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| Most 12-year-old girls are not superheroines. |
One of my favorite dopey complaints from the Men’s Rights crowd is that action movies featuring ass-kicking women are “unrealistic” because real women are too dainty to do all that ass-kicking shit. On The Spearhead today, W.F. Price aims his withering contempt at the new film Hanna:
The ass-kicking chick flicks are getting more and more ridiculous as time goes on. In “Hanna” a girl is raised by her father to be a vicious killer somewhere in the arctic. Hanna is played by Saoirse Ronan, an Irish girl with a sweet smile who looks about as tough as a bunny rabbit. Nevertheless, we are supposed to suspend disbelief and accept that this waif is capable of breaking necks with a single blow.
Even worse, in the trailer for the film, young Miss Ronan is depicted doing … pull-ups! “In general, women can’t do pull-ups,” Price complains, “and the vanishingly few who can don’t look much like Saoirse Ronan.”
Price does have a point. Real women can’t do the things that female action heroes do in films. Angelina Jolie may be a deeply scary woman, but I’m pretty sure she can’t take out entire boats full of trained assassins by herself, or jump from truck to truck on the highway to escape pursuers in cars, as she did as super seekret double (triple?) agent Evelyn Salt. Also, to the best of my knowledge, Sarah Michelle Gellar has never really slain even a single vampire. And there is no such thing as an indestructible cheerleader.
But here’s the thing, guys: All that crazy shit that male action stars do? Real men can’t do that either. Matt Damon is pretty buff, and I’m pretty sure he could take Angelina Jolie in a fight, but he’s not actually Jason Bourne. Christian Bale doesn’t put on a batsuit at night and run around town taking out baddies with his bare – well, gloved — hands. Toby Maguire can’t swing from building to building, or stick to walls; if he were bitten by a radioactive spider, he’d need to go to the hospital. Arnold is not the Terminator.
Also, and I hate to be the one who has to break this to you, guys: professional wrestling is fake.
I know it might be tough to take all this in, guys, so here’s Captain Kirk fighting a very slow-moving alien monster on planet Not-Very-Far-From-The-Studio. Kirk has a little trouble with this one but in real life, I’m pretty sure William Shatner could take down an alien monster, provided it moved as slowly as this one.
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*Yes, that was a Bioshock reference.
>Tit for Tat, you're not nearly as obnoxious as many other commenters on this site, but you do have a tendency to mansplain.Might want to get that checked.
>Hmm. Let's see, law, medecine, teaching (university level) research, accounting, business, politics… that is, up until 50-100 years ago.(Sally)Yep, pretty much my entire life. So I guess I can honestly say I know equality. ;)But far be it for me to stop you from mansplaining the obvious.
>Manufacturing was and is a problem since businesses use the excuse of "fetal protection" to bar women from doing certain jobs despite letting men do the same jobs with the same risks to their reproduction parts.
>Nothing is more amusing than when a guy whines about mansplaining, because of course we all need to hear his big manly opinion on discrimination and how women just aren't as good as men. That's not discrimination—he's never known inequality. Christ on a pony. Sally, yeah, that was me. Boy, that place has gone into the toilet. I saw a couple of women on a story about a pregnant eleven-year-old talking about 'How did nobody know? I'm three months and I'm huge!" "Oh, Congratulations, do you know what it is yet?" PLus more chatter about weight gain during pregnancy—in a topic where the subject was a girl who 12 and gave birth on a school trip, meaning she was just about certainly a rape victim.
>Yep, pretty much my entire life. So I guess I can honestly say I know equality. ;)But far be it for me to stop you from mansplaining the obvious.So, if we decide to take away your right to vote, your right to own property, and your right to decide with whom to have sex and procreate, and your right to decide which kind of work you do (or rather, narrow it by about 90%, since as we are honest interlocutors, unlike MRA types, we will acknowledge that men's choices are also constrained under the current system) for 2 or 3 millennia, you'll call it even about a century after we've stopped writing your oppression into law? Cool. *takes mental notes*@ ginmar -excellent. Well, when you left I knew that place was lame. But it wasn't til the apocadesign hit until I could go cold turkey. Now I feel better, like less of a dirty crack fiend. I still go back once in a while to smack Kielworth-LA around. But when it comes to socializing I hang around Pharyngula – come check out the open thread there sometime.
>I do get annoyed at action movies that feature an Angelina Jolie type killing people with her bare hands, largely because it reinforces the fact that women have to be pretty ALL THE TIME, and ignores the fact that most women – especially women with the physical strength needed to be that much of a badass – don't weigh 100lbs. It's better than no lady action heroes at all, but it would be nice to see a movie starring a woman who was a bit less supermodel and a bit more Sarah Connor. Hit Girl was awesome, though. There was never a doubt in my mind that she could kick my ass.
>Im not sure of an industry in the west where ALL women are excluded either. Reformed churches. But that's just my personal bugbear.
