Quiz! Who said the following, in reference to the presence of women on television?
Enough, ladies. I get it. You have periods. … [W]e’re approaching peak vagina on television, the point of labia saturation.
Was it?
- W.F. Price of The Spearhead
- Christopher in Oregon, legendary vagina-hating Man Going His Own Way
- Reddit commenter VjayjaysAreIcky69
Trick question! It was actually Two and a Half Men co-creator Lee Aronsohn, complaining to The Hollywood Reporter about the female-centric sticoms that have popped up of late. (There’s plenty to complain about when it comes to shows like Whitney and 2 Broke Girls, but “the main characters have vaginas” ain’t it.)
In a keynote address at the Toronto Screenwriting Conference, Aronsohn also defended his show’s tendency to portray women in a less-than-flattering light:
Screw it. … We’re centering the show on two very damaged men. What makes men damaged? Sorry, it’s women. I never got my heart broken by a man.
So brave, Aronsohn, so brave, standing up to the Matriarchy like that!
On ThinkProgress, Alyssa Rosenberg lays into Aronsohn:
[H]aving to hear that ladies have menstrual cycles, take birth control pills, and enjoy sex is just unbearable, right? Because even though the number of female characters on television tends to hover in the low 40 percent range, we’re just saturated with vaginas, because god forbid stories about men and their ish don’t absolutely dominate the media? Because even though those shows Aronsohn’s complaining about have actually created more writing and directing jobs for men than women, and resulted in some really awful portrayals as a result, we couldn’t possibly let women come to expect that they’ll have access to stories both about them and by them, could we? Because where would that leave poor, suffering, disadvantaged American men?
And then she takes on the entertainment industry in general, for tolerating his troglodyte views:
[T]hat Aronsohn is dumb and woman-fearing enough not just to believe this, to blithely admit he believes it to a major publication tells you everything about how cosseted Hollywood’s disgusting sexists are. You want to know why we get what we get on movie and television screens? … Because there are, apparently, no consequences in Hollywood for being perfectly open about how much you despise women’s bodies and the contours of women’s lives.
Maude Lebowski, what do you have to say about all this?
I love Charlie Sheen, and the fact that he says “fuck you” (metaphorically) to everybody.
There seems to be an inverse proportion between one’s pretentiousness and one’s intelligence. I’m sure I’m not the only person to realize this.
Dunning-Kruger effect?
self-absorbed contrarian dimwit loves other self-absorbed contrarian dimwit. film at eleven.
Not one of the people I dealt with today thought that.
Ah, Sharculese, always a delight hearing from you. You just bring sunshine to teh internets.
Don’t watch TV so much these days since I don’t have cable, but I’ve seen vaginas on television. Mostly on documentaries related to sex and reproduction. Somehow I get the feeling that’s not what he meant, though.
It’s not like there haven’t been plenty of female-centric sitcoms in the past. Heck, a lot of them used sex as an occasional element in their plots. Murphy Brown, Designing Women, the Golden Girls… All of which were much better than anything put out by Lee Aronsohn IMHO.
Never have I been more glad to not own a television. Most of Hollywood is such filth, such stupidity for the idiot people.
Good thing you’re smart and special.
Or maybe most people own televisions because it’s a nice low-effort way to relax, it gives them common ground for socializing, and it provides a mildly entertaining background for boring chores.
Sorry, I just get so set off by “television is idiot hypnosis for the idiot masses” superiority complexes. Television is on the whole sexist (see also: racist, classist, etc.), but it isn’t the opiate of the sheeple.
And MRAs are absolutely positive and brilliant people, encouraging hope, understanding, and truth wherever they go. They don’t darken the world and divide people with hatred, meanness, bullying, dishonesty, and resentment. They bring us all together, absolve our differences, encourage us to see each other has full human beings and to think critically and to be responsible to each other on this earth because this earth and each other is all we really have.
Don’t they, shitwit?
*as full human beings
The only person in this thread demonstrating “hatred, meanness, bullying, dishonesty, and resentment” is you (i mean besides Sharculese).
Oh dear Mags. My snarky comments are nowhere near the daily intellectual diarrhea of MRA favorites such as JohntheOther, Arks, Roissy, Paul Elam, etc. etc.
Mister Worf, dispatch a subspace message to Admiral Hanson. We have engaged the Borg.
Yeah, like how he gives the metaphorical finger to his children while he goes off the deep end on drugs, or like how he metaphorically flipped the bird to his wife when he held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her.
