Things to read

[pezzae]

Here is a great anti-woo site, with fact sheets about various health scares and an explanation of how scientific claims in journals are different from the 'scientifically proven to decrease wrinkles!' claims in marketing materials and 'Experts warn of risks from X' headlines

Comments

[splunkles]

Hmmm. That article is quite good, but not entirely without flaws.

For example: "Fear and contempt of women are the only motivating factors to write a character this way."
Argh no. Hate hate hate. There is no possible way (ruling out the impossible like mind reading) the author can see into the motivations of the people writing these characters.

Not only has she claimed insight into their minds, she has claimed it in the strongest possible way - by claiming that these are the only reasons, she is effectively claiming that she has looked into each and every single one of their minds and found naught but fear and contempt of women (at least when it comes to writing female characters).

Lastly, this is clearly false. I can, even in my current sleep deprived state, think of another reason - they are rubbish writers. Maybe all their characters do things for no coherent reason beyond needs of plot.

Now I get her point, I do! There is (at least in my experience) a bias towards female characters being the ones doing things for no coherent reason, and that certainly suggests that there is something dubious going on in the minds of these writers, and it would be explained by fear and contempt of women. BUT! By overstating her case, the author is doing naught but damage to it. You are basically giving your opponents a free strawman to beat up on and alienating those who don't feel so extremely. Maybe some people on your side will like it, but then, they are already on your side! They don't need an article like this.

I also don't like the way she tends to ramble on within parentheses, and I would think some paragraphs would be clearer if she didn't, but that is really just a comment on her style, not the content.

The idea of the "Because, um...?" girl is a very good one, however, and is a prime candidate to be put on TV Tropes, where it can join excellent articles such as Straw Feminist, DisposableWoman and StayInTheKitchen. This of course needs to be done by someone with more time then me, and (more importantly) greater knowledge of examples of this.

[blindmouse]

I can, even in my current sleep deprived state, think of another reason - they are rubbish writers. Maybe all their characters do things for no coherent reason beyond needs of plot.

The needs of the plot, though? What was the plot? I haven't seen this show, but assuming that she wasn't misrepresenting it, the plot seems to be the fairly common "Loser Makes Good and Gets the Girl". (Possibly it's just "Loser Gets the Girl", since leaving town at the end suggests he didn't make good.) Which ... well, the "Because, Um?" Girl is pretty much built into that plot. If the plot is inherently misogynistic, can't you assume misogynistic motivations, whether the writer is conscious of them or not?

Maybe some people on your side will like it, but then, they are already on your side! They don't need an article like this.

On the contrary; I always need an article like this. It's awesome :-)

[splunkles]

Ahhh, but if another of their plots is "Loser makes good and Gets the Guy", then we can hardly accuse them of misogyny, as they are being equally retarded in their treatment of both genders. Of course, if they make shows with only stupid females, then its clear that for these particular writers, there is something misogynistic going on.

But we still can't say that about all writers, which is what the original statement claimed. And what I was driving my objection at - while it may well be true for these writers, we can't say that about all writers who have ever written characters like this.

That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if most writers who wrote characters like this were being misogynistic.

[pezzae]

Ok, so find me examples of work by the cited writers in which they write main female characters with motivation and main male characters without. You'll need to find lots, because one screenplay that way around stacked against an entire body of work the other way around is likely to leave me still thinking the guy is misogynist.

I also think it's telling that it's apparently totally cool for men to write f***ed-up plots that require their female characters to bitches, sluts or motivationless plot devices, even though that's not actually realistic, but if a woman calls attention to this fact, she is supposed to do it in a scientific manner without overstating her case or using any dramatics or exagerations... because people making arguments NEVER generalise or exagerate to make a point. Expecting an upset person to be utterly bland and hyperbole-free in their complaint is TOTALLY realistic.

A note to readers: seeing stuff that looks like you are not thought of as a real person? Makes you angry. Getting told that you are not allowed to be angry when pointing out THIS SH*T IS NOT ON? Makes you MORE angry. This happening every time anyone from your devalued group dares to make a complaint, because your group is deemed irrational and overemotional as part of the devaluing, and having this used as an excuse not to listen to the complaints and fix stuff? Drives you up the wall.

I know you think you're just making a point about debating styles, and you probably do this on forums all the time, and you don't think it has anything to do with patriarchy at all. But the fact is that women keep getting told that we're hysterical for having a problem with this kind of stuff, and we get ignored, and the blokes who are pushing misogyny (or assaulting their girlfriends, or gang-raping someone, or...) tend to get excused because 'you can't know what his motivations are'/'you're just overreacting'/'he's really a good guy'/etc ad nauseam. It's just not good enough.
How about we do a deal: women (and black folks, and various other groups who this applies to) will stop being angry and dramatic when there are no longer horrible things to be angry about...

[pezzae]

Is this why you never post argumentative stuff on your blog? Because it might be flawed? :o)
The gripe is not just that the female characters don't have motivations. The gripe is that the correlation between characters without motivations and characters who are female approaches 1. Meanwhile, the main male characters always do have motivations, so it's not like these dudes can't write proper reasons for their characters to do stuff if they want to.

[darthbessie]

I am agreeing with you on many points, and it really really bugs me that it is so hard to find good female characters in ANYTHING, but I feel I have a small tempering piece of evidence against main male characters always having motivations.

As a long-time slasher, I have to provide a definition here - you see, slash is no fun when you've got two realistic and fully fleshed-out characters with actual reasons behind their actions - you already know why they're burning with passion in their eyes when they look at each other and it's not because they really just want to be hugging. But when the characters are so poorly written that the motivation could be *anything* - that's when you get this mysterious sexual tension developing, and that's when it's fun to write them into your own little world where they could be completely different (ie, fully fleshed out, complex characters that have something interesting about them). Slash exists in the spaces between good canonical charcter writing.

um, see Harry Potter. ^_^

Also, I get really annoyed at chick-flick-rom-coms for the same reason (well, actually a whole bunch of reasons, but we'll leave it to this one for now) is that there is absolutely nothing about the main male character that makes him fall in love with the main female character. To my mind, she's usually barely-explained, vacuous and self-centred parody of a woman who seems to get some real characterisation only in the first and last ten minutes and spends the rest of the time behaving like a thirteen-year-old - and somehow this makes him fall completely in love with her. On the other hand, even if she is written well, the male character is more often than not given no reason whatsoever to have fallen in love with her - we as the audience see why she's so great, but he usually never has - and we never get any more of his character than that she's totally in love with him and he's hot and possibly mysteriously and amorphously a 'nice guy', nor any more of his motivation than that he's mysteriously fallen in love with her somewhere in the final twenty minutes.

So yes... writers of those kinds of films seem to miss the male characterisation/motivation angle even if they manage to get the female one right.

I also concur that most films/tv shows at the moment really, really bug me. Why is there nothing good to watch?

[darthbessie]

*thinks for a bit more*

It's the imbalance that bugs me. There ARE more female characters who lack motivation, but there are plenty of male ones as well. The point is that there exist vastly more well-written male characters than female ones - I'm not so much mad at the female characters who don't have motivation, but rather at the lack of ones who do.