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?
I have a problem and want to ask for advice, but I think I should wait for the next open thread. Not sure.
Woooo it’s delurkin’ time!
Yes, I remember reading it in 2013 or so. Douglas has a lot of interesting critiques of the media that got me thinking more carefully about what I watch. Her observations about the ways TV programs interact with their audiences and the nonfiction world have struck me as particularly insightful.
Very good book. I’d recommend it to everyone.
This guy should just buy himself a bunch of Barbie dolls and be done with it. Then he can play out his Rescue fantasies and they’ll do exactly what he wants, because they’re plastic toys instead of real people with thoughts and agency in their own life who want none of his bullshit.
Extinction bursts are the worst.
@Dr. NicolaLuna (from two pages back–oh the things I miss due to sleep!)
As a theology geek, this is one of the big flaws (but certainly not the only one) I see when people try to use the Bible to defend Leave-it-to-Beaver style femininity. Complementarianism–the system that believes men and women have very clear, God-ordained gender roles, with men leading and women following–has essentially no idea what to do with godly single women.
Complementarianism defines femininity strictly in relationship to masculinity. One of the leading complementarian books defines femininity as primarily an inclination to yield to leadership from worthy men. I’ve condensed it a bit, but that’s literally the only concrete definition offered. The author admits that, if the men in a woman’s life are immature/unworthy, then “the natural expression of her womanhood” will necessarily be “hindered”.
So yeah, basically, we single ladies are up a creek without a paddle until a knight in shining armor happens along and volunteers to be our oarsman.
And this is with a definition that DOESN’T explicitly pigeonhole women as current or future wives and mothers.
While there ARE some complementarian articles/books/etc. out there that try to answer the “Um, so, what about us single women” question, they’re usually either a) all about preparing and/or waiting to be a good wife in the future, or b) vague applications of how to apply femininity to single adult life, which require a lot of stretching. Both of these are usually filled with hand-wringing about becoming too bossy or arrogantly independent.
Considering that the apostle Paul explicitly encouraged both men and women to remain single if they wanted to (1 Corinthians 7), you’d think that “biblical femininity” would do better at accounting for the existence of single women. Hmm, it’s almost like “biblical femininity” is not actually a thing.
Of course, there’s a whole other discussion to be had about the complementarian expectation that women should be under the protection of their fathers before getting handed off to their husbands, but I trust that the flaws there are evident, and I’m pretty sure I’ve made this deer teal enough already.
In a real-life crisis situation, that is indeed how it would normally work if women were unable to care for themselves. But we’re talking about fiction, here. Events don’t have to evolve in a realistic way in fiction. He can want women in fiction to be delicate fainting flowers and yet come out okay in the end, because it’s fiction and fiction doesn’t have to follow the rules of reality.
I can’t believe that he actually wants to see fictional women dead, because that would destroy the entire narrative that he’s trying to spin here. He wants fictional women to be weak because he wants fictional men to save them. Male characters can’t live up to his weird ideals if the female characters in the stories die.
If translated to reality, his ideas would, indeed, result in dead women. They factually do result in dead women sometimes. He’s not thinking that far ahead. All he’s thinking about is what he wants reality to be, not what it means for the women who fit inside it.
Women are weak? Giggle giggle giggle.
http://img.pandawhale.com/155057-russian-woman-carrying-log-mem-2xVj.jpeg
@Pandapool
I’d love to watch that video, except for the part where thunderfoot ends up in my recommendations.
@Petal
I think most people seem to be fine with threads going off topic, but of course it’s up to you.
You all might be highly interested to know that women are actually stronger, pound-for-pound, than men. I am a nanotechnology (and medical physics and medical dosimetry) triple major (kill me now, I know). One of the things I’ve studied in nanotech is scaling laws.
There is a more or less universal scaling law for critters with regard to strength and weight. The strength of a living organism (well, of an animal anyway, not sure if this holds for plants, archae, bacteria, or fungi, but wouldn’t be surprised to find that it did) is directly proportional to D-squared, where ‘D’ is the “characteristic dimension” of the object.
Basically the characteristic dimension is just saying the length and width of the organism, both being represented by D. In other words D^2 is the cross-sectional area of a muscle, which directly relates to the amount of force that muscle can exert.
Now, weight is directly proportional to the volume of a muscle, which is represented by D-cubed (D^3).
So if you set the strength to weight ratio up, it comes out as D^2/D^3 or just 1/D.
