So the question on the table for today is: Are asskicking women in action films an affront to “godly, awesome, beautiful, feminine women” and, well, now that you come to mention it, our heavenly Father too?
According to Christian cultural critic Nathan Alberson, the answer is “yes.”
That’s the short version of his answer, in any case. The long version is a rambling 3000-word diatribe that Alberson casts as “AN OPEN LETTER TO REY FROM STAR WARS.” Originally posted in March on Warhorn, a site I’ve never heard of before, his post is now being passed around by irritated feminists, many of whom aren’t quite sure whether his argument is real or an elaborate parody.
Having poked around Warhorn a bit, I’m pretty sure that Alberson is sincere. He genuinely thinks that characters like Rey in Star Wars are an affront not only to his own masculinity but to God, for whom Alberson seems to think he’s a spokesman.
Alberson starts out his “open letter” by addressing not only Rey but an assortment of other heroines in science fiction and fantasy films, including, among others,
Princess Leia. And Wonder Woman. And Sarah Connor and Trinity and Imperator Furiosa … and Katniss Everdeen and River Tam … And Feminist Elf-Kate from The Hobbit. … And the godmother of them all, Ellen Ripley.
The problem with these fictional women? They’re strong. And women in the real world are weak. Because God made them that way. So kickass women in action movies (and the women who play them) not only “look ridiculous,” they’re also
behaving … in ways that do not befit your sex or glorify God. … Your friends and family and fans may not laugh at you. But the angels do and history will.
I’ve seen this same argument made by antifeminists I don’t know how many times — though generally without all that stuff about God and the laughing angels. Women in the real world are, on average, weaker than men, all these guys say. So it’s unrealistic to think that any female heroine could beat up a man.
Here’s my open letter to Alberson:
Dear Mr. Alberson,
Have you ever actually seen an action movie?
Sincerely,
David
I mean, dude, seriously, you’re mad that Trinity from the Matrix can jump high and beat up dudes?
The Matrix movies are about a dystopian future in which humans “live” in a computer-generated virtual world while their bodies in the real world are used to generate electricity. And the part of the movie that seems the most unrealistic to you is that Trinity, while she’s in the video-game-like matrix, can jump high and beat up dudes?
You do remember that by the end of the movie Neo can slow down time, repel bullets with his mind, and, you know, FLY?
In the original Star Wars, Darth Vader strangles a dude with his mind, by using a mysterious force called, you know, The Force. But the unbelievable thing to you is that Princess Leia knows how to use a blaster?
It’s true that in the real world women can’t do all the amazing things that fictional women in science fiction and action films do. But, as I pointed out the last time I wrote about this goofy argument, neither can men.
Seriously, have you seen any movie with Jason Statham in it? Sure, Statham could kick my ass, and probably yours, in the real world. But he can’t actually do all the unbelievable things his characters do on film.
I mean, the first Crank movie, as unrealistic in its violence (and its physics) as a Roadrunner cartoon, ends with Statham’s character, Chev Chelios, dispatching his arch nemesis, then calmly calling his girlfriend and leaving her a message — all while plummeting to earth from a helicopter without a parachute. SPOILER ALERT: he lives.
No, really.
And here’s a sort of greatest hits compilation from all his films:
I eagerly await Alberson’s Open Letter to Chev From Crank.
And then he’ll need to write open letters to James Bond, Jason Bourne, Rambo and John McClane. And practically every character Arnold Schwarzenegger has ever played.
But of course, Alberson isn’t just worried that kickass women in action films are unrealistic. He also think they send the wrong messages to women — and to men.
[T]he cumulative effect of watching movie after movie wherein fine ladies … suddenly crunch the bones of a dozen bad guys at a time is that some silly people get the idea there’s no real difference between men and women’s bodies … .
Really? I don’t think that’s the message being sent by, oh, Tomb Raider.
Or any of the innumerable action films in which the heroine wears skin-tight, often fetishistic outfits that sexualize her in a way that most male action stars aren’t.
I mean, sure, Bruce Willis wore that cute orange tank top in The Fifth Element, but Milla Jovavich wore, you know, this:
Hell, in the Underworld movies, Kate Beckinsale wears a corset while fighting the werewolf menace.
But apparently all these women look pretty manly to Alberson.
Movies and TV were a big part of how I learned who women were. And they lied to me. They told me that women were glorified boys who tagged along on adventures, took care of themselves, and wouldn’t let you have sex with them until sometime late in act 2 when, for no particular reason, they would.
These are terrible things to learn about women.
These movies, he thinks, should have been teaching him that women were frail flowers who need to be protected by men like him.
