One effect of living within the ideological bubble of the Men’s Rights movement is what you might call ideological inflation: MRAs start off believing, for example, that women don’t face discrimination today, in the developed world — an idea that’s wrong enough to start with. But then, surrounded by other delusional MRAs who reinforce their every wrong notion, the denizens of the Men’s Rights bubble come to believe that women haven’t ever been discriminated against anywhere and at any time in the history of the world. (You may recall those evil cavewomen who sat around eating prehistoric bon bons while the men hunted the mammoth to feed them.)
And that leads to things like the following video, in which the FeMRA video maker who calls herself The Wooly Bumblebee declares war on a pair of “Misandric Pants” she bought for her daughter by accident.
Yep, that’s right, she’s furious because one fucking percent of the proceeds made from selling these pants goes to a charity fighting against the very real discrimination and oppression that girls face all over the globe. You know, like being denied educations because they’re girls. Like being forced into child marriages with adult men. Like being forced into prostitution as children. That sort of thing.
Apparently girls don’t suffer from being repeatedly raped as children. But boys are totally oppressed because a tiny portion of the profits from a pair of pants goes to a charity that talks about, and tries to do something about, the shit girls have to endure because they are girls.
I liked ST:TNG a lot when it came out. It took me a while to warm up to DS9, largely because I thought Avery Brooks was way too wooden in his acting. He loosens up substantially though, to the point where his unnaturally stiff demeanour in the first season or two actually starts to look like a brilliant long-term portrayal of the emotional damage he suffered at Wolf 359.
The long-term story arcs from the cross-pollinization with Babylon 5 were a high point for Star Trek generally too, and I was hooked during the Dominion War.
After DS9, Voyager was such a let down. I wanted the ship to start looking more like the Millenium Falcon, full of closed sections, cross-patched systems, salvaged parts and comfortable spaces as crew discipline started to break down in favor of the “big happy family” that Trek crews were famous for. That series made me allergic to time travel and holographic technology as plot points.
Then “Enterprise” came along set centuries in the past, and in the very first episode we get… time travel and holographic technology. Done.
I’m SUCH a frelling Farscape fan now. 😀
Oh, Farscape! One of the Sci-Fi’s channel’s more successful shows. I loved how Crichton dropped pop culture references all over the place and his alien companions never knew what the hell he was talking about. One time, a Nebari took over the ship, and Crichton kept commenting on how much she looked like Debbie Harry. The Nebari got pissed with him, and he replied, “You’d better do what she says, ’cause she gonna get ya, gonna get ya!”
I watched DS-9. Would you believe one of my favorite characters was Elim Garak?
I liked TNG too, though I got sick of all the storylines about Worf’s old family ties to the Klingon Empire — not ALL of them, just some of them. Deanna never got to beat anyone up; they just glass-ceiling-ed the lady. Her mother was a pistol, though.
We’re a diverse bunch here, even on sci-fi preferences. Thanks for all the comments on why naval terms are used, poor air force. Re the DS9 comments, I *hated* the Ferengi as characters, possibly because I viewed the few episodes I saw as having strong and horrid racial stereotypes. And I thought Picard was too diplomatic to the point of being submissive in order to avoid confrontation, which is not how I would believe a captain or commander would behave. I much preferred Voyager, because I liked Janeway so much: firm but fair. However, repeating the phrase “finding your humanity” (was it a rule to mention this phrase at least once per bloody episode?) with respect to 7 of 9 was annoying.
I really liked Farscape, and we bought all the series on DVD. I liked Pa’u Zotoh Zhaan and was sad to see that character go, I read somewhere it was because Virginia Hey was having such a bad reaction to the blue make-up.
And I’m a huge Blake’s Seven fan. Apart from the last episode in the last series.
@Polliwog – I’m terribly sorry that happened to you. As you say, the US ratings sytem is a horrible mess that doesn’t really provide a lot of useful information.
Can I rant about “Saving Private Ryan” for a minute? Because I have developed a fairly deep hatred for Spielberg ever since I learned he ripped off a good portion of Maus in “Schindler.” And SPR breaks one of the cardinal rules of editing with such contempt that I left the theater fuming over the editing rather than caring about the movie. (The opening scene in the graveyard is match-edited to a close up of Tom Hanks’ face, creating the implication that the guy in the graveyard is him. Except it’s not. I don’t care who Spielberg thinks he is, he can’t fuck with the language of film that way.)
