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?
Also, P4 was given a 16+, because Kanji is sorta maybe not-heterosexual, Naoto has some gender identity issues, and possibly because of Rise’s dungeon (squelchy technicolour stripper with radar dish head… my brain…)
Nocturne is 12 even though it features Mara as a boss. SMT: Digital Devil Saga was 16+ because of eating sentient beings, I guess?
I’ve only ever played P3 and P4. I think I got up to the dungeon in P4 that was a gay bathhouse, but my wife got further. Rise’s dungeon was the love hotel, yes?
I can only remember getting to the train in P3. I remember one of the young women led the way climbing a ladder into the train. She stops halfway up and tells the boys not to look up. I thought at first it was because she was wearing a skirt. Then I realized a few minutes later that there must have been something unpleasant on the ceiling of the train ….
I’m pretty sure the monster is 2 different things, a weird animal on top of an octopus.
Google image only find me articles named “how a gay man sees a vagina”.
Oh, wait, here it is:
http://www.sotatoysonline.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=66_68&products_id=197
Dagon – Shadow Over Insmouth
$19.99
Dagon (“Shadow Over Insmouth”) features a translucent skull cap and six arms, including 4 articulated arms.
Through many worlds and many cultures does Dagon’s influence sway. From Sumerian mythology to the Bible, Dagon in one form or another has appeared through time. But to the Deep Ones, it is Dagon the Great Old One to whom they worship for his powers and boon. Written in 1931 and was published in 1936.
ninja’d, obvioulsy.
@Falconer
Rise’s dungeon was the strip club. Yosuke shows himself to be the master of understatement in this video.
My friends and I decided the noises made it tone of the most disturbing things ever.
Ah – I knew I recognised a Lovecraft beastie when I saw it. The gibbering blasphemous vagina of Cyclopean angles that should not be!
Okay, this is off-topic, but can someone explain to me where this stereotype of gay men hating or fearing vulvas came from? I do not get it.
…the hell? I thought Dagon was just a really big Deep One.
On the other hand, I think this version is cooler. I was always a little bit disappointed that Lovecraft’s version of an actual ancient water god was a mere giant mook in service to Cthulhu. Actually, this fellow reminds me very much of the version of Dagon that Wizards of the Coast created for their 3.5 supplement Hordes of the Abyss.
I presume it comes from old “inversion” theories. That gay men don’t want sex with women because they have some sort of man obsession or vagina trauma or some shit like that.
Cis hetero men say horrible hateful things about vulvas all of the time, I haven’t seen more of this from cis gay men than from cis hetero men.
It’s probably just a stupid joke gone out of hand.
Viscaria: for some time I regularly listened to Dan Savage’s podcast, and that’s something that came back a lot. Not so much hate or even fear, but rather he was – probably still is – grossed out by it, and expressed it repeatedly, even though many commenters asked him to stop.
The idea seem to be that it’s objectively gross and off-putting for all men, but straight men will get used to it because they’re horny, while gay men don’t have to.
Now, that’s just one man, and I don’t know how many feel the same way (I rarely discuss genitals with people), but his fame could have contributed.
Just my two cents.
@DSC, that makes sense I guess. I mean, it makes sense that the origins of that idea would be in inversion theories. “Gay dudes are grossed out by vag and that’s why they’re gay!” does not make any sense whatsoever.
@Kyrie: Huh. We do demonize vulvas a lot (thus, the OP) so I guess that makes sense too.
Sometimes I wish people would stop being ridiculous.
That picture reminds me of Vagina dentata.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagina_dentata
LOL!
*sigh* Off topic, but I was just reading a yahoo news story about the shootings in Oakland, California, yesterday. The police have the shooter and the story said that he shot and killed six women and one man and injured three more people, because he “was angry at a female school administrator and students, saying they teased him and “were not treating him respectfully.””
Now I bet the MRAs will be using him as an example of women pushing an innocent man to violence.
The story did say that the female administrator was not injured and it’s not believed that any of his victims were the people who teased him.
The pretentious, classist, assholes who usually say this are completely full of shit, and if you put a TV in front of them they will zone out for hours.
I take it you’ve never seen a David Simon production? There are some smart people making some smart TV, but I guess you’ll never know.
@Creative Writing Student
The female bodied version of Mara in the SMT series would be Arioch.
I think to be effectively stupid you have to be really smart. Then again, I still do not get Jackass.
talking of the telly, I rarely watch it but I happened to put it on tonight and lo, Morgan Freeman Explains Wormholes! And it isn’t even my birthday. I need to put it on more often!
@Demios
Ah. I’ve only played P3:FES, P4, SMTIII and Digital Devil Saga, and Arioch doesn’t turn up in any of them.
One of many things that annoys me about anti-TV sentiment, which other people have also articulated to some degree, is the idea that entertainment has to be “smart.” I mean, I’m a pretty smart person. I am a giant literary nerd, I adore classical music, I go to science lectures of the sort aimed more at other scientists than at laypersons whenever possible and find them fascinating – and I also like watching shit blow up, watching hot guys prance around shirtless, and laughing at jokes about poop, because being smart and into fancy-schmancy erudite things doesn’t magically make explosions stop being cool-looking, pretty men stop being pretty, and poop jokes stop appealing to one’s inner ten-year-old. Sometimes I want my entertainment to be something complex and detailed that will make me think deep, philosophical thoughts, and sometimes I just want to watch Dean Winchester make pouty faces and then stab a monster with a sword. And that’s okay!
Shakespeare’s best cunt joke!: http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/11/shakespeares_best_cunt_joke
Getting kids into Shakespeare through his dirty jokes (I used this in my intro to lit courses at my university–told them the dirty jokes were explained in the footnotes! they read the footnotes!
http://englishteacherman.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/romeo-and-juliet-a-gateway-drug-for-kids/
According to this blogger, 700 puns on sex, 400 on genitals
http://talonsbronwyn.edublogs.org/2011/12/06/dirty-jokes-shakespeare/
Academics: Playing Dirty: Sexuality and Waste in Early Modern Comedy
http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/playing-dirty