Feminism general thread

[Ptangmatik]

To be perfectly honest, I just really like the word "jodphurs", but also I always thought the word only referred to the tight riding trousers.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

Unrelatedly, the sentence 'Quick Baz, fetch my woven flax jodhpurs!' is the shortest agreed-upon-to-be-coherent sentence in the English language to contain all of its 26 letters.

[CrazyMax46]

Real talk, Marvel just made Thor a woman to sell shit real talk.

[CrazyMax46]

Also this is a good point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fc_AnL ... vldU_urowQ

[Matt]

Real talk, Marvel just made Thor a woman to sell shit real talk.

Yeah, but so what? Anything a company does is intended to sell shit. If they want to sell more shit to women, good on them.

-m

[J_S_Bach]

Real talk, Marvel just made Thor a woman to sell shit real talk.

Yeah, but so what? Anything a company does is intended to sell shit. If they want to sell more shit to women, good on them.

-m

Isn't this just pandering though? On Beej's stream this week he and Heather were discussing how much they dislike it when companies make decisions simply to pander to an audience. Beej's example was the romance sub plots in Star Trek Enterprise but I think it can be applied to a larger context.
Personally I don't care what Marvel does with Thor because I never read the comics nor do I plan to.
I'm also not a fan of the new Batgirl costume (to be fair I haven't really liked a Batgirl costume except for the one worn by Stephanie Brown). I've read a few of the New 52 Batgirl comics and the writing, more than the design, was in need of an update. As my wife put it when I showed her Batgirl's redesign: "it looks like they're trying to make her a hip twenty year old who pretends to fight crime". If you look at the original New 52 batgirl and then the redesign you'll notice that Barbara has lost all of her muscle mass.

[Matt]

Real talk, Marvel just made Thor a woman to sell shit real talk.

Yeah, but so what? Anything a company does is intended to sell shit. If they want to sell more shit to women, good on them.

-m

Isn't this just pandering though?

I'd actually argue that, if anything, it's a grab for headlines and attention, rather than an attempt, per se, to grow a larger female reader-base, (I therefore wouldn't define it as "pandering" at all). But again - if Marvel is moving in such a way that broadly says "we are open to the idea that our flagship heroes need not necessarily be straight white men, and we welcome an audience that agrees" then I see that as a generally positive move - whatever the details of any specific initiative they undertake.

-m

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

At least it aesthetically makes sense. Shieldmaidens and Valkyries existed in nordic folklore. I am too ignorant about the Marvel Universe to suggest a gender change of a main character that aesthetically would be strange.

With some comic characters, you had characters "passing the mantle and the name down". Just so happens "Thor" was inherited by a woman this time.

[Amake]

I'd argue everything Marvel does is designed to pander to the audience. Like what else are they going to do, sell comics with artistic vision and authorial integrity and personal expression, with no regard for good business? I think that's more the domain of webcomics made in the author's free time hosted on Tumblr.

I don't read a lot of Marvel comics because I read them when I was younger and I have no desire to read them again. Anything they do that they haven't done before is positive in my opinion as a consumer of the arts. But if they manage to also move with the times and stop helping oppressing minorities quite so much, that's even better in my opinion as a Humanist.

[Avistew]

Honestly, I see it as a good thing if having a female character now means selling more rather than selling less, like comics seem to have assumed for a really, really long time.

[CrazyMax46]

It's a cash grab. Nothing more. I honestly don't believe they give a shit who buys their merchandise. And I'm sorry if that comes off as pessimistic, but after working jobs in marketing and in government, I don't look at anything any national business does as anything but "Plan To Make Money Ver X."

[Tycherin]

It's a cash grab. Nothing more. I honestly don't believe they give a shit who buys their merchandise. And I'm sorry if that comes off as pessimistic, but after working jobs in marketing and in government, I don't look at anything any national business does as anything but "Plan To Make Money Ver X."

I do think that's a pessimistic way of looking at things, but let's assume you're right, and that they're purely in this for money. In that case, it still means that Marvel looked at the market right now and said, "There are enough people out there right now who want to see gender diversity that we can make money off of selling that." Which is still movement in the right direction, except that instead of coming from Marvel it's coming from the general populace. So unless you want to argue that it's a money grab and they're also wrong about there being a market for this, I'm still going to chalk this down as a win.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

I wonder if sometimes if the reaction to things is saltiness for the sake of saltiness. Goldilocks syndrome.

[Bebop Man]

I don't mind the pandering or the cash-grabbing, it's what the business part of the movie business is all about. I think what most people criticize about this ploy is the execution, not the intent.

Take the Hobbit movies for instance. The studio decides they desperately need female characters in the movies, what do they do? Bring back old characters in a plausible fashion (was anybody shocked by seeing Galadriel at the White Council, if that was its name?) or make up new characters like Tauriel (which had some backlash, fair enough). But I think people are readier to accept these kinds of changes rather than make one of the 13 (?) dwarves female.

The point is there's a stealthier, more "natural" way of pandering to the audience and there's the obvious way of doing it - "Thor is now a woman" being a good example as far as I'm concerned.