What I need is something to fight for, someone to fight for, someone to protect. If you rob me of that, you rob me of my dignity as a man.
Because men are supposed to be the white knights who rescue women (mostly from men who aren’t white knights).
As men, we were born with bodies and minds crafted for war. We are the warriors, the peacekeepers, the protectors—the bloodshedders, when the time is right. Every man is a father, whether of his own children, or the people that work for him, or the folks he leads at church. As such, he must be ready to uphold what is virtuous and punish what is evil.
And so Alberson has decided that his white knight quest for the moment is to take on the “wicked men” who make action movies with kickass heroines. He feels he needs to stand up for “all the girls and women out there who want to be godly, awesome, beautiful, feminine women,” who “feel beaten up” every time they see a fictional heroine beat someone up.
If only, he laments, the fathers and/or husbands of the actresses who’ve played action heroines had “loved them enough to tell them they weren’t allowed to do what they did.”
Alberson is pretty big on the whole “men telling women what to do” thing, urging his male readers to
Protect your wives and mothers and daughters and sisters. Honor them. Make them feel special. … When you see them trying to be like the ladies in those movies, tell them no. Tell them that isn’t what you want.
Indeed, Alberson seems to think that women trying to be like kickass female action stars is one of the leading causes of divorce.
Men lie to themselves and women about the sort of women they want. Women are gullible and believe the lie and become the women they think men want. Then men reject them because men never wanted those sorts of women in the first place.
And men do reject them. Look at the divorce statistics, look at the TV shows and books and articles by women desperately wondering why it’s so hard to hold on to a man. That’s a bigger problem than the purview of this letter, but you fictional female warriors are part of it.
I’m pretty sure no man has ever divorced his wife because she reminded him too much of Milla Jovavich in The Fifth Element. Or Sigorney Weaver in Aliens. Or Charlize Theron in anything. Well, anything except Monster.
Alberson’s argument really needs to have a stake driven through its heart. Buffy, can you do the honors?
Just happened to see this in the news. I wonder what Mr. Women Can’s Kick Ass would think of it?
http://www.smh.com.au/video/video-news/video-world-news/babyholding-woman-beats-gunman-20160419-4dp5f.html
I’ll tell you when I finally get to watch The Force Awakens in, like, two minutes. (Prediction: Yeah, it’s because he’s black.)
Or maybe a tent peg driven through its temple. Jael (from the Bible), can you do the honors? By the way, that part of the Bible has not one, but TWO female leads (Jael and Deborah). Meanwhile, the male lead, Barak, is something of a coward.
@mildlymagnificent:
That pants-wearing hussy!
MRAs: “WOMEN ARE WEAK!!!!! MEN ARE SUPPOSED TO PROTECT WOMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’
*Sees a man stand up for a woman who is being harassed, or assualted*
MRA’s: WOW LOOK AT THAT WHITE KNIGHT MANGINA BETA CUCK!!!!!!!
MRA’s: MEN ARE NATURALLY STRONGER AND FASTER THAN WOMEN!!!!!!!!
WOMEN: Right! Thats why we feel so unsafe when men harass us on the streets
MRA’s: SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU FEMINAZI CUNT YOU THINK ALL MEN ARE RAPISTS NO ONE WOULD EVEN RAPE YOU BECAUSE YOURE FAT AND UGLY ANYWAYS, WHAT ABOUT WHEN MEN GET HARASSED BY WOMEN?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
*bites the bullet and de-lurks*
As such, he must be ready to uphold what is virtuous and punish what is evil.
Why yes, I agree. In fact, I learned this lesson as a young boy…and considering it was a fictional woman who taught me, while diminishing neither my respect for her nor for myself, I have no idea what your deal is.
Theories:
a.) He’s black.
b.) He didn’t try to “Alpha” Rey into the sack (but that would be bad b/c race cuckoldry?) within 30 minutes of meeting her.
c.) He avoids conflict and showed horror at being ordered to kill.(“emotions”=#1 sign of a beta)
d.) The author of the piece didn’t actually see the whole movie.
e.) All
Finn? Inconsequential? What movie were they watching he was a cool guy that did cool stuff, and managed to bluff his way into being a Resistance soldier. Even when he wanted to weasel out of it, who could blame him? Even though Rey proved to be the protagonist by the end of the movie, Finn drove quite a few events. Not to mention John Boyega’s stellar performance.
