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| [SSB] Gender General Cafe; for discussing gender stuff | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Mar 23 2015, 09:20 PM (6,327 Views) | |
| The Phantom Squee | Apr 23 2015, 09:54 PM Post #81 |
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Sound the horn and call the cry: "How many of them can we make die?"
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You were asking whether men who sacrifice themselves for the safety of women are seen as being particularly special, I was saying that no, I haven't generally found that to be the case. |
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| Momentime | Apr 23 2015, 09:59 PM Post #82 |
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uh oh
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also i think people here are tlaking about 'strong women' but i've yet to see it actually defined or someone put forth an example of a 'strong woman' that everyone can agree on personally i think a strong female character is just one that can drive the story forward by her own actions. actual strength, feminity(cant spell that for shit, too many i's), [radio edit]ing whatever you want to throw onto the character doesn't really matter imo. two examples: jen from crouching tiger, hidden dragon. she literally drives the entire plot, but at different points in the story she's an aristocratic daughter in an arranged marriage, then she's posing as a warrior dude and trashes a restaurant. but, she blows at actual martial arts compared to li mu bai, so is she really strong? feminity and strength relative in her world matters [radio edit]all, but imo that is a female character with a lot of presence in the story, hence a strong character...that is female. example two: morgan fey from phoenix wright. It's been a while but essentially we think she's just a doting mom/aunt but she iirc frames her family for murder and almost no one batted an eye. she's a sharp woman, but none of it can be attributed to her just being a woman. if anything given the setting her being a woman just gave her a different set of circumstances than most characters would have to deal with. again, a strong character...that is female. which is basically how i see characters and how i wish more people see characters. the character must be strong first, and then female. including marginalized or minority characters just because or bemoaning about the lack of them is imo a stupid thing to do.
Unless you're insinuating that a male character would not care for his personal life, I honestly don't see how a male character would react differently to any of the situations that you posited. in the star trek movie, a lot of attention is placed on how spock feels when his home planet is destroyed. Ed and Al are both orphans, just like Raine and Genis, and ed pretty much takes on the role of head of house throughout fma. |
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| Saturos | Apr 23 2015, 10:37 PM Post #83 |
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heart-under-blade
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Shads, with the "real men wear pink" thing, it's often played for comedic effect, and as the trope page itself says:
So, the emphasis is still heavily on masculinity, and the feminity here (reading through some examples) seems to be for a comic or unexpected. The article even prefaces it by saying that they're so manly that no one questions their masculinity, but questioning masculinity is exactly what we have in mind, I believe. If anything, this trope might be more of what I have in mind: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InTouchWithHisFeminineSide The anime/manga section is pretty developed, since the super macho manly man is associated with homosexuality (ie. bara), whereas the feminine man is often the object of feminine desire. So slightly different conceptions of gender. Your personal RL experience might be different, Shads, but I think it would be hard to argue that domestic sphere stuff is typically associated with women, as Sundancer said. Just look at any advertising for cleaning products over the last century or before, look at the demographic stats that 83% of women and 65% of men do housework (which is still hugely better than it was before, and better than Japan presently), and so on. It's awesome that you and your brother help your mom. If I may ask, though, what's your father doing? I know in my family, my father did make supper often, but my mother did most of the chores around the house, except for mowing the lawn. And my mother worked full time, whereas my stepfather worked part-time. Colette Shads, I didn't mean that all the women in the story are self-sacrificing (though Martel, Marble, possibly Anna though I forget that, come to mind), just that Colette's particular kind of self-sacrifice is a very feminine one. But as I said, the text itself situates that as a Bad Thing. Squee, that's a great point about men being disposable, and I'm glad you brought it up. I think there's a difference between actively dying for glory in battle, in a single moment of sacrifice, and slowly bit by bit sacrificing the things that give you enjoyment in life, losing your voice, taste, ability to sleep, and so on. It's a differently constructed kind of sacrifice: not a sacrifice of one's life, per se (though it involves that too), but a sacrifice of one's quality of life. A lot of that is echoing what Sundancer said, but there are centuries or thousands of years celebrating men dying in battle or dying for glory, giving up their lives rather than surrendering. "Charge of the Light Brigade," 300, etc. You're right that that's more generally a soldier thing, but remember that it's only within the last century, half-century, that women were allowed to be soldiers in most militaries. It's very much a traditionally masculine role. Do you know of any famous heroes or societal celebrations for women killed in action? I'm sure there are, but it seems to be that the weight of evidence is much more in the male direction in that case. Like I said, it's differently constructed senses of sacrifice. Whatever the origin for it, if it derived from early civilizations or not, that dynamic is not really necessary today. And I'd certainly say it's special, not as in the sense of being an exception, but being valourized over the course of centuries and millennia. Squee, I'm a little confused... your last post has you saying that you don't find men sacrificing themselves for women to be special, but your post earlier seems to be saying the opposite:
Particularly the romanticizing of the concept bit, which is the definition of "special" that I have in mind. |
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| ShinyGirafarig | Apr 23 2015, 10:50 PM Post #84 |
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Giraffes are adorable.
