(Untitled)
So this is my 4am random rant on women in movies and comics...I'm not responsible for spelling after 4am....
Long post! Contains vague spoilers for various movies, books, and comics. X-men? Harry Potter? Batman? Maybe more. Nothing too recent though....Spoilers if you've been under a rock....
( Why WB cutting female leads won't be as disasterous as people claim. )
Long post! Contains vague spoilers for various movies, books, and comics. X-men? Harry Potter? Batman? Maybe more. Nothing too recent though....Spoilers if you've been under a rock....
( Why WB cutting female leads won't be as disasterous as people claim. )
I WISH I WAS A BOY. So often! And what psychoanalysts try to tell people is that having a penis is so awesome, and girls have penis envy, when NO! I want to be a boy so I'm less likely to be attacked while walking alone (and then blamed for the attack). I want to automatically get paid more money, just for having a penis (regardless of whether of not I do more work!). I want to have role models of my sex I can look up to, instead of having to cross-dress every halloween to get a good, non-slutty costume.
Girls really can't win ("Women is losers" has become closer to my heart in the last couple months...a sad but true song), for the reason you mention. I've seen it before in my relationships. I don't act like a stereotypical girl, so guys think it's awesome! ...but then they want me to do typical girls things and get upset when I don't (like, they want me to wait by the phone all night for their call, or save my weekends for them regardless of whether we've made plans or not, but they don't want to do the same themself. haha no way.)....then they go and date a sterotypical girl, and they're annoyed because she's smothering them. CHOOSE ONE, people! Or at the very least, quit whining!
I do like hanging out with girls, too, but it's annoying when you get one who's stereotypical, and expect all girls to want to do the same thing. Like the ones who, all they talk about is babies and marriages....after a half hour of polite listening, I'd like to change the subject, please! But they assume that since I'm a girl, and ALL girls love babies and marriage, that I must enjoy this conversation! Meeeh.
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HAHA DUDE XD (Okay, sorry to butt in, BUT-) I remember back in my early days of getting into slash/yaoi, before I ever decided that just saying, "Because it's hot," should suffice, that I would use that argument--the whole 'straight guys like two chicks, so why wouldn't some girls enjoy two guys..?' bit.
The responses that received were almost always, "It DOESN'T work the same way! What would you think if you came home and found your boyfriend getting fucking in the ass by some fat, hairy guy??" Which.. I mean, one, I think there's a sense in our culture that men aren't attractive or something. Which I say is an argument for another day. And TWO, they never seemed to consider that I'd be far more upset that he was cheating on me at all O_o Notably, by that token, apparently none of the guys who gave that response would've considered "coming home and finding [their] girl having sex with a hot chick" to be cheating. There's just.. there's too much stupid ingrained into our culture in terms of sex and gender and expectations of them to work out a decent dialogue with most people who don't already 'get' slash -_-
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Haha, I am born and raised in Norway where girls are slutty, and studied in UK where girls are sluttier! That girls aren't capable of lust is a foreign concept for me :O And het porn would be hotter if the men weren't so greasy-looking and moustached 8D
When the Japanese draw weepy ukes, I tend to assume they are Mary Sues and that the Japanese women kind of want to be subjugated/as desirable just like the uke. I cannot see why they would find characters like that interesting otherwise :-/ I also think Japanese women see being able to make men act like animals a sort of power over them. I think it's a bit like that in China too...
Awww, I think it's great being a girl! I don't there are REALLY that many things stopping us from doing anything. I wouldn't want to have a penis cos that's a major weakness when in fights, and unless you're dressed veeeeery provocatively, I don't see how the girl can be blamed for the attack? And, hm, money-wise and job-wise it's very fair in the Nordic countries. I really don't notice sexual discrimination at all. Is the US really like what you describe? Women in Shell are very competent - my boss only hires women for our team XD
I totally agree with the lack of female role model, but a lot of it is our own fault. We let ourselves be brainwashed to think that looking pretty and attracting men are our key performance indicators in life. I don't like it, but I can't blame men for it.