If you are at all familiar with how fractions work, you know that the smaller D gets, the bigger the number becomes and approaches infinity as D approaches zero (sorry, basic calculus, but you can punch 1/1, 1/0.5 and 1/0.000005 into your calculator and observe the trend easily enough).
So since women do TEND to be smaller (some are taller than even I am at 6’4″ or 198cm), those women tend to be stronger pound for pound because of their smaller size.
And that isn’t just armchair theorizing, either. If you go and look at female weightlifters, they lift more pounds of weight per unit of body mass than their male counterparts. It’s just that the male weightlifters tend to be bigger and lift a higher total amount of weight.
In case you’ve ever wondered, this is why you hear in documentaries all the time that fleas can jump like 100 times their height and ants can carry 100 times their own weight, etc. etc. Then the documentaries get silly and say that if humans could do that, we’d be jumping over skyscrapers etc. Well, no we wouldn’t because at our size the strength-to-weight ratio wouldn’t be sufficient to accommodate such a feat (at least unassisted by some kind of mechanical boost such as a flügtag!)
Anyway, this whole convoluted mess is just to say that if you science the shit out of reality, you find out that women are, in fact, stronger than men on average, they are just smaller than men on average. So (straight, bi, etc.) fellas, just remember: if you have a lady in your life, you are living alongside a tiny, dangerous little ninja who is made of pain. :))))))))
Yours truly,
David
@PoM
Of course, given some of his other weird ideals, I think he’d be just as fine with fiction in which women never appear on-stage/screen/page at all. Which (I agree with you) is also not the same as wanting fictional women dead.
I find when people start calling other people affront to God or abominations, they are saying those people should not exist.
It is important that women fear for their lives for patriarchy to keep its hold over us. I appreciate the well stated arguments to the contrary, but I still think he prefers us dead rather than capable and independent.
If we were not in a state of mortal danger, why would we need to be protected by men like him?
His identity is tied to real women being in real danger. That means many of us die in order to make him feel we are sufficiently in need of rescue.
@freemage
This of course applies to male action heroes as well, although in their case it ties in with the idea that a woman is not an independant agent, rather an accessory or possession.
The idea of a woman being an accessory or lifestyle product is one of the most devious in the media. It has been a mainstay of product advertising for generations. You only have to look at the bike, car and tech magazines (T3 is a prime example, I actually like to read the reviews but feel sickened at the way women are objectified) The Elliot Rogers of the world have swallowed this whole sale. Once you reduce human beings to the same status as mobile phones, motorbikes and cars, and tell men they are losers or betas if the don’t have the latest model you are going to have some very sick and disgruntled men out there. I don’t think men are objectified in the same way in women’s demographic media, they are still more than likely to be portrayed as strong and competent than simple arm candy.
The other thing I find interesting about Alberson’s article is his complete misunderstanding of the word ‘awesome’.
Ok, so it’s probably one of the worst misused words in the English language today. In its original usage “awesome” and “awful” meant practically the same thing, inspiring awe. Now, God can be both ‘awesome’ and ‘awful’ as s/he can be both benevolent and wrathful. A dragon can be awe inspiring, dangerous and even beautiful. A salad on the other hand, well, if it’s ‘awful’ it’s most likely gone off, if it’s ‘awesome’ it’s yummy. If you catch my drift.
When Alberson describes his godly feminine ‘awesome’ woman, he clearly is using this superlative in the wrong way. There is nothing ‘awesome’ about a kowtowing, vulnerable, shrinking violet.
The only females worthy of being awesome are the strong ones who can stand up against this Patriarchist mindset.
Or the ‘awful’ ones, like Ursula the Sea Witch, Indoniminous Rex, and the female of the Alien species.
@kootiepatra
I suggest you do some research into Paul’s female companion Thecla. I saw a good History Channel documentary about her a while back, but can’t seem to find it now. It’s should be somewhere on YouTube.
🙂
There’s a dreadful martial arts site called Bullshido. One good thing they do have though is a thing called “smack downs”. So basically if someone is saying their particular fighting style would allow them to beat someone else using a different style they are invited to put their money where their mouth is (and film the results)
Every time someone comes out with “girls can’t fight” I wish we could do something similar. I know lots of women who could kick just about anyone’s butt; and I especially think that would be the case with the braggarts that post the sort of crap in the linked article.
@alan
There are a lot of female MMA fighters very capable of beating men with their speed, intelligence and tactically using the guys weight against him. It is not uncommon to see women fight men in MMA.