…oh FFS…i work in one of the most stereotypically feminine professions, and trust me, people always give us the giant eyes when we “boost them in bed” and the bed itself shifts and hits the wall…(and yeah, i’m currently out of shape)…we move PEOPLE. ALL THE TIME. Heck with this bull-nonsense about women being “weak”…i did compressions for 25 minutes Thursday night, and my male counterparts were doing the SAME THING…and know what? afterwards they werent thinking “oh gosh these strong women…i feel emasculated!” we were ALL thinking “HOT DAMN WE SAVED THAT PATIENT!!!” which leads me to believe the following: people who are gender essentialists clearly dont work in my job
i mean, we have caring men AND badass women! and vice versa! OMG ITS LIKE WE ARE PEOPLE!
Apparently someone forgot to inform my three year old daughter that women can’t be bad ass. I started babysitting kids when I was 10 years old, and she seriously could take the tar out of all but the most hyperactive little boys I’ve cared for. I’m not saying this with pride, because honestly, helping her learn to control her temper is exhausting (as is teaching her to not climb on top of the fridge). Oh, and she actually has a very slight frame and will probably only be around 5’4 (my build, in other words). She even has a warrior yell when she gets mad at her sister. X_X
These guys don’t get it. Women are humans, just like them. I’m woman who has a very “feminine” build, but I’ve always enjoyed “guy” activities. (Along with just enough girly stuff to keep things interesting. I love dresses and trips to the spa.) Most of us just want to be treated like we have agency of our own, not as some predetermined role. What about men/little boys who don’t want to fit the ultra aggressive masculine ideal? What if they want to learn how to knit or enjoy arranging flowers more than watching football?
I wish the MRAs would just mind their own business and stop trying to sell people on biological essentialism.
Spoilers: Yeah, it’s because he’s black because Finn is AMAZING.
I had a boyfriend once come up behind me, hug me, and, in what was clearly a romantic moment for him, inform me, “I love how safe you feel.”
I sort of appreciated the gesture, but it was still odd. Mostly because, of course I felt safe, I was in my locked apartment with a man I trusted. I was in no danger. Of course I felt safe. Also because this wasn’t a feeling I was having, it was a feeling I was being assigned. HE liked the idea that I felt safe with him. He projected my feelings based on what he wanted to romanticize. I didn’t feel any more or less safe in his arms; I was just enjoying the hug.
I couldn’t get the moment out of my head for the longest time, and I’m starting to understand why it bothered me. What did “safe” mean? Safe from what? From him? I mean, maybe, but trusting him not to do physical violence to me is pretty low bar to set for the relationship. From starvation? From existential angst? From a grizzly bear?
No. What my boyfriend meant was, “safe from other men”
And I mean, think about how fucked up it is what that implies. Does he think that when I’m not with him I’m walking around terrified all the time? For me to feel “safe with him” I would have to feel at least marginally unsafe when I’m not.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to protect those you love, but could it be that the excessive male romanticization of the concept of “safety” and “protection” is just the flip side of the coin from the threat of male violence?
To put it another way: like most women, I recieve a low-level threat of violence from strange men on a semi-regular basis. Verbal harassment, groping, catcalling, stalking… The message being, “Get out of here. Get out of the public sphere. When you are here, you will be threatened and possibly harmed. Go hide at home where it’s safe.” A man doesn’t have to physically harm a woman to use the vague threat of male violence to control her through fear. And when a woman attracts a large amount of male ire for her outspokenness in public, the urge to frighten and threaten her goes into overdrive (just look at Sarkeesian)
To expect a woman to depend upon you for protection from other men is just playing in to the patriarchal mechanism that women should live their lives based on fear of what men might do to them. You’re playing the “nice guy” role rather than the “threat” role, but the mechanism is the same. “Boys will be boys. You’d best stay inside, or attach yourself to a man who will protect you.” Leave male violence unchallenged, and leave women vulnerable if they don’t tow the patriarchal line and find themselves a male protector. The fact that this restricts a woman’s choices and freedoms is not an unfortunate sideaffect, it is the whole point of this line of thinking.
I don’t think for a moment that this was some kind of conscious attempt of my boyfriend to manipulate me, I think it was a genuinely tender moment for him. We learn what romance and relationships are from the culture we are raised in, and he had absorbed the romantic “protector” figure into what he thought of as love. But it’s a mechanism of control that is deeply embedded into that culture: Scary man intimidates the woman, benevolent man offers safety, woman lives her life chained to the benevolent man and restricted from full freedom and participation in the public sphere.
Also, maybe it has something to do with the man’s sense of “safety” that if a woman depends on you, she will never leave you. If you are her protector, then she can’t leave your side and you will never be alone.
Maybe it’s less about making US feel safe, and more about making THEM feel safe.
@Ktoryx Thanks for that insightful post.
Laughed out loud a few times reading this one. Not funny, really.