What a rebel!
Christ, what a douchebag that guy is.
Ah I love the smell of manboobz in the morning, smells like comedy. It’s 3pm here, but my morning, got my coffee…since we’re all bloody sharing. This thread is so funny. Although I did read it while listening to Patrick Stewart yammer on forever… overacting, yap yap yap wank wank wank, we get it Patrick. Your unfunny bleeding labia whore of a mother caused a problem for your father and paid for it. Leaky mangina. We’re at the point of awareness saturation. TMI Patrick, amirite?
—–
I was puzzled with the “we get it” portion of this dood’s failblurb. Because he kind of implied that women controlled when women were on tv, in what capacity and context, etc.
LOL!
So there’s a writers room full of men and a coupla swell gals, they’re all writing. Head writer says in his gruff voice. Ok time for the Vagina to come in, you ladies write that. Or, wait do you think they should come in now? You decide when they come in. Write what they should talk about. And, I thought I would take this opportunity to mention that market research shows that people don’t necessarily want to hear about your periods. So if we can focus on some other vagina related topic, that would be great.
Swell gals: “Oh, sorry, no can do, we need to be as authentic as possible. This is women.. deal with it!” *swell gals high five each other and then in unison, as if their cycles had synced up after spending so much time writing together, give the head writer dood the finger*
So yeah, I didn’t get that “we get it ladies” part AT ALL. It makes no sense. I think this guy was trying to be funny, meaning making absurd commentary. Now he’s screwed because if he comes out saying, oh that was a joke, he’s going to look like a douche because already so many people have decided it was not funny. And he’s supposed to be a comedy writer. Heh, For being a dick and not a vag, he sure did fuck himself.
That comedian tweeting him, I went and checked it out… she is funny. Those are worth the read. 😀
Is this the women are funnier than men thread? No doubt backed up by many personal examples and personal opinions. Hell, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if there was a “study” that makes it a fact. After all, we’ve got studies proving women are superior at everything.
I just want to know where the heck that terrifying tentacle-wtf-picture is from — mostly because it looks like a bad-ass VAGINA MONSTER I could shove into some 3D render…
I’m with Holly here.
I, personally, don’t watch TV and am happy with that. But people who want to think about stuff will think about it whether they watch TV or not, and people who don’t want to think about stuff won’t think about it whether they watch TV or not. It’s not TV that causes lack of curiosity or critical thinking in humans.
Sometimes, humans even think curiously and critically about THINGS THEY WATCH ON TV! Whoa!
What’s even more disturbing to me is that I feel like I’ve seen it before, but I can’t remember WHERE! Maybe it’s from “The Thing”?
It looks like the female-body version of this: http://i42.tinypic.com/9jg21y.jpg
(‘This’ is Mara from SMT, btw. A personal favourite for sheer ‘dafuq’-ness. I cuddleship him with Belphegor.)
Looks like a Todd McFarlane toy to me.
I like Harlan Ellison’s writing for television, but I don’t like his writing about television because it’s all if you were smart like me you would see how stupid television is. I’m like, dude, you made a living off television, WTF?
I don’t watch a whole lot of television, but I’m pretty sure a whole lot of people put a whole lot of effort into TV shows. Calling shows I don’t like worthless and low-brow seems awfully mean, not to mention a good way of making sure there is never another show like, e.g., Avatar or Doctor Who or whichever show makes you squee.
@Creative Writing Student:
I see penis. Do you see penis? Am I supposed to see penis?
I thought the SMT games were, like, T at best. Which was one reason why such a shit fit was thrown when Persona 3 was all “we’re going to make you act out teen suicide!”
There’s also a lot of classism in most anti-TV sentiment, since it generally comes with an subtext (or text) that people should be entertaining themselves in ways that require more money, free time, space, education, or energy at the end of the day.
When you’ve been on your feet for twelve hours, forms of entertainment that “stimulate your mind!” aren’t necessarily what you’re looking for; when you’re cooking and cleaning and chasing the kids around and just want something in the background to keep you less-bored, you can’t very well read a book.
@Falconer
It’s a penis. I want one as a steed.
I don’t know about the US, but in the UK the original P3 was rated 12 (why? I’d have given it a 15, personally, because of creepy-scary and possible triggers). P3: FES was rated 15, and included Mara.
Found it! It is from SOTA Toys, and depicts Dagon from Cthulhu Mythos.