Twerp-Alert Thursday

[highlyeccentric]

As torificus puts it... Feminism: You're Doin' it Wrong!

101 one ways to completely misinterpret Firefly...
*fail to notice that Zoe, the 'black woman', holds all the cards and calls every single shot in her marriage.
*decide that Inara is in fact powerless and the fact that she sees to enjoy her job is because Joss Whedon is using her as a sort of apology for prositution.
*somehow forget that it's only logical for a female soldier to address her superior as 'Sir'
*Utterly fail to notice the real affection between Mal and Kaylee, and for added sparkle, take Mal's joking at Kaylee's expense as evidence that Joss Whedon rapes his wife.

and there's plenty more... completely insane.

What I noted is that she analyses primarily the way male characters treat women, aside from noting Zoe's lack of hobbies and wondering why Inara entered her proffession. Female-Male relations are reduced, in her reading, to Zoe sir-ing Mal and Inara mandating her personal space in an order then countermanded. (Ok, Mal ignores her instructions. But does anyone else get the feeling that every time he calls her whore, every time he enters her shuttle, she ends up with more power out of the exchange? She's the one who retains her composure, while Mal flusters about and loses face.)
She utterly fails to analyse Kaylee's character, which is a pity, since she's the most complex female on ship in terms of gender and sexuality (as far as i can tell). River is so plainly mad as to desexualise her completely (note that allecto doesn't even mention River in the analysis). Kaylee, on the other hand... I would have expected Miss Male-Authors-Are-Manipulating-Female-Characters-To-Pander-To-Their-Power to argue that Kaylee's power in the 'masculine' role of mechanic is mitigated by her otherwise ditzy character. I would've expected an argument to the effect that Kaylee's evident libido is a prop for some kind of masculine fantasy about sexually-charged women.
Had she made that argument, I would've poked holes in it, but at least she would have interacted with the character. Kaylee is the awesomest thing ever, and the ditzy-mechanic thing is a fabulous way to avoid the stereotypical woman-in-a-man's-role, all burly and stern and asexual, sort of character. She's a developed character with strengths, weaknesses and downright annoying traits. Why does a female character have to be dominant, intelligent and never, ever embarrassing in order not to be a patriarchal fantasy? And as for the evident libido... well, all I can say is, I envy her forthrightness.

With that... vive La Kaylee!


ed: ok, the crazy takes a new leap. It's now sexist to call your ship 'she', to have your ship play a 'passive' role and to 'rape her by living in her womb'.

Comments

[flamearrows.livejournal.com]

I prefer to ignore all of this, and assume that someone is simply doing some really epic level trolling, because there just ain't no way that people can miss the point so repeatedly

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

sure there is... it's called indocrination. radical feminist indoctrination, socialist indoctrination, religious indoctrination (yes, i'm indicting myself here, i know), and so on... they all have this tendancy to put their POINTS on top of everything, regardless of the actual content.

[flamearrows.livejournal.com]

Nah, the problem with that is that there's almost never such a thing as radical feminist indoctrination - reason being that it seems to be relatively new, and such people rarely reproduce. For an interesting example of the consequences, see here: http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/BitingBeaver

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

you can be indoctrinated by a GROUP, surely? not every fundamentalist loony is raised that way, for one thing.
you could self-indoctrinate via easily available literature... all it requires is the decision to ignore any evidence contrary to whatever agenda you're pushing.

and... um... that article is disturbing, to say the least.

[torificus.livejournal.com]

Don't forget the part where ALL HETEROSEXUAL SEX is rape. That's pretty crucial.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

ah, yes, but as i have it from reliable sources that i've internalised the patriarchy, am i really qualified to comment?

[torificus.livejournal.com]

Yep, we are tools of the patriarchy, and not intelligent nor critical enough to question anything. We follow BLINDLY.

That kind of feminism is POISONOUS, because it makes me want to abandon a career, breed, and become a Republican.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

heh. you won't believe the reason she could tell i've internalised teh patriarchy, though...

it was because i thought the new Peter Pan movie should've had a male narrator... because, you know, the book has such a strong male voice...
and also because i hear children's stories in my dad's voice. cos i LOVE MY DAD, which is clearly teh eefil.

[ahsavka.livejournal.com]

This kind of thing ... actually, I do think Buffy has some weird not-so-feminist things going on, but I think that's basically unavoidable, because ... I mean ... it's Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You can push as hard as you can away from the movie, but you can't escape it. Firefly is pretty darn solid, though. I mean -- half the crew is female. Holy shit.

"She" for ships is great, it's one of the few places where the default gender of an object is female. It has a cool mothering/protecting thing, it's not negative, jeez. We don't all want to be mothers, but trivializing/demeaning motherhood doesn't help anyone. Motherhood, protecting/organizing groups (very much a necessary leadership skill), these things are valuable. It's unfortunately that it's what women automatically get when they'd rather be judged individually, but the traits themselves aren't bad at all. It's the automatic assignment that deserves a headshake.

When I got to the part in the comments where she said that she'd never seen a (well, she grudgingly admitted one) heterosexual relationship that was good, that's when I just grinned and left. Clearly someone has been damaged by their past experience, here, and that's very sad. But not quite sad enough to lump me in the "fail" pile without knowing me.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

On the contrary, I got the distinct impression that she'd lump all heterosexual women, and anyone else not lining up with her ideal of 'radical feminism' in the FAIL pile until proven otherwise...

what i don't get is the idea that literature must provide ROLE MODELS. if everyone was equal, all of the time, there'd be no such thing as plot...

