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

[lanna_kitty]

*standing ovation*

Word

edit: aaaand I suck for hitting return too quickly :P

In my field I am a minority. Most of the women in my studio are in art, production, customer service or administration. I am one of two female designers. There is quite a bit of joking and teasing and boyish humor. Sometimes I need to pick my battles, sometimes I fight fire with fire. They can drool all they want over the booth babes and scantily clad women as long as I get to do the same over the male underwear model we hired to represent one of our big characters ;) And oh MAN is it funny to watch them backpedal when you call them on bullshit

[annerbhp]

Whoops, sorry! Got distracted by ficathon angst, but now that I am free I am back. :)

Oh, man, the role women play in video games, both behind the scenes and out front. Booth babes! God, and the guy who made Lara Croft, who basically said he made the character a woman because if you have to stare at someone's ass for that many hours, it might as well be a hot chick's ass. (We think we have it bad in scifi? Geez.)

It sucks to have to be in that minority position you are in, but you seem to be aware of that position and refuse to just be quiet, which would undoubtedly be the easier route. Go you!

I always love how a school of thought that is supposed to be so progressive always ends up some exclusionary club no matter what ideals it starts with. I swear it's just the human drive to make ourselves feel included by excluding others. Not our shiniest moment as a species.

[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

[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

[gunhilda]

"Feminism" is a good example of a word/concept that has been hijacked by its opponents and distorted into something tarnished and ugly in order to undermine it. Language has so much power, and at the point that feminism becomes a dirty word in someone's mind (and believe me, it is a dirty word in most people's minds around here), the whole movement loses focus and momentum.

It's up to people with strength and courage to reclaim the term and return that movement forward. Go you!

[annerbhp]

"Feminism" is a good example of a word/concept that has been hijacked by its opponents and distorted into something tarnished and ugly in order to undermine it.

God, yes. Just like the word 'liberal'. It's frightening how easily manipulated we are by a well thought out verbal assault through sheer repetition, which the Republican party was liquid gold with during Bush's terms. (I'm thinking 'death tax', 'partial-birth abortion', etc, where the very names you are using skew the issues.)

It would be nice to reclaim feminism, but sometimes I fear ever washing it clean of all the misconceptions and name-calling. Can't we just say we are Equality-ists? Er... Not quite catchy. ;)

[meghan70]

i'm glad you posted this because i've ran into a few feminist viewpoints online slamming choices other women make. it's like, we're all women shouldn't we be supporting one another?

[annerbhp]

Yeah, it's pretty amazing how quickly a discussion of feminism boils down to slamming each other for the choices we make. As I mentioned in my response to Bristow's comment above, I really think this is still one of the biggest left-over hangups from women as objects. If we are objects whose purpose is to draw attention from men, who threatens that? Men? No. Other women. God, just think of beauty pageants and night clubs...we are used to defining our success comparative to other women, so isn't it so much more comfortable when we can point out how other women fail?

No more!!!! We need to want to see all women succeed and realize that this success does not in any way diminish our value.

[meiou_set]

Here for metafandom. Thanks for bringing this up. In my short time in the new Trek fandom, I've seen this argument brought up time and time again ("I usually don't like reading/writing women characters because they're badly written in the source material) and it has always made me uncomfortable. If that were the case (women being badly written), should the more intuitive thing to do be to "fix" it as a fan through fic, meta, whathaveyou instead of feeding the structures in place by turning away? More interrogation of that argument is definitely needed.

[annerbhp]

Hi! Welcome.

Yes, it seems the more fandom changes, the more it stays exactly the same. Personally, the reason I dabble in fanfic is usually to fill in something I'm not getting to see on screen for whatever reason, or to fix something. If I see a woman character that I don't think is being written well, then my reaction is to try to write her well. (There is actually a woman in Stargate fandom (dsudis) who did a detailed Bechdel test of each season of Stargate and has started writing missing scenes for each episode to 'fix' the lack of women and characters of color interacting. That sort of proactive critique has always appealed to me

[ladydreamer]

I don't know much about Stargate, but sometimes I have to take a step back at my anger at the assumptions that the writers of the show make before taking on writing the character well. One of the things that has kept my fandom thriving is the need to 'fix' everything, and I've noticed, even if I flat out make a hated female character a villain, I can usually elicit more sympathy for her than people give on the show itself. And maybe that's something to take into consideration because I write a lot of slash/femslash and have often felt that if they're not going to show me gay narratives in the mainstream, we'll just take than on for them.

[annerbhp]

I think in general fanfic gives us a lot more room to explore things that are ignored in shows for reasons of actor availability, budgets, ratings, mainstream appeal (ie. socially 'acceptable' bigotry) etc. We have endless pages to delve into the nuances (yay!) But we can only blame TPTB so much. I think the issue of gay characters on tv, etc, is in an interesting period right now as well, because mostly we are just happy to get any gay characters at all, so that issues of "well, are these all terrible stereotypes? Why is the gay guy always the side kick?" questions are still burgeoning. But, yeah, desperately need to be asked. And ideally, the tools of Feminism should allow us to critique any representation of identity.