Also ditto on Spielberg always going for the trite and saccharine parts of any story. It was cute when he was doing adventure movies but it cheapens any drama he undertakes.
OK done ranting about that.
I will spare you the ranting about Trek or I’ll be here all day. 😉
::flaps hands::
I loved Blake’s 7! And yeah, hated the way they ended it. Cried my eyes out.
“Also ditto on Spielberg always going for the trite and saccharine parts of any story. It was cute when he was doing adventure movies but it cheapens any drama he undertakes.”
I felt like that watching War Horse. I’ll be seeing the play this weekend (am SO looking forward to watching those puppets!) and it’ll be interesting to see the story told sans Spielberg.
What’d he rip off? Here’s excerpts from a conversation in the Village Voice in which Art Spiegelman says Spielberg ripped off Maus for An American Tail, but the excerpts don’t include what he has to say about if he saw anything of his own work in Schindler.
I do think there is a point to the argument that the Jews are completely beside the point of Schindler.
I feel like I ought to add that I saw Schindler’s List once, a long time ago, it moved me to tears, but I haven’t thought about it and I don’t have anything invested in it, so I’m sorry if that last post came off as an aggressive defense.
I haven’t watched any Blake’s 7 yet.
I love Red Dwarf, but I thought perhaps Dwayne Dibbley was getting overused, and then on the other hand, maybe the showrunners started to feel like the Cat was one-dimensional.
I enjoy some episodes of Next Gen, but others I don’t like. I found myself skipping over episodes on Netflix. Of course, I also skipped over episodes of TOS. I couldn’t get all the way through “The Paradise Syndrome” this time, and “And the Children Shall Lead” felt awkward.
I’ve watched a few episodes of DS9 but I haven’t nerved up to watch any Voyager.
I made it all the way through Enterprise and didn’t watch the finale because it had been spoiled and I didn’t like what I was hearing. Earlier in the last season, I found myself oddly touched by (rot13 Zveebe!Nepure. Gurer’f n ovg jurer vg orpbzrf boivbhf gung ur vf n yvggyr puvyq va n zna’f obql, ur’f va bire uvf urnq, naq uvf cynaf ner nyy sehfgengrq, naq jung ur qbrf vf serrmr naq fgneg cnavpxvat hagvy fbzrbar ryfr trgf gur fuvc jbexvat.
Nyfb, uvf pncgnva ehaf vagresrerapr sbe uvz naq ynlf qbja uvf yvsr sbe uvf perj, juvpu jnf abg fbzrguvat V jnf rkcrpgvat sebz na Rnegu Rzcver pbzznaqre.
Dang! forgot to close a parenthesis.
“Ripped off” seems like a generally unfair accusation to level at filmmakers because of the nature of the medium; everyone has ripped off someone at some point and the boundary between ripoff and influence and homage is so thin and amorphous and so many masterpieces are blatant ripoffs.
Katz: That makes more sense. I didn’t see much similarity between “Maus” and “Schindler’s List”, even though they were both based on true stories from the same historical events. I can totally see Spiegelman being pissed off at Spielberg and Bluth for “American Tail”.
Well the similarity would be Jews depicted as mice and their historical prosecutors depicted as cats. On the one hand, yeah, that’s a striking resemblance. On the other hand, Bluth was dueling with Disney at the time, so if it was actually trying to rip off anything, it’s more likely The Great Mouse Detective. And once you’ve got mouse protagonists, cat antagonists are an obvious choice.
None of which makes Spiegelman have any less right to think his work was being exploited, of course.
You know, this article is kindof funny when you remember that this comes from people who think women are snobby bitches that have to be in the spotlight all the time. It makes their reaction to not being in the spotlight the saddest kind of hilarious.