[Deedles]

The obvious way is a pretty good way to do it, that's basically them loudly supporting more diversity in super heroes. Whether that is a grab for money or sincerely a move to try to support feminism is kind of irrelevant.

[empath]

Good point; since we agree that anything a corporation does is virtually by definition to profit, is it a BAD thing that their profiteering happens to support diversity and equity?

They could just keep up with the patriarchal misogynistic status quo and 'pander to the neckbeards' and still rake it in...

[Bebop Man]

No, I don't think gender-benders and piggybacking on a pre-existing character in general is particularly progressive for anybody. But whatever rocks the vote of the majority I guess, it's always about them after all.

[Volafortis]

The issue with your Hobbit comparison is that The Hobbit is telling an existing story. Thor isn't. This is a completely new story.

Beyond that, the character behind the superhero title in comics change all the time. It's Mjolnir that grants the power to whoever is deemed worthy.

So let's say they were planning on changing the character anyway. Thor Odinson is deemed unworthy, because the writer wants that plot point, or hell, for a more pessimistic stance, because Thor sales are down, and Marvel wants to mix up the comic.

Would you seriously rather they just maintain the status quo of "another white guy" simply because it's what everyone expects?

Sure, they probably chose to make Thor a women because they thought it would make them money. But the motivations behind the decision really don't matter. If Thor's going to change anyway, why not a woman?

[Psyclone]

Hello, thread that exploded while I was away! If you like cats and/or feminism, you should check out this tumblr.

Also, to my pronoun-doubting friends around page 11 or so, hi? I don't want to start up this discussion again, but please remember when having arguments like this that there may be people reading who are actually affected by what you're talking about.

[Deedles]

As was mentioned several times before, Mjolnir have gone to Stock-White-Guy before several times and no one has batted and eyelid about it. Why is it suddenly a problem because it's a woman?

[Avistew]

The issue with your Hobbit comparison is that The Hobbit is telling an existing story. Thor isn't. This is a completely new story.

Beyond that, the character behind the superhero title in comics change all the time. It's Mjolnir that grants the power to whoever is deemed worthy.

So let's say they were planning on changing the character anyway. Thor Odinson is deemed unworthy, because the writer wants that plot point, or hell, for a more pessimistic stance, because Thor sales are down, and Marvel wants to mix up the comic.

Would you seriously rather they just maintain the status quo of "another white guy" simply because it's what everyone expects?

Sure, they probably chose to make Thor a women because they thought it would make them money. But the motivations behind the decision really don't matter. If Thor's going to change anyway, why not a woman?

I'm quoting this in the hopes that more people will read it, considering we've mentioned that before yet people keep ignoring it completely and reacting as though Thor Odinson suddenly became a woman or something.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Tangent. What does a Middle Earth female Dwarf look like?

[Hepheastus]

[J_S_Bach]

As was mentioned several times before, Mjolnir have gone to Stock-White-Guy before several times and no one has batted and eyelid about it. Why is it suddenly a problem because it's a woman?

Stereotypically comic book fans complain about any change made to a comic character. Perhaps what you're seeing is results oriented bias. I'm assuming the reason why there may appear to be a bigger uproar about the new Thor character being a woman is due to several factors including, but not limited to, the recent popularity of the Marvel movies getting new people interested in the character of Thor Odinson, the ability for less tech literate individuals to make their voices heard on internet forums and the intersection of the van diagram of feminist activists and Thor comic fans. I know if I was a Thor fan and they pulled that "Thor is a frog now" stunt, I wouldn't be very pleased with the writers.

Personally I'm more of a fan of Chris Hemsworth than I am of Thor, I mean have you seen that man?

[Duckay]

I'm cross-posting this from the Magic general thread, because I feel like there's some relevant overlap: http://blogs.magicjudges.org/seacat/201 ... uct-major/

The short version for those who don't know or care much about Magic is that the rules pertaining to "unsporting conduct" have been redefined this season. Punishments for certain infractions against other people have been made more severe, and the different kinds of infractions have been more carefully delineated. All in all, I think it's a really good move because I wasn't such a fan of the way that Unsporting Conduct was defined before.

The part I thought might be relevant specifically to this thread, however, is as follows:

C. A player asks a spectator for a date, is denied, and continues to press the issue.

D. A player purposefully obstructs another player with the intent of inducing physical contact.

Sexual harassment has many forms, and these are just a couple examples. We have a responsibility to create safe event environments for everyone who might be interested in this game. (I hope you’re sensing a theme here.)

The first example might even seem tame to some of you reading this, or somehow not deserving of such a strong penalty. If this is how you feel, let’s talk about it. Really. Send me an e-mail ([email protected]) and let’s talk. There’s a lot that needs to be said here on male privilege and other kinds of privilege and culture, but that’s really less about this policy and more about the environment we create, so I’ll save that broader discussion for another time.

Note that we don’t identify the genders of the offender or victim here, though. These examples don’t just pertain to men and women interacting, they are meant to illustrate unacceptable behavior between any two people.