I hope you are not offended by what I say next, but the way you describe your relationships is kind of telling... ''so guys think', 'but then they want me to' and they don't want to do the same themself'. That sounds a bit defeatist to me, like you're subconsciously giving the power in the relationship to the men! And, uhm, again, the waiting by the phone for their call and keeping weekends free for them is so very alien to me... whoa whoa! I never do that O_o (mobile phones solve the first problem, surely?)
Your friends are a little scary! I never talk about babies and marriage with anybody except bf (it's a very personal thing I think). What I do find quite sad is that a lot of girls don't seem so interested in current events, because it's angled more at 'what' than the 'who', which girls are more interested in... but I partly blame that on the way the news is portrayed.
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and unless you're dressed veeeeery provocatively, I don't see how the girl can be blamed for the attack?
Eeeh? Even if a girl walks around naked, guys still need to be accountable for their actions. I mean, if some guy breaks into your home, and you're wearing only a nightie, and he rapes you, would you want him to be held for breaking and entering AND rape? Or would you argue that he can't be held accountable because of the rape because you were dressed in a way that made him incapable of controlling his sexual urges? Even if a woman is dressed provocatively, it does not mean she deserves to be raped. Guys should be able to curb their own actions, regardless of how a woman presents herself - in Italy a judge ruled that a girl "wasn't really raped" because she was wearing tight pants. Recently a different judge ruled that a TEN YEAR OLD girl was pretty much responsible for her rape because she was dressed provocatively. Saying a woman can be blamed for her rape whatever she's wearing opens the door for loose interpretations of that. Soon the rape excuses will be (or will continue to be, but validated) "She was wearing a miniskirt, I couldn't help it," "she was wearing tight pants, I couldn't help it." "She wasn't wearing a niqab, I couldn't help it." A rape ALWAYS has one person to blame, and one person ONLY - the rapist.
I've also never understood the whole, "women have power over men" argument either. People say, "if you were the last woman on earth, you'd have so much power" when in truth, you'd probably just get raped a lot. Because let's face it, you can say, "I'll only have sex with you if you...." which is a type of power, but he can turn right around and force you whether you want to or not. There's really no clear "one side has all the power".
It's honestly not horrible in the US - I certainly wouldn't want to be in other countries. However, our society is very much into blaming the victim in rape and domestic abuse cases (hell, a while ago I posted a link where a girl was gang-raped, and SHE was charged with indecent exposure, and the boys who did that to her got immunity for their crimes in order to testify against her). Job-wise, women are still encouraged to stay in the kitchen and at home to raise babies, if not outright, then silently, through the actions of not hiring women, or not promoting them. Women still make less than men (about seventy-six cents to the dollar), for equal work (not even taking into account that men are more likely to be given higher ranking jobs that automatically get higher pay). And this goes back to school as well. There was one experiment done where two applications were sent out to graduate schools, pretty much it was the same resume, only one had a girl's name, and the other a boy's. The boy's ended up getting a lot more responses and acceptance, while the girl got relatively fewer, the school casting doubts as to whether the girl would actually stay enrolled in the program, or leave to get married and have a baby in the middle of it. Doubts were also cast as to whether the girl had done all her own research. Neither of the two questions were made against the boy's resume, and the only thing the reviewers had to base these two questions on were the gender.
And I'm not denying that more women will leave to have babies than men, but that's because men can't have babies. And plenty of males drop out of grad school for other reasons. If you're willing to drop out of grad school to have a baby, that shows a noncommitment to graduate school (as opposed to just waiting until you're done with school), which is not inherent to females. I know of more men who have dropped out of grad school than females, and my blood boils to think that there are girls who aren't getting in, who would be dedicated, because some reviewer is holding the girls up to an outdated idea that they all are just in college to meet eligible men.
....arg, stupid livejournal hates how wordy I am. ....tbc.