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My grandfather on my father's side did all the cooking. He told me he even was mocked for that but he did not care. He loved what he did. |
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| Saturos | Apr 23 2015, 11:22 PM Post #85 |
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heart-under-blade
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I'm sorry to hear he was mocked for it. That's why prescripted gender roles/patriarchy is such a shame. Feminism/equal rights+opportunities+choices opens doors for both men and women. I'd like to think we as a society are getting better about that. I know in Japan at least it's still very traditional, I get a lot of surprised reactions when I bring food I cooked myself, and there's even a general term I hear which amounts to "cooking man." And many of the husbands here have no idea how to cook. |
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| ShinyGirafarig | Apr 23 2015, 11:24 PM Post #86 |
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Giraffes are adorable.
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He wasn't social though as he was to himself so it did not bother him as he did not care much for having friends. |
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| The Phantom Squee | Apr 24 2015, 01:48 AM Post #87 |
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Sound the horn and call the cry: "How many of them can we make die?"
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Would you not agree, though, that the comparatively high suicide rates among men speak to a problem of this nature among them as well? I would argue that sacrificing quality of life is a problem of class and certain aspects of society in general, rather than gender. At any rate, I'm not referring exclusively to military sacrifice. I mentioned the problem of a sinking ship, as well--women and children being given lifeboat priority seems to me to denote a greater value being placed on their lives. Or for a different situation, say you're confronted with a burning building, and there are a man and a woman trapped inside. You only have time to save one, and the one you don't save is guaranteed to die. Am I wrong in claiming that, all other factors being equal, society would favor rescuing the woman? Sure, the people who make these sacrifices, most frequently men, are usually honored for them, but frankly I'd rather be alive because society didn't expect me to value my life less on the basis of gender, than be dead and given a token honor. And that, to me, is what feminism is about: letting both men and women make that choice, rather than being pressured into it by societal standards.
Societal celebrations, not so much. And as you said, women weren't allowed to serve until very recently, so that's to be expected. Off the top of my head, an argument could be made for Boudicca and Joan of Arc, both of whom were not killed in battle but were executed after being captured in battle, so I'd say the principle still applies.
Exactly! That's what I'm saying, that the dynamic is no longer necessary, and that it's harmful to both genders. It's like you said earlier, that patriarchal practices like that benefit nobody (although I've already gone over the reasons I object to the term "patriarchy," I think the meaning of the term as you're using it is the same as what I'm getting at). [qupte]Squee, I'm a little confused... your last post has you saying that you don't find men sacrificing themselves for women to be special, but your post earlier seems to be saying the opposite:
Particularly the romanticizing of the concept bit, which is the definition of "special" that I have in mind.[/quote] I'm not saying I don't think it's anything special, I'm saying that society doesn't, because it's just what's expected. Men are just expected to be the ones going to war, or fighting off a home invader, or throwing a woman out of the path of oncoming traffic, just like women are expected to be the homemakers, raise children, and so forth. They're ideals that are romanticized, yes, but actually achieving them isn't really met with any large-scale or lasting appreciation unless the circumstance are truly remarkable--sacrificing oneself specifically to achieve some key objective, or raising the literal son of God. EDIT:
Agreed, I definitely think we've been getting better about this stuff recently. The move toward more well-written female protagonists in video games and TV/film has been progressing well in spite of backlash against figures like Anita, and I know that in my area, at least, most people have no problem at all with stay-at-home dads, moms as breadwinners, that sort of thing. |
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| Saturos | Apr 24 2015, 02:27 AM Post #88 |
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heart-under-blade
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I'm not sure if suicide would be related to dying "gloriously" in battle. Japan might have that association, but most articles I've read tie the higher successful suicide rate among men to feeling like they're weak if they talk to someone, being afraid to be seen as vulnerable, and trying to bottle up and control their emotions instead. Gender and class intersect, so yes, both are at work. A high-class woman who can afford to outsource her housework to a cleaning staff doesn't have the same experience as someone who might be trying to raise five or seven kids and take care of the house. There are sacrifices required of both genders, but I said that it's possible to read Colette's sacrifice as a particularly feminine kind of construction that mostly is vested into female characters. But it's a tenuous thread, and as I said, the text itself criticizes it. I feel like we're getting a bit off topic.