[ahsavka.livejournal.com]

On the contrary

Whoops, I must've given the wrong idea. I agree with you.

[rxgra.livejournal.com]

As a homosexual male, I am inherently misogynist. All men are like me except I've managed to have the courage to completely forsake my feminine overlords. In the space future, women will be only good for being black, prostitutes, mechanics, or black prostitute mechanics! Joss Whedon is our grand prophet!

Actually I don't really have anywhere to go with this, I just like the idea that I'm inherently misogynist, although the way I understand it, in the eyes of this person the simple act of having male genitals is misogynist ("He has moving parts! Get him!").

(and I have seen the argument that all men are gay, I don't know. I really don't. The internet sure has muddied up discourse).

[rxgra.livejournal.com]

After posting this, I realised that reading your journal, let alone posting to it, is a form of rape. For this I apologise; I am a very bad man.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

i understand. it's because you've internalised the gaytriarchy, clearly.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

ah yes... you're inherantly misogynist because you don't want to sleep with women. On the other hand, if you DID want to sleep with women, you couldn't do so without MISOGYNISTICALLY RAPING THEM.

basically, you're stuffed.

[rxgra.livejournal.com]

Serious question: how do these people have children? How do they justify their own attraction to men? Why isn't there a name for these fake feminists?

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

well, they don't. you can't HAVE heterosexual sex without rape, so you don't sleep with men, and you don't breed, lest you introduce future rapists to the world. DUH.

also, given your aversion to power play and 'sex-positive' anything, presumably you only have very boring lesbian sex.

[sea-of-tethys.livejournal.com]

"He has moving parts! Get him!"

That made my day :D

[avedaggio.livejournal.com]

Jayzus. What a bitch. This is what I hate about feminists, what gives the movement such a bad name. Christ. And so many people agree with ehr and think she's something wonderful. What an arrogant little... well, bitch, again. Grrr.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

yahuh. Needless to say, she's 'giving the movement a bad name'... but then, she thinks sex-positive feminists are 'letting the movement down'. Comes a point when a group splinters so far it becomes meaningless...

[sea-of-tethys.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Yeah, she lost me pretty early on, with her complaint about Zoe calling her male superior officer 'sir'. Missing the point much?

Why do nutcases like this have to make things so much harder for the rest of us?

[rxgra.livejournal.com]

You know, normally I wouldn't say the author's being a lesbian renders her argument stupid and moot, but ... well.

[phrasemuffin.livejournal.com]

Thought I'd just share this with you (my reply):

I was directed to this by a number of friends, and I have to say that I honestly found your analysis completely unjustified. Articulate, certainly (though you lost points with me when you stepped down from argument to rant with the swearing), but nothing more. Sorry, that's just the way I read it.

And women talk mainly in questions whereas men talk in statements.
If you'd ever studied sociolinguistics, you'd know that women tend to speak in questions as prompts to further conversation, while men tend to speak in statements that shut conversations down, so it makes sense that a lot of the female dialogue is in questions, if only because it's become somewhat stereotyped as "the norm" for natural conversation. Also, if you consider the cast makeup, you'll notice that there are more prominent male characters than there are prominent female characters, so it makes sense that there'd be more male dialogue. And before you say that that in itself is male domination, if that were true, all texts would have an equal number of male and female characters on every level - main roles, supporting roles, heroes, villains, sidekicks... it would be terribly unrealistic.

Also, the first comment about your analysis being lazy didn't have anything to do with the amount of time or paper you put into this. It was a reference to your lack of personal work before the analysis - you went in with your eyes closed to anything you didn't want to see. You were looking for the hate, trying to find it, not letting the evidence speak for itself whether it was women-hating or otherwise. And, from the looks of the analysis, I'd have to agree. Not because you have a different opinion to myself or anyone else, but from the way you've worded things. You mentioned personal experiences and admitted that they coloured your opinion - "I have never personally known of a healthy relationship between a white man and a woman of colour" - and went on to describe horrible relationships with no regard for the obvious possibility that you don't know everything. You can't prove that something doesn't exist, especially not with such flimsy proof as yours, and the fact that it happens in your family and around you does not mean that it is a universal constant.

The bit about Zoe calling her Captain "sir"? He is her superior officer; there's no racial or gender supremacy going on there. It is simply procedure.

The last point I want to make is that the line “Sometimes you just wanna duct tape her mouth and dump her in the hold for a month.” has nothing to do with Kaylee's gender. It's the constant happyness that gets to Mal. He would have made the same comment about a male character who was constantly happy if there was one. And it isn't a threat, as you claimed; it may not fully be a joke, but it isn't something Mal would ever do to Kaylee. I don't get how you missed that.

Please, feel free to tell me if you think anything I said is wrong or if you think my reasoning is faulty. But, I would challenge you to argue in a way that you support your claims with facts, not assumptions or opinions (which means no saying that Joss Whedon rapes his wife unless you can actually prove it). Thanks.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

aww, aren't you all polite and articulate?

good stuff though.

[phrasemuffin.livejournal.com]

well, I wasn't about to bash her for having an opinion, even if she did bash someone else for no good reason (apart from it being her opinion, which is only a "good reason" in her own little world). Plus, I figured that if I stooped to her level, there'd be no way she'd reply, even though I highly doubt she will anyway. Everyone else that has had an intelligent thing to say has been completely misunderstood or just ignored with no reply.