Feminism is like the red pill in the Matrix.
Suddenly you’re watching everyone walk around in this delusion and reality is terrifying.
There’s a reason this exists:
(courtesy Sinfest)
HOLY SHIT I HAD NO IDEA THIS GEM EXISTED.
5 Ways Our Society Unfairly Punishes Women For Their Sexuality | ThinkProgress
5 Ways Our Society Unfairly Punishes Women For Their Sexuality | ThinkProgress
*slow claps for days*
(2 days, still going)
the reason why feminism is being called trendy is because more teenage girls are supporting it and YOU KNOW if teenage girls like a thing it must be fleeting and dumb
I need feminism because young women can’t get involved in the world and demand equality in large numbers without being viewed as ‘dumb.’
No, but even my own fic default character is male. I realize that’s a habit. But it’s hard to break
Most of my books tend to be about women, funnily enough. But I grew up on a lot of Tamora Pierce…
See almost every story I read growing up, it was male heroes. I grew up on a lot of classics and King Arthur and Robin Hood and Phineus Fogg were all men. Later I got into scifi and fantasy and the trend continued with Lazarus Long and Ender and Baginsses.
TV wasn’t any better with Captain Kirk and Picard and Bridger and Sheridan. Sam Beckett and The Doctor.
Movies gave me Indiana Jones and William Wallace.
I realize this should make me want to write more female characters. I know the problem with representation. But it’s still very, very hard for me to write female characters, though I do try. At least I’ve written River and Tamara.
This is also another part of why I changed my major.
You know what I get tired of? People shitting on things that women do, or that they perceive is something women (or girls) do. Rapid fandom is always portrayed as crazy 14 year old girls.
We don’t do it for you, we’ve never done it for you, we do it because we love something and want to create something.
It’s never about you.
What would you say to a fan who wants more diversity in all of Doctor Who, but who doesn’t necessarily believe the Doctor should be played by a woman? Throughout the show (especially the classic series) the Doctor has always been portrayed as a very strong father figure. Although the original showrunners might not have conceived of the Doctor this way, that’s what its become. What are your thoughts?
Sometimes the Doctor is a father figure, and sometimes the Doctor is your best friend. He comforts you and berates you. He guides his companions and depends on their perspective. He’s old and wise and weary, and he’s young-at-heart and curious and meddlesome. Basically, the Doctor is many things. Sometimes he is a father figure, but I would argue that he is not just a father figure.
But I’d would also ask: Why shouldn’t a woman portray that kind of character? We tend to think many of the Doctor’s characteristics are “male” or “father figure” characteristics: his wisdom, his power and authority, that slightly paternalistic and condescending way he treats the people around him. But really, there’s no reason why those characteristics couldn’t be portrayed by a woman.
In fact, that would be an utterly fascinating character. Show me a woman who unquestionably commands respect and authority, who is eager for new experiences but frequently betrays a sense of weariness with all she has seen. Give me a woman who is fiercely intelligent, and clever and who can get away with being slightly condescending because she’s just brilliant. And we’ll forgive her because we know she believes that every person is important (or because we knew that jerk had it coming to them).
I know it’s hard to view the Doctor as anyone but a man when there’s such a strong association between those “father figure” characteristics and men, but I’d urge you to challenge yourself and try to imagine a woman taking on that kind of role. You can start by watching Laura Roslin in Battlestar Galactica.
Female Reading of the Male Gaze, and Sherlock
Why the dismissal of women’s readings of Sherlock bothers me so much
Male showrunners and actors: They’re just friends. Why are you reading sex into this?
Female fans: They obviously want each other.
Male showrunners and actors: No they don’t. You’re hysterical and oversexualized and deluded.
Female fans: No we’re not. It’s OBVIOUS they desire each other.
Male showrunners and actors: NO THEY—
Female fans: YES THEY—
[ad infinitum]
Film and television are visual mediums. The text comes from what we see, not just the script, and definitely not extra-text commentary. Sherlock especially is a strikingly visual story that is all about looking.
Any woman with any sense of self-preservation spends her whole life learning to read the male gaze. The reason is not because women are constantly checking to make sure they are desirable (as many men like to think); the reason is because women have to. The consequences for not noticing when a male gaze equals “desire” are very dangerous, and so obvious I don’t even have to explain them. Any woman who walks through a parking lot at night, who has to spend her days avoiding a co-worker who sexually harrasses her but not enough to make it worth it to fight back, who deals with members of the public service who laugh at her when she is being threatened (I am thinking of that woman in San Francisco who tried to get a BART bus driver to call the police when a man was threatening to rape her and got ignored)—any woman who LIVES ON THIS PLANET has to learn to be aware of the male gaze and interpret it for signs of arousal and/or danger from a young age. This is SO MUCH BIGGER than “women want romance” or “women want love” or any of that ignorant shorthand for “women aren’t reading this show correctly.” It is definitely bigger than Sherlock.
If a man stood right in my personal space and stared into my eyes I would know how to interpret that. If a man licked his lips while staring at my face I would know how to interpret that. If a man belitted and chased off my romantic partners I would know how to interpret that. If a man asked me to reach into his jacket and pull out his phone I would damn well know how to interpret that. Any time I have tried to brush aside suspicions under these circumstances, I was proved right that I should have trusted my instincts, and I wound up in dangerous situations (luckily, nothing terrible resulted thanks to being able to escape, but the danger was real). If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but at least I don’t get locked in a basement in Cleveland for a decade. Women have to err on the side of caution. People are right when they say the sexual tension moments in Sherlock are brief, but that doesn’t matter: if you’re a woman you have to take even the briefest flashes into account. There is a reason we call these moments “eyefucking.”
Sherlock is all about the power of sight, of the gaze, specifically the male gaze. (There’s a whole article in that, but I’ll resist.)
We get Sherlock POV when he interprets a scene, with those subtitles and graphics; we get John POV for everything else (that’s my reading, anyway; Watson is the narrator of the Sherlock Holmes tales, after all). There are only a few establishing shots/omniscient narrator scenes that aren’t from John or Sherlock’s POV, e.g. the victims at the beginning of ASIP, or Moriarty texting in front of Big Ben in ASIB or in a cell in THOB. We briefly see Irene’s POV as she looks at pictures of Sherlock (in that beautiful sequence where they look at pictures of each other), but that’s about it. (I’ve never been certain whether that dream sequence of Irene interpreting the “bed scene” was from her POV or Sherlock’s or both.) I have hopes we’ll see Molly’s POV in TEH but of course I haven’t seen it yet.
The denial of the male showrunners of Sherlock and the firm disagreement of the female fans just proves to me that even in the 21st century, men and women live in different worlds.
5 men: There’s no sexual tension.
Thousands of women: Yes there is.
5 men: Clearly you’re wrong!
I don’t need this ship to be canon, it’s not the differing opinions that bothers me. The writers are free to write whatever they want and I’m on board. I just want some acknowledgement—from the world at large—that women’s perspective on human interactions is just as valid as men’s and doesn’t come from wishful thinking. Quite the opposite.
Bottom bit bolded, because THIS. Fucking THIS, a thousand times THIS. It cannot be said strongly or loudly or often enough: we get so, so fucking tired of being told that we’re delusional, when everything – everything – is telling a different story than the ones TPTB think they’re telling.
Women are forever being told we’re imagining it all – from PMS to actual hostility and danger to narrative romance, and everything in-between. Women are always ’imagining things’, and men are always there to set us straight. Well, fuck that.
the future is here
this is precious as FUCK >:U
starts crying
(Source: http://boogerashes.tumblr.com/)