This is not the wank you're looking for.

[annerbhp]

I want to say something about the F word. You know the one I mean: Feminism.  Oh, has there ever been a term more misused and misunderstood than Feminism?  How often do you hear things like “Feminism is where men suck and women refuse to shave their legs, right?” and most recently “Feminism means being loud and bitchy and eviscerating people for

Comments

[bristow1941]

I think the specific case of Carter & Stargate is a very interesting lens to examine feminism and its portrayal in "Hollywood". From interviews I've read the pilot's cringe-inducing moment was something Amanda Tapping tried to call the producers on and they dismissed her concerns. As the series went on, the writers were willing to more comments from the actors and in the case of the Sam Carter character, it really paid off by making her much more human and less a male fantasy of what every woman should be. She got a sense of humor, flaws, and her totally ineptness with relationships. By season 4 of Atlantis and Continuum rolled around, Carter had accidentally grown into a truly interesting character. How many shows could show a woman crying at the death of her close friend, long-time boss, hinted love interest without it sliding into either extreme (the stereotypical "weak woman falling apart during crisis" or the wonder woman unable to show emotion in front of her nominal CO)? That's the moment I was like "YES!" and my inner feminist threw the confetti to celebrate.

I was one of those teenage girls who thought I had feminism all figured out (god, you have to love the certainty of teenagers). I was going to engineering school and become a computer engineer because women were underrepresented in engineering. I attended an all-girls high school where woman's history was constantly on parade and we all knew that our school's founder, Emma Willard, had started the first school to offer the same education to girls as was offered to boys in 1820. Yet it took years (and college) for me to look at Emma Hart Willard again and realize what a complex and amazing woman she was. In middle age, she had horrified her community and her supporters by divorcing her non-account unfaithful husband, not because of those flaws (that had gone on for years), but because she had met someone else she had fallen in love with who could make her happy. Guess what? She divorced Mr. Willard, held her head high through the scandal, stepped back from the school so less controversial women could shepherd it through the crisis, and married the man she thought could make her happy. By most reports, he did make her happy for several years and she never regretted what she did. Some of her former associates never forgave her for the financial damage the divorce did to the school, others applauded her courage in leaving a "bad man" and asked why she waited so long, and her divorce was smoothed over in the feminist hagiography done of her in the 1960s and 1970s at the start of the feminist movement. But really all feminism requires of us is the duty to put ourselves first as woman and refuse to sacrifice your desires to the socially-constructed view of what "good" women do - for ever woman, this answer may be very different and we need to stop judging each other for our choices. I realized during the college selection process that I wanted a broader experience in college that straight engineering and my apologies to the women stuck in the minority in those programs for deserting the field. Instead, I choose a liberal arts college, ended up with a history degree after dealing with a clueless comp sci professor sitting in the dark to use your lovely metaphor, and enjoyed every second of it. Still ended up a computer engineer and love my job.

[annerbhp]

It's just scary to consider what Sam Carter might have been without AT there fighting for the character at every turn.

The in-fighting between Feminists makes me insanely uncomfortable (not to mention disillusioned) because it seems to me that competitiveness between women, this need to put ourselves above other women in terms of 'broad'-mindedness, career, kids, fashion, choices, etc, etc--that this might all stem once again from that basic relationship between the sexes. Women define themselves and their value by the attention of men, this is status quo. And isn't all this competitiveness just an extension of that? And if we are all 'enlightened' feminists trying to fight against this instinctual attention whore inside of all of us, then shouldn't we be encouraging other women, wanting them to succeed, rather than judging them? I think this shows so clearly why feminism is not an end point. Even last generation's innovative, progressive feminists are still fighting that programming in a million new ways every year.

[bristow1941]

Advocates of single-sex education tell you that girls are more cooperative, less catty, and more positive with each other without competing for the attention of males. Since it's really really hard to do an experiment where you can truly test this, I would say that's probably true from my personal experience of coed K-8 and a single-sex high school. But I'm not sure how much of it is caused by self-selection, stronger female role models, and massive amount of feminism hanging around. I think the tendency of feminists towards infighting is caused by more than simple competition for males, but the innate female desire for communication. Men, when gathered in groups, talk about rigidly defined public areas like sports. Women get together and start sharing about their inner selves, their lives, and how they feel. Actual research has been done by biologists and neuro-scientists that I'm too lazy to go and find to link to that describes these gender differences in male-to-male interaction and female-to-female interaction. Anyway, women just have more opportunity to judge each other because we share information about ourselves and our feelings than men. Men are equally like to be meddling and judgemental of how other men conduct their lives, they just don't get together in socially-approved of groups to discuss family, personal, and relationships issues at the same rate.(snark warning) Look at the pro-life movement - the movement is pretty balanced between men and women who think it's really really important to interfere in the personal decisions of women controlling their bodies. *wink* Okay, that was a totally gratuitous slam of the pro-life movement, but local fallacy of murdering someone to stop them from murdering not-yet-people has me super annoyed.