Voyager was the first Trek I watched. I think it gets too much crap from lots of Trekkers… Okay, I do like DS9 the best, as I said. Voyager, yeah, they had some problems, like how they alternated between talking about limited supplies and seeming to have endless supplies, and the “alien of the week, then press reset button” syndrom. BUT TNG had a lot of the latter as well. Overall I liked the Voyager crew, and I LOVE that they had a female captain who didn’t have to be traditionally attractive or anything, just a normal-looking thirty-something strong woman in a normal uniform being a space hero. I think that’s one of the reasons I got stuck on Trek to begin with, and several female trekkers I know say the same.
(And it was silly fan-service to have Seven in that catsuit, but she was still a very good character.)
Re ferengis as racial stereotypes… When I started watching DS9, I just saw the ferengis as exaggerated versions of present-day western humans. Consider:
– They think the market forces are divine forces that arrange everything for the best (totally true about our current government as well)
– The closest thing they have to a holy scripture is a glorified self-help book with 300 pieces of advice and aphorisms on how to get rich and successful
– If a person in their society is really talented, but doesn’t know how to turn that talent into money, he’s a loser, since money and material success is all that counts.
– The workers in their society believe laissez-faire capitalism is in THEIR best interest too, because if they work hard enough, one day they can also become rich and successful capitalists.
– And oh, it’s explicitly pointed out in one ep that humans used to be like ferengi some hundred years ago.
The producers also stated that they intended the ferengi as such; parodies of present-day humans placed among the enlightened and noble future humans of Star Trek.
HOWEVER, I know that intent isn’t magical or make everything allright. And there is clearly a case to be made for them being antisemitic stereotypes – they’re greedy little bastards mostly played by Jewish actors. And some Jews and Jewish groups have criticised them on that point. Knowing this, and knowing that I’m not a Jew so it’s not my place to judge whether they’re antisemitic or not, I still can’t help enjoying them as parodies of us…
(Final note: The case has also been made that the Bajorans are totally the Jews of the alpha quadrant. Their religion is an important part of their identity, they’ve been slaughtered and put in concentration camps by a racist dictatorship, and *sigh* their distinguishing feature are their noses…)
I don’t see why they can’t share the title….
True, Falconer. One could regard them as the positive vs the negative Jews. Or something like that.
Warning, I’m about to comment geek sacrilege…I could never get into any of Star Trek. Picard could manage to hold my interest for an hour, but I just couldn’t care enough to actually watch.
*ducks*
I might be inclined to regard the Bajorans as “the Jews the Yanks trot out when they want to feel good about themselves.”
Not to deny the experience of the survivors, but it’s been kind of taken over by Hollywood, seems to me.
I’m not sure us telling ourselves all these stories about beating the Nazis is doing the Jews any good. Like how all the ultra-Christian-based Israel ra-ra over here has that hidden sting of, “So that way our religion can be proven true!”
Well, that’s great. At least we’ll only argue over Doctor Who. 😛
Seriously, don’t feel bad, you don’t have to watch Star Trek to be a geek.
I think the realization that fundies support Israel because they think it’s going to help bring on the apocalypse was what tipped me over from “I do not understand these people” to “these people are 100% batshit”.
I’m a Browncoat 🙂
LOL Argenti! I feel that way about most television series. Anything that’s on commercial television … nope, not happening, I don’t care how good it is, I’m not sitting through ads. Even series I like don’t get me super-involved or passionate.
Lauralot: If you want to spin, on a spindle I’d recommend the following:
1: A decent spindle (Shchact, or Louet are good) of about 2 oz. weight).
2: “Respect the Spindle”, which is a book (with lots of illos) about nothing but spindle spinning.
Most spinning books are meant for wheel users, and have a throwaway chapter about spindles, which tends to be dismissive in effect, if not intent. They do the same thing, but very differently, and each has its virtues.
I recall the time when the more relevant part of the name was, “drop”, not spindle. What was causing it for me was a lack of twist, usually caused because I didn’t have enough feel for the yarn to realise the spindle had reversed direction.
The only Trek I could get into was the original series, and (to a lesser extent) the movies.
Falconer — lovely! It’d be awesome if 11 could find a happy balance between disinterested wimp hiding in a cloud and OMGS did you forget that you’re a damned pacifist?!
Kitteh — Doctor Who gets me, even with the Moffat, because dinosaurs on a space ship! That and sort of Criminal minds and NCIS, brain crush on Reed, and OMGS Abby! (I want her music collection!)