In the world of Veronica Mars, the meek shall inherit the jail time.
I don't know what to call the plotlines on this season of Veronica Mars. 'Counterintuitive' is one possibility. 'Ass-twitching' is another, courtesy of knish. What can one possibly call a season that includes the following:
A campus group of feminists fakes a rape.
This same group then drugs and sexually assaults the head of a frat house accused of a series of rapes.
A woman's miscarriage turns out to have been the result of her (clearly feminist) best friend dosing her with mifepristone.
What's so ridiculous about these particular plotlines in an already slightly ridiculous show? First and foremost, feminists respect the bodily autonomy of others. No feminist who did not also have a serious mental disorder would sexually assault men suspected of rape. No woman who knew the importance of another woman's choice, who understood that a forced abortion is as much a crime as a forced pregnancy, would slip an abortifacient into her friend's drink. These are things that feminists do not do because while feminists may harangue and harp and moralize and be no fun at parties and boringly refuse to remove their shirts for throws, they do not use violence as a means to the end of reducing violence. They do not use rape as a means to the end of reducing rape. (And before you say, 'AHAH! But feminists have said this and this!', there's a very big difference between saying and doing, especially where assault and rape are concerned.)
But then, feminists apparently aren't the only members of oppressed classes screwing stuff up. There was also that episode in season two where the immigrant parents of a low-income, hard-working valedictorian candidate hired a PI to harrass the other valedictorian candidate, daughter of the well-to-do school board member. Then there was the fantastic finale of season two, in which it turns out that the mass murderer who blew up a bus full of low-income high school students was another high school student trying to keep two students on the bus from outing the town's mayor for sexually abusing all three of them when they were younger.
"Oh," the writers at Veronica Mars seem to say, "if ONLY victims of sexual abuse wouldn't hurt each other the way they do! Oh, hard-working ethnic minorities, can't you see you're oppressing yourselves? Oh feminists, can't you stop hurting the sisterhood with your brutal sexual assaults and sneaky mifepristone?" I call bull shit. Find me the headline that these blatant and damaging prevarifications were torn from.
And yes, I know it's fiction, and yes, I know that it's a television show, but even fictional work has a responsibility not to stereotype or caricature groups. You shouldn't present angry and violent as the default for feminists any more than you should present angry and violent as the default for African-Americans, or Muslims, or Latinos, or men, or the differently-abled, because to do so makes you not just a writer, but a propagandist; not just a producer, but a demagogue.
Mix it up a little, writers. Try doing a feminist character that's fun, or a rich Latino, or something. Because, yes, even your flying-running-up-the-wall-reverse plot twists are getting a little hackneyed.
A campus group of feminists fakes a rape.
This same group then drugs and sexually assaults the head of a frat house accused of a series of rapes.
A woman's miscarriage turns out to have been the result of her (clearly feminist) best friend dosing her with mifepristone.
What's so ridiculous about these particular plotlines in an already slightly ridiculous show? First and foremost, feminists respect the bodily autonomy of others. No feminist who did not also have a serious mental disorder would sexually assault men suspected of rape. No woman who knew the importance of another woman's choice, who understood that a forced abortion is as much a crime as a forced pregnancy, would slip an abortifacient into her friend's drink. These are things that feminists do not do because while feminists may harangue and harp and moralize and be no fun at parties and boringly refuse to remove their shirts for throws, they do not use violence as a means to the end of reducing violence. They do not use rape as a means to the end of reducing rape. (And before you say, 'AHAH! But feminists have said this and this!', there's a very big difference between saying and doing, especially where assault and rape are concerned.)
But then, feminists apparently aren't the only members of oppressed classes screwing stuff up. There was also that episode in season two where the immigrant parents of a low-income, hard-working valedictorian candidate hired a PI to harrass the other valedictorian candidate, daughter of the well-to-do school board member. Then there was the fantastic finale of season two, in which it turns out that the mass murderer who blew up a bus full of low-income high school students was another high school student trying to keep two students on the bus from outing the town's mayor for sexually abusing all three of them when they were younger.
"Oh," the writers at Veronica Mars seem to say, "if ONLY victims of sexual abuse wouldn't hurt each other the way they do! Oh, hard-working ethnic minorities, can't you see you're oppressing yourselves? Oh feminists, can't you stop hurting the sisterhood with your brutal sexual assaults and sneaky mifepristone?" I call bull shit. Find me the headline that these blatant and damaging prevarifications were torn from.
And yes, I know it's fiction, and yes, I know that it's a television show, but even fictional work has a responsibility not to stereotype or caricature groups. You shouldn't present angry and violent as the default for feminists any more than you should present angry and violent as the default for African-Americans, or Muslims, or Latinos, or men, or the differently-abled, because to do so makes you not just a writer, but a propagandist; not just a producer, but a demagogue.
Mix it up a little, writers. Try doing a feminist character that's fun, or a rich Latino, or something. Because, yes, even your flying-running-up-the-wall-reverse plot twists are getting a little hackneyed.