Why is it that so much of the discourse on the macho right, of which ever flavour, laughing angels, alphas & betas, PUAs, red pill swallowers, Trump T-shirt wearers & etc. seems so similar?
An ability only to find an identity in relationship to having power & control over others. These men seem to be very weak and have very fragile egos, if they only feel real when they are lording it over others and laying down the law. Telling themselves how strong and righteous they are. How important and necessary their potential for violence is. The discourse of male purpose and potency must not be interrupted, not even for fantasy.
Proud protectors and avengers, or insecure sad sacks? LOL.
Found the Buffy mashup very cathartic. Thanks!
Paternalism with a capital P
So…women should listen to men, but men lie to women all the time, about what they really want.
Just not with bodies and minds crafted for Hollywood action movies.
#masculinitysofragile
So women have to be fragile so men can protect them?
Uh. I was bullied at school when I was a little girl and no boy ever tried to protect me.
Those guys must be really insecure if they feel threatened by fictional women. Confident men appreciate all kinds of women.
If you base your understanding of your fellow humans on movies, I have bad news for you.
Yeah, you don’t want to ”fight”, you want people to tell you you’re awesome just because you may be slightly bigger in stature than your partner. If you really wanted to fight, there are so many worthy causes. But none of them require no effort.
Oh, and as a woman, it’s not MY job to make you feel good about yourself. If you can’t have any dignity without women naming you Grand Puba of Protecting Our Dainty Ladyness, that’s your problem and you have to figure it out for yourself.
@POM “He doesn’t prefer dead women, necessarily. He prefers weak, frail women in supporting roles with the “hero” role filled by a man.”
Which usually works out to the same thing.
During a crisis situation men are often too busy saving themselves to devote much energy into saving everyone else around them. Which i a good thing! Much like how you have to put your own oxygen mask on before your children’s, a man won’t be able to help anyone if he’s dead or disabled. The high probability that a male “savior” would be either unavailable or unable to do any saving is the inconvenient truth that these paternal benevolent sexists always ignore.
Although I admit, the kind of “kickass” women that show up in many movies irritate me to no end because it always feels so unearned. Skinny, untrained girl easily beats up several men twice her size and three times her strength? Yeah…tokenism. I don’t believe in powerful, independent women because I want some checked box that’s designed to appeal to men, but because I believe that being capable of taking care of oneself is the only sensible way to survive in the world.
And yeah, I’m a bitter old feminist.
On a related note, has anyone read the book Enlightened Sexism that discusses the “girl power” trope from a critical feminist slant? I haven’t read the whole book yet, but so far is interesting. Here’s a review and excerpt.
@freemage “GenJones: There is a very small edge to men in the upper-body-strength category,”
More like “there is a rather large edge to men in the upper body strength catagory”. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I remember them being significant. Of course, this difference gets exaggerated to comical levels by patriarchal society, so GenJone’s point stands. 🙂
But this is all relative to how we define strength. Women have stronger immune systems, which I would take over “advantage in upper-body strength” any day. 😉
Hello.
Well, now i understand the expression “going medieval”… And i am not even sure that all those clichés can be found in medieval behavior and literature.
For the warriors, i do not know, but peacekeepers and protectors, let give a deep and sarcastic laugh at that. When people, mainly women, are harassed in the subway, i yet have to see you, ô white christian male crusader, protect the harassed. For now, i have only seen shifty eyes, or even worse, snarks and remarks with words like “teasing”, “inappropriate outfit”, and all the standard shaming vocabulary. So strong ! So protective ! Ah, but they are not your women (mind you, some are even POC !), so i suppose they are not worth your mighty protection, ha !
Have a nice day.
I love that he was too lazy to look up the name of Kate Blanchett’s character in the Lord of the Rings.
Because when writing what will one day be recognized as a “manifesto,” it’s best not to get too bogged down in the details.
Actually, I’m going to quote the last part of the excerpt from Enlightened Sexism that I linked, because it’s relevant and because I can.
” Since the early 1990s, much of the media have come to over-represent women as having made it — completely — in the professions, as having gained sexual equality with men, and having achieved a level of financial success and comfort enjoyed primarily by the Tiffany’s-encrusted doyennes of Laguna Beach. At the same time, there has been a resurgence of retrograde dreck clogging our cultural arteries — The Man Show, Maxim, Girls Gone Wild. But even this fare, which insists that young women should dress like strippers and have the mental capacities of a vole, was presented as empowering, because while the scantily clad or bare-breasted women may have seemed to be objectified, they were really on top, because now they had chosen to be sex objects and men were supposedly nothing more than their helpless, ogling, crotch-driven slaves.