>you'll call it even about a century after we've stopped writing your oppression into law?(Sally)So here we have it. It is MY fault because I was born MALE. It seems to me that is the same thinking that let's Christian's think were all born of shit because of Adam and Eve. I will go out on a limb here and point out that odd's are you have never been denied the right to vote or denied access to education or prevented from buying property or fucking anyone you desire. Maybe your grandmother, or great grandmother. But YOU personally, highly unlikely if you grew up in the west. As far as being oppressed or abused goes, why dont we share some stories and see if were on equal footing in that regard.
>Which of course means we should completely ignore that history. Despite the fact that the denial of those rights is starting to be bandied about in the current crop of Republican right wing nutters (that are being elected to Congress.) And in the case of health care, it is being actively destroyed.So how about you stop claiming that things are honky dory when they are not. And they are getting worse for women, not better.
>Well Elizabeth(good name by the way, my grandmothers and daughters middle name)Im Canadian, so maybe our concerns arent quite as bad as yours. I tend to be an optimist and as far as I can see things are really looking pretty good overall for my daughters future. Im pretty aware of history but I just dont quite see her getting sold into slavery anytime soon. In my city stats show women have more managerial jobs, girls are getting better educated and pro choice is still, well, pro choice. Now as far as my stepson and his future, there is a slight difference in the stats for him. Not that we tell him that, he is afterall a very capable young man with lots of promise.
>Im not sure of an industry in the west where ALL women are excluded either.Most major religions do not offer ordination to women. So there's that.
>Im Canadian, so maybe our concerns arent quite as bad as yours.Canada is certainly saner than the US, but on the other hand, sexist creeps like you live there, so I suppose they still have some progress to make.
>tripYou are such a nice man. Perfect for showing my daughter what to stay away from. Rude and judgemental.
>Most major religions do not offer ordination to women. So there's that.(Lady vic)Lmao. And here I would have thought you would be tickled pink from being left out of the clubs that would have you worship a invisible male deity.
>And if—-that's a big IF, assuming you had any to begin with because people are charitable—you had any credibility, there it went. Bravo.
>@T4T:My personal beliefs are beside the point – and, for what it's worth, I've chosen a faith that not only allows women to receive ordination, but *requires* female clergy for the performance of several core rites. But if a woman wants to be Catholic, Mormon, conservative Jew or Muslim… she can't be that and be a leader in her faith. And those are just the major faiths that come to mind immediately – there are many smaller churches that do not allow women to become clergy or even teachers. Saying that women shouldn't be ordained because I personally don't like organized Judeo-Christian religion is like me saying that I don't want women to vote because they might vote Republican. They might, and many do. What a woman chooses is incidental to her being able to make that choice in the first place. Besides, that's not even the point of the discussion. Someone said that there wasn't a single field left in which women were systematically excluded, and I mentioned that women still can't become cardianals, imams and rabbis.
>Someone said that there wasn't a single field left in which women were systematically excluded(Lady Vic)Actually I questioned whether or not there was an area in the west. You showed me there is, thanks.ginmarYou werent talking about your charitable nature, were you? 😉
>Also, in the US Military, women are still kept out of combat roles. They're still able to join the military, but until the rules change, they won't be able to become generals. And having accepted that *some* sectors of Western life still exclude women, are you able to accept that there is still other, more subtle discrimination going on?
>Funnily enough, when I was in combat, the insurgents did not consult US Army Regs as to whether or not they could shoot at me. Dipshits back home, however, handily avoided the discrepancy by either calling me a liar or declaring that it wasn't really combat. There are a lot of decent people in the military—more decent than in civilian life. When you're chatting with Marines and they get it, nobody else has any excuse. And in fact women are being recognized for combat. This demonstrates the necessity of changing things from within.
>Dipshits back home, however, handily avoided the discrepancy by either calling me a liar or declaring that it wasn't really combat.That's some serious mansplaining. "Sorry, I have to erase your experience because it doesn't fit my preconceived notions. It doesn't matter that you were there, you're a woman so you wouldn't know about such things."Sigh.
>It's more of a case of people don't understand that support roles are not direct combat but often are fired at and are involved in combat situations by the nature of warfare. That and "baddies cannot tell what you are" and "baddies often like shooting at the people wearing the fancy hats with the big red crosses on it". I would put it down to the idea that people have that warfare is conducted with solid lines of contact (AKA soldiers and tanks, artillery, support). It's a very pervasive notion in a lot of people.
>And having accepted that *some* sectors of Western life still exclude women, are you able to accept that there is still other, more subtle discrimination going on?(Lady Vic)Of course, that is pretty obvious. But it goes both ways. I work in an industry where there is gender bias also, though it goes the other way. It is very subtle, but after 20yrs of dealing with it I am not surprised.
>"But it goes both ways." Oh, bullshit. If a woman gets her arm amputated, some whining asshole is going to whine he got a boo boo on his finer, and no woman would put a bandaid on it for him. And that's even if he has anything wrong wiht him at all.
>ginmarYou really are an angry person. You should get a massage, it may help you relax.
>And we have a tone argument. YOu know, the anti-feminist bingo card, Tat, is not a how to. So you're a troll.