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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.
>@ AvicennaIf you were paying attention at all to what I write you would clearly see that I dont use any of the language that you insinuate. In fact, for the most part I rarely if ever even use a slur or insult or any other defamatory language. I actually like most women(minus a few). I definately love and respect my wife, mother, daugther and the other women that have come before them. I just dont agree with certain aspects from the so called feminists(which include men) that I read on this site.
>I recommend that ginmar and SallyStrange be banned from this thread. They have been nothing but disruptive, rude and abusive from the beginning. One is a few fries short of a Happy Meal, and the other seems to think I was coming onto her or something. I recommend tranquilization and relocation to a radical feminist blog, where they may roam around with others of their kind, railing against the patriarchy and agreeing with each other. Electronic collars are recommended to keep track of their migration patterns.Avicenna: Hell, I'm all for mixed sports teams. If anything it'll increase visibility for female athletes (because let's face it, how many people watch women's sports compared to men's?) Should also be particularly interesting for events like boxing and the like. Bring it on!"And again sporting prowess and ass kicking prowess is hardly an indicator of our success as a human being. Infact they are now the opposite of our success as a human being. "Well now, it sounds like you're arguing two different things. First you imply women are physically equal – or even superior?, then you say "but it doesn't really matter anyway, it's not an indicator of success", as if you're not sure about it.Why would it be "the opposite of success" though? You wouldn't consider a professional athlete, or a martial arts master, successful? Even with all the work, discipline and effort it took to get there? I disagree, sir.
>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?(Sally)Sorry idiot loser, nobody wins and everyone loses when people get into a pissing match about who has it worse(Sally)Now, what were you saying about a pissing match?
>"Don't say that! She will hunt you down and make hats out of you. HATS!"Hats? I love hats!Can I place an order?
>I recommend that ginmar and SallyStrange be banned from this thread. They have been nothing but disruptive, rude and abusive from the beginning. One is a few fries short of a Happy Meal, and the other seems to think I was coming onto her or something. I recommend tranquilization and relocation to a radical feminist blog, where they may roam around with others of their kind, railing against the patriarchy and agreeing with each other.You don't seem to understand something here: ginmar and SallyStrange are not the odd ones out here. You are. This is a "radical feminist blog," to the extent that "radical" means "left of Sarah Palin."You came here knowing full well that you'd be starting an argument. That makes you the disruptive one. There's nothing inherently wrong with starting an argument, but now you're getting pissy that we don't think you're some voice of reason. Get over it.
>I'm sure you've just summed up his life, too. He never grew out of the stage where everybody thinks it's cute for boys to be boys—-you know, harassing girls and calling it good fun. But he hates it when the girls dare to suggest that they have a right to an opinion about what an asshole he is.
>The only thing you have a right to is heavy medication. I never called you a "rabid frothing bitch" despite your claims (so far the only ones cursing have been you and your friends), but damn, if the shoe fits… and in your case, that sucker fits like it was made to order.I love how you all assume I'm "getting pissy" (good god, if that isn't the supermassive black hole calling the kettle black) and "whining that people are being mean?" huh? seriously, where? This is why this is so much fun. I don't even know who or what your insults are directed at. Arguing with you is like tapping a guy on the shoulder, then watching him wildly punch and kick at the air in front of him for five minutes, yelling "take that! and that!" I mean seriously, if you people represent feminism, I should go to the MRA forum and tell them they've got nothing to worry about.
>"He never grew out of the stage where everybody thinks it's cute for boys to be boys—-you know, harassing girls and calling it good fun."But that means I secretly like you 🙂
>Ion protests and protests and protests and yet others can see for themselves that his own words don't make him into the doe-eyed innocent. He really seems to think that his opinion of himself should be the one that holds sway over other people.
>Hey Dickwad – if you don't like the heat then get out of the kitchen. Your views are highly objectionable to feminists. This is a blog frequented by feminists. What did you think, you were going to come in and make a grand announcement and then we were all going to go, "OMFG he is so right! I see the light now!" and suck your cock?Yeah, you probably did think that, because you're a fuckwitted woman-hating douchenozzle.
>"Your views are highly objectionable to feminists. This is a blog frequented by feminists."If I see any, I'll need to have a talk with them. Seems there's a bunch of idiots running around this place masquerading as feminists and ruining their image."What did you think, you were going to come in and make a grand announcement and then we were all going to go, "OMFG he is so right! I see the light now!" and suck your cock?"Yes, this is exactly what I thought. You've exposed my hidden agenda. Bravo, Mr. Bond. Shame you won't live long enough to stop me!"Yeah, you probably did think that, because you're a fuckwitted woman-hating douchenozzle."What is it with you and those words? They could be copy-pasted from every feminist blog, like, ever. You people need to update your insult repertoire. Sure, it would take some talent and creativity, but… oh, nevermind.