Absolutely, and that would be correct. But a lot of the concepts and traditions you mention, like men saving women and children first, is itself a product of patriarchal and gendered thinking. Namely the logic is that women are things to be protected, that they're too weak to protect themselves, so men will do it for them. Part of the consequence of putting women on a pedestal is stuff like this, and again, feminism objects to it. I'm not sure exactly why you're bringing it up? It's obvious that the male gender role in several situations demands sacrifice. But again, it's a different kind of sacrifice. A more equivalent sacrifice across gender would be the man who's worked hard, backbreaking labour all his life, and now his body has largely failed him; or the soldier with posttraumatic stress as we now understand it. These are not sacrifices of life but sacrifices of quality of life. However, Colette's sacrifice is a conscious, deliberate thing offered up to save her world, which is moooore frequently represented as a female thing (Christ excepting, but Christ was "feminine" in many ways). A way to criticize my argument would be to say that Colette consciously chooses at each juncture (even if she's deceived into it by a father figure) to sacrifice herself, which is certainly more Messianic. I don't know the first one, but in terms of how they were celebrated and received by the society, Joan of Arc was immortalized less as a capable military commander who died gloriously in battle and more of a religious saint. One or two exceptions doesn't change the vast tendency of the literature and societies over thousands of years, though.
Of course it's harmful to both genders. I don't think anyone would object to that. My point is that traditional gender roles demand different kinds of sacrifices from men as from women. Oh, what I meant by "special" was that they were romanticized as the ideals, not that individual cases of them were treated as special. Like you said, those were the gender norms that everyone was expected to follow. The woman was expected to give up all their dreams and ideals to raise kids and be the "angel of the hearth" (look at Ibsen's Nora from A Doll's House as one example of a psychology and challenging of this, late Victorian/early modern, so when feminism was starting to finally effect some small changes). A woman refusing to sacrifice her life for her kids and boxed into the house was absolutely unbelievable at the time and Nora the character was scathingly derided for it. The Yellow Wallpaper is another. That's not to say that women should walk out on their kids, obviously, but that it's important to understand where that feeling of what's sacrificed is coming from. And let me underscore this, that does not in any way belittle or lessen the sacrifices that men were also expected to perform as according to their gender roles. That's |
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| The Phantom Squee | Apr 24 2015, 03:09 AM Post #89 |
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Sound the horn and call the cry: "How many of them can we make die?"
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I'm not sure where you're getting the impression that I was relating that to battle, because I wasn't. I was referring specifically to the symptoms you just outlined being indicative of sacrificing one's quality of life.
I brought it up because you seemed to be saying the expectation for men to be self-sacrificing in defense of women benefited men because it was viewed as "honorable" or "glorious."
See, I haven't played ToS, so I don't know if the way it's pulled off in the game contains some element that you're not managing to convey here, but this is the main point I'm getting at: that I haven't seen conscious self-sacrifice represented as a feminine thing with any real frequency. In most of the media I've seen featuring some sort of heroic sacrifice, it's been the male lead or the (also male) best friend character who does it, and I'm speculating that this tendency is linked to the pervasive view of men as being disposable.
I was never arguing that, I only brought up those examples because you asked.