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Men and women should be respected equally, but I think men and women are different, and should be treated differently.
I generally see your points of view as black and white, guilty vs not guilty. If a girl is raped, of course the blame is on the man. Always, that's justice. But I also hold common sense and general survivial instincts/wariness in high regards. I feel less sympathy for women who dress like they're asking for trouble. I think most people are like this. The man is still accountable, but I would not go and shout in the woman's defence either.
I have never heard of that kind of sexual discrimination in school or work, and I'm quite baffled. But, this reminds me, my uni friend in UK did a study on why female graduates were paid less than male graduates, and the result was that women are not as good at/confident with negotiating salaries and benefits. If a job is advertised as 30k pounds a year, a man would push for more or ask for a car, while the woman would more readily accept what was offered initially. So it's good for women to be aware of these things so as not to miss out, but there's nothing to be feminist about, in my opinion.
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totally agree with the lack of female role model, but a lot of it is our own fault. We let ourselves be brainwashed to think that looking pretty and attracting men are our key performance indicators in life. I don't like it, but I can't blame men for it.
But who reinforces those ideas? Sure, it's up to us how we want to live our lives, but who's primarily feeding us the message that looking hot is the thing to do, and we should prepare ourselves for a life of taking care of our husband and our children? Most of these sexist ideas come from religious backgrounds, which, let's face it, is written by men. The reinforcement is done by both men and women, but we don't have to look far to see who originated it (hell, I'm really pissed off that in most species, the female is larger, and the male is prettier. Where did we go wrong!?).
so guys think', 'but then they want me to' and they don't want to do the same themself'. That sounds a bit defeatist to me
I'm actually going off of conversations with my own boyfriends, and observations of other girls' relationships. I'm not setting out to defeat a relationship, I simply act the way I want to act, and the boy complains that I don't wait for him. If I'm still out at 2am, I get text messages of, "where are you? Who are you with?" When they're out at two am, and I don't text them, they complain I don't care. If I do text them, they complain that I don't trust them (nevermind they do the same to me). It's not a defeatist attitude, because I'm not saying, "this is what would happen", it's simple what I DO see, in my own relationships, and in a LOT of others. I don't see this in some relationships, however, the number I do see it in far outnumbers the ones I don't see it in. I'm not saying boys are inherently bad and selfish, however, we have a society that nods and smiles when they act this way. If people were willing to do that when I acted selfish, I probably would be a lot more selfish! It's understandable that men don't want to give up or reign in this power and selfishness, however, that doesn't make it right.
See, I think girls are assumed and trained to be more interested in the who than the what. I was hanging out with a group of four girls and one boy, and the topic came to weddings and babies. Two of us were incredibly bored with the conversation (me and another girl) and did not participate much in it. I'm not sure if the boy was or not (I only know the other girl was, because she tells me she always gets bored with those talks), but after a while, the other girls said, "Oh! Sorry [boy], we must be boring you!" No apologies to me or the other girl, though, because the other girls just ASSUMED that since we have boobs, we, too, must be absolutely FASCINATED by the conversation.
Which is the problem. People who like a certain thing assume others like that thing too, moreso when society gives you a role. If you ask a boy which girls would rather do, see a sappy romantic comedy, or an action movie, I think most boys would say, "romantic comedy" (or possibly, "the chick flick.") If you asked women which they would rather see, I think you would get a mixed batch. However, I think that more women who would rather watch a romantic comedy would say that other women, too, have this desire (cue my friend's comment of, "I'm not sexist, but naturally more women would want to watch a romantic comedy than a movie like tomb raider." There's nothing "natural" about that. It's a sexist bias that prevents women from voicing wants and desires outside the norm.) Like I said in one of my closing paragraphs, people who want to see a strong female lead don't want that exclusively, but there are *many* more people who don't want the strong female lead AT ALL, and it's hard to tell if a woman was just naturally inclined to not want that, or doesn't want it because she's been told for 20 years that it's unnaturally to want something besides the romantic comedy.
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