>Seems there's a bunch of idiots running around this place masquerading as feminists and ruining their image.What is it with you and those words? They could be copy-pasted from every feminist blog, like, ever.So are we making other feminists look bad, or are we representative of feminists? Make up your mind.
>Could we all cool it with the personal insults here?
>DAvid, either you do something about these trolls or you're asking women to accept this abusive shit from the MRAs. And if you put that mode of moderating in motion, you're telling women they have to tolerate the abusive shit that guys like Ion and the others thing is okay. Where were you when he was spinning his detailed bar fantasies?
>ginmar, I was away from my computer for many hours. I cannot monitor the comments in this blog 24/7. Which at times can lead to less than ideal results, as was the case with Discount. But the only alternative Blogger allows is for me to approve all comments before they go up, and that would effectively shut down discussion here for ten hours a day at least. I'm not willing to do that. Given the subject matter of this blog, there is really no way it can be a "safe space," and so I do not attempt to make the comments a "safe space" either. That's why I have a "trigger warning" in the blog description at the top left in the sidebar. Discount went well over the line and I banned him as soon as I saw what he had posted. I have only banned a tiny handful of people here.As for Ion, yes, he's said some obnoxious shit here (including the bar thing above). But others (well, mostly Sally) have said some obnoxious shit back to him. My judgement call is that none of this has reached ban-worthy status, at least not yet. But at the same time I'm not pleased with this turn in the discussion. That's why I asked everyone to cool it a bit with the insults. I will delete comments if that sort of shit continues.
>Did I say safe space, David? No. I'm talking about you hosting a space for misogynists and lumping them in with women who are reacting to misogyny with some sort of toss off remark about how people are behaving.
>In other words, it's flat out bullshit to compare bigots with the people who are the victims of their bigotry. That's what you just did.
>Just to clarify, when I said that "none of this has reached ban-worthy status, at least not yet," I was mostly referring to deleting individual comments, not banning people; no one here is close to being banned, unless they suddenly pull a Discount.
>ginmar, yes, in the interest of encouraging discussion I do allow misogynists to post here, and allow them to say more or less what they want, unless they start resorting to what I've called "gratuitously nasty personal attacks." I hold everyone here to the same standard of behavior in the comments here, though so far only misogynists have gone over the line to the point at which I've banned them.Enforcing the same set of rules for misogynists and feminists alike doesn't mean that I see them as equivalent. Obviously I don't, hence this blog. I'm for a generally open discussion on ideological grounds, even if that means that sometimes some people say obnoxious and bigoted shit. On this blog, the obnoxious stuff (insults, etc) comes from both sides; the bigoted shit almost exclusively from the MRA side. That, I think, is pretty revealing, and honestly, when MRAs and MGTOWers act like assholes and/or spout bigoted shit in the comments here it helps to reinforce and provide evidence for the points I make in my posts, and with the blog overall. I give them the opportunity to hoist themselves by their own petard, and many of them take advantage of that opportunity.
>Enforcing the same set of rules for misogynists and feminists alike doesn't mean that I see them as equivalent. Obviously I don't, hence this blog.(David)lol, just the fact that you need to make this statement is indeed pretty interesting. Dont worry Dave, I dont see you as a misogynist. Though, if you dont watch it, you might be a mansplainer. 🙂
>When you treat bigots and their victims the same way, that's inherently wrong.
>I think that the predictable, heavy-handed rejection of action heroines by all those sexist types has a lot to do with their refusal to see women as individuals, instead lumping them all together into a collective. The western consciousness associates individualism with phallic symbolism. As a consequence, individualistic female characters in fiction are viewed with contempt by those who would prefer so-called "phallic" power to be reserved for generic male action heroes.I'm a writer, so I've come to notice some rather disturbing trends in fiction and in audience reactions to said works. There seems to be a huge double standard in play here.For example, has anyone ever noticed how expendable the average femme fatale seems to be? Ever watched a Bond film? Of course you have. How about those male villains? How come they get all the recurring appearances, while the women are nothing more than dime-a-dozen obstacles; mere insignificant roadblocks for 007 to surpass?Also, there seems to be an alarming lack of audience sympathy for villainous females. I mean, who are you more willing to sympathize with? Rosa Klebb and Cruella de Vil, or Draco Malfoy and Anton Chigurh? I mean, they're all reasonably nasty characters in their own right, but the latter two are often lauded as cool and charistmatic, while the former two are treated with near-total contempt. I could name any pair of male or female villains and the same patterns would emerge roughly 80% of the time.I'm in the process of working on a bit of a genre-buster novel myself that features a number of female protagonists who are powerful and ambitious in their own right. Who said that girls always have to play the part of the gentle down-to-earth nature-lover? That's just patronizing bullcrap.Girls can use guns and kick ass too. Ever hear of Lyudmila Pavlichenko or Nancy Wake? The former was a WWII Soviet sniper with a body count greater than Rambo, and the latter was an SOE spy who did badass stuff like killing Nazis with her bare hands and bike-riding hundreds of miles across German-occupied France to deliver updated radio codes.I think a lot of these MRA fellows are ignoring the simple fact that REAL female badasses have existed throughout history. It's hilarious watching them bitch and moan about fictional ones.