I think you may be misinterpreting my meaning, so let me clarify. I'm not trying to make some point about men having it just as bad, only bringing up what I thought was an interesting conversation point in the process of answering Nell's question about what constitutes a strong female character. |
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| Saturos | Apr 24 2015, 04:44 AM Post #90 |
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heart-under-blade
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This is beginning to feel like one of those rabbit hole nightmares, but I'll just say that if you actually want a media list where you can see the things I'm referencing at work you can message me. I'm pretty sure I still have my old reading lists. So I'll just leave off here. Shads, you mentioned that you didn't feel we had a term for a strong female character that we could all agree on. I'll link a few articles, one of which was quoted already (by Squee), and one I feel someone linked me before: http://www.overthinkingit.com/2008/08/18/why-strong-female-characters-are-bad-for-women/ http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/08/i-hate-strong-female-characters "Strong just means they have their own goals that move beyond “I want to do whatever the male hero wants to do” or “I want to marry the male hero.” " TVTropes folks put together this big flowchart, since we seem to like TvTropes here. Which is fine, it's a great starting point: http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/ziabandito555/2503850/14598/14598_original.png It puts Strong Female Character down to the initial questions: - Can they carry their own story? (I don't think this is actually necessary) - Is she three dimensional? - Does she represent an idea? - Does she have any flaws? - Is she killed before the third act? But to me, I think the most important one there is "three-dimensional." To reiterate what I said before, do they seem like a fully realized person? Also, before anyone gets butthurt, I'm going to preliminarily say that just because some character is the picture on that chart for another trope, or that other tropes are present there, doesn't mean that that character isn't a strong female character. Alright, finally watched the Sarkeesian video, so I can talk to your post now, SG:
I think Sarkeesian clearly said that it was just her vision of feminism, but I think you're missing the point. It's not so much that Mattie's character herself is masculine, but rather that she's not a feminist character because she doesn't question the masculine values of the society around her, ie. solving things without emotions and with violence is the ONLY way. What Sarkeesian seemed to be saying is that Mattie doesn't entertain the full spectrum of emotion and that her actions basically just reinforce the prevailing masculine/patriarchal structure. So while her gender may be different, and while Sarkeesian herself is pretty clearly excited by the character, she would stop short of calling her a feminist character for that reason. That reason being that Mattie participates in a world where the only way is individualism, emotional repression/emotionlessness, and solving problems with violence. That's basically the crux of it. Now, personally I disagree with one thing: I think women performing and occupying male roles is by itself destabilizing, but by itself it's not sufficient. As we seem to have been saying, female characters need to represent the full breadth of human emotion and experience. Also, I'm not sure where the "man with boobs" comment came from? I recall hearing something similar in a review about the new Lara Croft game talking about Shepard, which is lolwrong, but I don't think that was Sarkeesian... unless it was from something else. Oh hey, I think I found that by just browsing the related: http://feministfrequency.com/2013/11/18/ms-male-character-tropes-vs-women/ EDIT 2: Lol nevermind, no I didn't. Incidentally the Shepard stuff she talks about here is mostly in concern with marketing, which is definitely right. And as she says, Bioware did eventually make some strides to try to rectify that, and she emphasizes that it doesn't affect the narrative. EDIT: Here's what Sarkeesian herself says about the video:
Incidentally, she also provides five articles for context arguing that the character IS feminist. |
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| The Phantom Squee | Apr 24 2015, 06:14 PM Post #91 |
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Sound the horn and call the cry: "How many of them can we make die?"
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Yeah, that's where I saw the quote, thanks for posting that. While I disagree with some of her points (I don't think that being rescued by a man at some point necessarily makes a female character not-feminist), the overall idea of the article is very much in line with my thoughts on female characters, and just characters in general. Also reminded me of this:
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| King in the North | Apr 24 2015, 06:24 PM Post #92 |
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that sounds pretty awesome though |
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| The Abominator | Apr 26 2015, 06:32 PM Post #93 |
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Good old RLM. That guy's impression of a modern action scene is the best. He flips his arms around going "whoosh whoosh shing woo shaah shwoo shwing" |
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| Admiral Miral | Apr 27 2015, 12:51 AM Post #94 |
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The Light of Hope
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JoJo%27s_Bizarre_Adventure |
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| Kula Diamond | Apr 27 2015, 07:02 AM Post #95 |
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atlus tracts
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crossdressing joseph 2op |
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| gnik drazil | May 2 2015, 06:46 PM Post #96 |
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The sun no longer sets me free
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gender is the new race card |
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| Clawford | May 10 2015, 06:47 AM Post #97 |
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has no style
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Happy cisgender adult female day |
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| ShinyGirafarig | May 10 2015, 07:02 AM Post #98 |
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Giraffes are adorable.
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Who happens to either lend her body of a new lifeform and feel like is is being ripped up inside or taking in another child but whatever the method caring for them all the same. Thank you very much. I like to know that I may one day earn this day very soon. |
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| Ceremonial Dentist Fridge | May 10 2015, 07:08 AM Post #99 |
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Spirit
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And hey, you don't have to cis to be a mom! :3 When I was a wee kid I resented that parents got birthdays AND Mother's/Father's Day. I thought it would only be fair to have Daughter's Day too. I've since chilled out and am looking forward to a barbecue for Mom tonight. |
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| Clawford | May 10 2015, 10:36 AM Post #100 |
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has no style
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You have a point but most of the features of the holiday are centered around traditional femininity that western society associates with cisgender women. I also resented the whole Parent's Days when I was a kid and kind of now since my parents have their anniversary near Mother's Day. Plus my dad has his birthday on the same of the anniversary so it's a double whammy. But I don't want to move to China because giving up a few of my freedoms. |
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