferiority.

The only reason it feels less important when it happens to female characters suddenly becoming male (as the examples you showed).... is because the majority of heroes are already male and white.

It's worse cause it's different, it's different cause it's worse, GOTO 10.

That you gratuitously throw in ethnicity when it is not germane to a discussion of gender-bending speaks volumes.

 

[Erttheking]

There's only one thing I have to reply here: if you guys think it's absolutely cool that women or black people wear the old and used clothes of white male heroes, and call it a "progress", well, ok.

I want my characters to wear brand new clothes, not used clothes borrowed from a white male.

And both aren't an option why? Isn't the point of progress that characters should be able to fit into whatever roles they want?

Also it's kind of self defeating to say that the role is "borrowed". Basically you're saying that white men own it and that a non-white can never really fit into it

 

[AlphaLackey]

Notice than when the opposite happens, it doesn't matter because white straight characters have a lot of shiny new clothes. If women or black people or other groups weren't in rags already, it also wouldn't matter if sometimes they borrowed.

Notice that you cite gender-bending as an exclusive female phenomenon, as proof that "only males 'own' heroes", and then when your absolute argument gets refuted by numerous counterpoints, you cite "only males 'own' heroes" as proof that those counterpoints don't really count.

And I mean, now you're adding sexual orientation? Why not just throw in cisgendered, able-bodied, able-minded, black-haired and blue-eyed?

Your statistical manipulation is as utterly palpable as your love of circular arguments.

 

[AlphaLackey]

To answer your question, pretty much some white straight males don't like the idea of women taking on gender roles they think should only be suited for men, and they pretty much would like to keep the status quo of men being the dominant force in fictional media.

Again with race and sexual orientation on a topic about gender. And in fact, it not only transcends sexual orientation and race but also gender, with regards to people who are throwbacks who want to see traditional gender roles in media.

 

[Malpraxis]

Three word: "Assassin's Creed Syndicate"

In the previous AC people bitched about not being enough women, and then Ubi filled the next one with way too many women and the same people shouted about being pandered to.

The ironic thing is that those people say those games are crap anyway, so why don't they stop whining instead and go do something they enjoy? Maybe because whining is what gives them their (male and female) hard ons.

In the spirit of the holidays, I can say than I hope those people get pancreatic cancer. At least they'd ***** about something that actually needs funding.

 

[Something Amyss]

In the previous AC people bitched about not being enough women, and then Ubi filled the next one with way too many women and the same people shouted about being pandered to.

The ironic thing is that those people say those games are crap anyway, so why don't they stop whining instead and go do something they enjoy? Maybe because whining is what gives them their (male and female) hard ons.

Like who, for example? Can you name me some people, especially prominent ones, who fill all three criteria?

Also, "too many women?" seriously? There isn't a significant uptick from the games I played, save possibly for 1, because I checked out of that early and never looked back. Are you sure you're not editorialising someone else's already tenuous "position?"

 

[Malpraxis]

In the previous AC people bitched about not being enough women, and then Ubi filled the next one with way too many women and the same people shouted about being pandered to.

The ironic thing is that those people say those games are crap anyway, so why don't they stop whining instead and go do something they enjoy? Maybe because whining is what gives them their (male and female) hard ons.

Like who, for example? Can you name me some people, especially prominent ones, who fill all three criteria?

Also, "too many women?" seriously? There isn't a significant uptick from the games I played, save possibly for 1, because I checked out of that early and never looked back. Are you sure you're not editorialising someone else's already tenuous "position?"

On your first point I cannot single out anyone, because for my own mental health I only glance those articles and see that part of games media as an amorphous mass who is constantly "Rabble, rabble, rabble". So I can concede that point if it makes you feel better.

The second one I cannot. They were objectively too many women in positions of power for that time period. 3/4 of the enemy gang leaders were women. Of the main assassination targets, we had 2 women. One of whom was the 2nd in command. No one seemed to mind a trans man as a sidequest giver. Those things were definitely out of place for Victorian London and absolutely deliberate.

 

[Something Amyss]

Of course not, but comic books aren't language. They're an art form with rapid turnover on creative teams, each creator bringing in new ideas and new viewpoints...and you'll never catch me saying the industry is all the way where I'd like to be, but things are improving. Things are better than they were even in the nineties when I first got into the hobby, and the characters have evolved a lot. Real effort has been put into making the characters more than just "[animal or adjective]man with tits," and that effort shows.

Having grown up on comics from the 60s and 70s in the 80s (which I also read), I'm not particularly sure that's the case. I mean, yeah, we've come a long way from the times where Supergirl was simply looking for the right man, but I'm not sure most of these characters have ever specifically evolved out of being "[character] with tits."

The standout example still seems to be Barbara Gordon, an example that's almost 30 years old now, and that actually hinged on her becoming a paraplegic and ditching the costume. In fact, that seems to be a minor trend now, too. Don't make X-Girl better, have her drop her costume/become depowered and become someone else. If the primary way to distinguish them is to take away the X-girl name, then I'd say we still have a pretty big problem.

I mean, there's progress on female characters in general, but not so much that Captain Marvel being Carol Danvers and the new Ms. Marvel didn't cause shitstorms.

If you say so. I kinda stopped paying attention to anything he said after the whole "I'm a lesbian trapped in a man's body" thing. I'm sure such people exist, but I don't trust that sentiment coming from someone who frames women the way he does.

I didn't know he said that. Or my last run at the angry dome caused a state of memory loss.

Well, I also think that "black Spider-Man" is a ridiculous publicity stunt.
Does that make me a racist?

Well, I think it's incredibly puzzling that you go from "statement x is bigoted" to "statement X makes me a bigot." This is the same thing people generally say about feminist critiques, mind. The minute something is mentioned as in any way not totally acceptable, we are calling them sexists or misogynists. I think this is at best reductive and counterproductive and at worst indicative that one might actually see themselves that way.

And I might add that this sounds a lot like what Joss Whedon does with criticism, the thing I was describing to JimB above before that lesbian comment sent me to the angry dome: the minute he's not held up as a God-king for saying women are awesome for being able to endure rape, he takes umbrage. Rather than address that some of his ideas might not be...productive/helpful/correct/supportive/insertwordhere, he takes offense and views it as a character judgment. Which probably speaks more to his character than calling any one thing he says or does sexist.

I also think you're incorrect, but that's another story:

Black heroes deserve a character who happens to be black, NOT a recycled white hero.

And that's the story.

Black people asked for a black Spider-Man. Marvel actually gave them what they wanted in Miles. This hardly seems like a PR stunt or pandering or whatever any more than any other character already is. Christ, nobody even noticed that Miguel was half-hispanic until he came back as part of the Marvel Now! line. Further, are you honestly going to tell black people they're wrong to want a black character as Spider-Man?

Saying they deserve a black hero who is a hero is a completely different question. It's like asking if someone likes spaghetti and getting an answer about the merits of salad. They're both food, but where you stand on salad doesn't directly impact your spaghetti choices. There had been a number of requests for a black Spider-Man. They got their wish. This stands regardless of whether or not there are or should be black heroes. And you're answering a question that I'm not disputing. There should be black characters that stand on their own. And women, too. That doesn't mean Thor and Spider-Man are in any way a problem. At worst, this is the same lazy writing that leads to the other Spider-Man/Thor replacements, which doesn't change because Thor is now a girl.

the answer, as said by a little biracial girl who also kicked up an online shitstorm, is "why not both?"

Can you give me a single good reason I can't be cool with [REDACTED] as Thor and want more unique female superheroes? You may have noticed, but my conversation with Jim ain't exactly saying the status quo is good.