>I think at least part of the problem is that there's a generation of younger male writers, who in their zeal to create "strong" women characters, end up making them completely over-the-top, unrealistic, over-sexualized Mary Sues. See Aeon Flux (the movie, not the animated series), Ultraviolet, Sucker Punch, Resident Evil (movies), Tomb Raider and the like. I don't think anyone can really identify with those characters, men or women, because there's nothing to identify with. They're just "butt-kicking action babe #342 who's got superhuman fighting skills for no adequately explained reason". I haven't seen "Hanna" but if there's a good reason for the character being good at fighting (for example being a skilled marksman, not throwing grown men twice her size around like toys or something), and she's actually well-developed as a character, I see no reason to complain.I do agree that there's a lack of sympathetic or memorable female villains. I can't think of one, actually.
>I dislike the term Mary Sue because it has effectively become meaningless. Originally, it referred to self-insert characters in fan fiction created as the perfect, incorruptible love interests for canonical characters; ones that the fanfic's author no doubt had a crush on.Since then, it has become a universally derogatory catch-all for "unrealistic characters", or "characters I don't like/cannot sympathize with/cannot connect with", or "characters who monopolize the plot", or "characters who alter the plot at will".That's just bad writing. Singling out one character as a Mary Sue is pointless. It's like hunting for a dust bunny on a rug that's been through a house fire, or complaining about a bad spark plug in an engine that's tossed a rod. If such a character exists in a work, then the problem isn't with that character. It's with the plot itself.A lot of authors fail to challenge their characters appropriately, and this is especially the case when the character in question is female. Your typical action heroine gets away with things that most male action heroes don't, like going through a massive fight or a gun battle without taking a single hit of any kind and downing more than their fair share of baddies all the same.This is probably because your average audience doesn't have the stomach for seeing a woman in a work of fiction gruesomely injured, whether the medium in question is a book, movie, comic or a video game or anything else. Personally, I think that having strong women in a work of fiction who can take a few licks and keep on ticking makes them more human and easier to relate with. There's no dignity in being magically shielded from all harm or loss or mental trauma as the plot demands, don't you agree?Sadly, the double standard is more pervasive than you'd think. In a work of cinema, a man with blood running down his face after a fight is a proud warrior and a testament to masculine fortitude. A woman with blood running down her face after a fight is victim and a survivor. Regardless of their actions on-screen and whether or not the woman initiated acts of aggression or took a greater share in the violence, these skewed audience perceptions remain. This has some strange side effects. For example, let’s say I were to write a book with a female villain that is not only a mass murderer, a war criminal and a sadist without compare, but she’s also the protagonist of the work. Would that make me a misogynist trying to paint a negative picture of women? Of course not. The character is an individual and part of a fictional plot, not a member of a collective. She does not speak for all women, just as a male character in the same situation would not speak for all men. As the author, I am supposed to remain completely impartial; neither supporting the cause of a given character nor rallying against it. Sometimes, it seems like you just can’t win with action heroines, though. If you make them over-the-top and manly/sadistic, it pisses off the masculists who see them as monopolizing dominant male traits that belong to them and them alone, and it pisses off feminists who see them as a male in disguise attempting to smear their good name. If you make them feminine and endearing, it pisses off masculists who see them as impostors and too incompetent to hold their own in a fight, and it pisses off feminists who want them to be just a little bit stronger.It’s like people just can’t make up their minds. You know what I say to that? To hell with it all. I like a good challenge, and writing convincing action heroines is one of the biggest of all.
>Society doesn't want to see women hurt? Have you been living under a rock? TV shows glory in showing scantily-clad victims getting tortured and raped and killed. Novels are worse. Hell, James Ellroy has made a career out of fetishizing and disparaging his mother, who he sneers at in print. Women getting murdered is a substantial genre. Without it, any number of TV channels would grow out of business.