What the media have been giving us, then, are little more than fantasies of power. They assure girls and women, repeatedly, that women’s liberation is a fait accompli and that we are stronger, more successful, more sexually in control, more fearless, and more held in awe than we actually are. We can believe that any woman can become a CEO (or president), that women have achieved economic, professional, and political parity with men, and we can expunge any suggestions that there might be some of us who actually have to live on the national median income, which for women in 2008 was $36,000 a year, 23 percent less than that of their male counterparts. Yet the images we see on television, in the movies, and in advertising also insist that purchasing power and sexual power are much more gratifying than political or economic power. Buying stuff — the right stuff, a lot of stuff — emerged as the dominant way to empower ourselves.4 Of course women in fictional TV shows can be in the highest positions of authority, but in real life — maybe not such a good idea. Instead, the wheedling, seductive message to young women is that being decorative is the highest form of power — when, of course, if it were, Dick Cheney would have gone to work every day in a sequined tutu.
And not that some of these fantasies haven-t been delectable. I mean, Xena single-handedly trashing, on a regular basis, battalions of stubble- faced, leather- clad, murdering-and-raping barbarian hordes? Or Buffy the Vampire Slayer letting us pretend, if just for an hour, that only a teenage girl (and a former cheerleader to boot) can save the world from fang-toothed evil? What about an underdog law student, dismissed by her fellow classmates as an airheaded bimbo, winning a high-profile murder case because she understood how permanents work, as Elle did in Legally Blonde? Or let’s say you’ve had an especially stupid day at work and as you collapse on the sofa desperately clutching a martini (hold the vermouth), you see a man on TV tell his female boss that the way she does things is “just not the way we play ball,” and she responds drolly, “Well, if you don’t like the way I’m doing things, you’re free to take your balls and go straight home”? (Yes, The Closer.) Oooo-weeee.
So what’s the matter with fantasies of female power? Haven’t the media always provided escapist fantasies; isn’t that, like, their job? And aren’t many in the media, however belatedly, simply addressing women’s demands for more representations of female achievement and control? Well, yes. But here’s the odd, somewhat unintended consequence: under the guise of escapism and pleasure, we are getting images of imagined power that mask, and even erase, how much still remains to be done for girls and women, images that make sexism seem fine, even fun, and insist that feminism is now utterly pointless, even bad for you. And if we look at what is often being said about girls and women in these fantasies, what we can and should do, what we can and can’t be, we will see that slithering just below the shiny mirage of power is the dark, sneaky serpent of sexism.”
Thank you for that post, Ktoryx, I think you unpack the situation rightly.
@Ktoryx – That was a really amazing comment. Wow. Thank you.
“The lies lied to me! I want the lies to tell me the truth about the lies in my head!”
Except that 2/3 of divorces are initiated by women. That statistic has been consistent for the last several decades, across the globe. So much for the shopworn “you’ll end up alone if you’re too unladylike” argument. If anything, the reality seems to be the inverse – “you’ll end up alone if you believe the purpose of marriage is to uphold male privilege and authority at the expense of the wife’s happiness”. Considering that most women take a negative financial hit when ending a marriage, they must really want out.
Gee, Katie really gets around, doesn’t she?
So, what is this dude’s reaction when he sees men on screen who are harming and insulting women? Or male rom-com leads who talk about feelings and relationships? Does he get his Bible in a bunch and rush to the nearest internet to post a tearful screed about how movie men should be more manly, or is it only the ladies that need to get stuffed back into their original factory packaging?
I don’t feel beaten up. I feel represented.
This whole rant boils down to “Young white males are the most important kind of person in the world and movies should cater to ME. I can’t identify with characters who don’t look exactly like ME.” He expects women, PoC, and gay people to relate to the struggles of straight white men. He expects everyone to automatically cheer white dudes on because they’re the default hero because of course; but when it’s someone else’s turn to save the world, suddenly it’s too much of a mental leap for this guy. He watches fantasy movies, yet his imagination is so stunted that watching a woman pick up a sword to defend herself is beyond the realm of belief? Give me a break. You don’t get to demand of screenwriters, “Give me fantastical, bizarre creatures and landscapes and situations, but make sure you reaffirm entrenched gender roles from the 1950s!”
Alberson’s whole argument relies on Orwellian doublespeak, because he can’t bring himself to admit that, as a consumer of entertainment, the problem rests with his own lazy, entitled expectations. So he tries to convince us that being a powerful protagonist is degrading, while submissiveness and marginalization are empowering (for women, that is). Up is down, down is up. Apparently men are supposed to be the hero of women’s stories, not women.
I can’t speak personally for the angels, Mr. Alberson, but the wood sprites think you’re a twit.