@ Virgin Mary
Indeed. I’m also thinking of the more practical elements of combat. That’s a subject close to my heart as I instruct in a thing call Krav Maga. I can attest to the effectiveness of women when it comes to actual combat, especially as the ‘hierarchy of skills’ is usually described as: “Strategic awareness, tactical awareness, psychological preparedness, technical skill, physical ability”, so even of we consider the average differences between genders in terms of things like strength, it’s such a minor consideration it’s barely significant.
I’ll avoid boring people with tales of the time a 14 year old girl* knocked my tooth out, or a woman who’d suffered horrendous DV sent me for a prostate exam.
(* She’s 21 now and an instructor herself. I describe myself as her inspiration, she describes me as her punchbag)
I’ve been listening to Stephen Ambrose’s ‘Undaunted Courage,’ which is about the Lewis and Clark expedition*. Yesterday, I heard a brief passage mentioning a Native American woman who hauled a hundred pounds of supplies to the expedition’s camp on her back. It must have surprised the heck out of Meriwether Lewis, since the Virginia planter culture that he was raised in tended to see women as fragile hothouse flowers.
* I hate travelling, but loooooooove stories of arduous treks.
Katherine
This reminds me of a sad story. While in the USAF, I had a job that was mainly babysitting (when things were running smoothly, it was all-hell-breaks-loose when it wasn’t) communications equipment. During the quiet times, I taught myself to knit. One of the guys that worked in a different shop in the same building mentioned to me that he knew how to knit socks and agreed to teach me to do it. Somehow, it got around the building and he got teased about it and my sock-knitting lesson evaporated.
Also sad: I became a fan of NFL football in the early 90s; my dad and I did a great deal of bonding over it. I have made the decision to drop football as an interest because despite the NFL having made fandom more inclusive to women, it has become too problematic. Last night, I saw Rex Ryan (head coach of the Buffalo Bills) yammering about how great he thinks Trump is. Yuck. That decision came not a moment too soon!
Had to scroll down and comment because ad placement was hilarious.
Your ‘here’s my open letter to Anderson’ was immediately followed by an ad of a lady dancing around her living room in her underwear, having a blast. That just felt like it made things PERFECT.
Don’t really have much to say beyond that, as everything else I’d say has been said before in the comments section, just wanted to share the levity.
Thanks to Mrex for the quotes and to the Ktory for the analysis. And the anecdote too, although it made me sad. (I used to say those words to my first girlfriend, but in my case I meant “I love how safe [from my parents, mostly] I feel when I’m around you”)
@Ktoryx
…!?!!??!?… Of all the presumptuous… I have been told, by romantic partners, that they feel safe with me (and, by contrast, do not feel safe with other male-presenting people*), but I don’t go about assuming that this is the case.
*This was before I started to transition.
@mrex
This, so much. Granted that, as has been noted, many action heros are explicitly magic, there’s still a major dichotomy in how they’re portrayed: Buffy has super strength, so she can kick ass without visible muscle, fine. What about Spider-man? Why doesn’t he still look like a scrawny geek? His ass-kicking is just as magical, and with the kind of strength he has it should actually be really, really hard for him to work out in a way that will visibly build up his muscles.
Without magic, though, women who can kick ass and take names tend to be built a lot like men who kick ass and take names. When that King Arthur movie came out in 2004, I was deeply pissed off that Kiera Knightly got the role of Guinivere; someone built like her couldn’t draw a bow that’d kill a rabbit, let alone a warbow. You want someone more like Lucy Lawless or Gina Torres in a role like that: someone with visible muscles. (This issue isn’t 100% limited to female characters, but it’s a whole lot more pronounced; Orlando Bloom as a blacksmith in Pirates of the Caribbean is even more ridiculous, but that’s the only male example that leaps to mind.)
Re: excerpt:
Right on!
Reading over this again, it does read like this guy is either totally unaware or totally willingly ignorant to the fact that other religions exist, and that not everyone follows his “God”, even within his own religion. : P
I mean, there are plenty of Christian feminists who love strong, independent women characters (even in this very comments section!), who would not believe that they have to be meek, frail, flowers in order to appease God.
And then, of course, there are plenty of feminists and anti-feminists of all stripes of religion and non-religion alike.
You can go into your history and delete the video so you won’t get recommendations of Thunderpalm.
Yeah, funny, that. My own fairly conservative Christian mother refused to date for a decade after we lost my father. When friends from church would ask her when she was going to start meeting people, she told them that God was her husband. Somehow, she survived as a gracious, traditionally feminine, Christian woman without submitting to some man. It would be interesting to see a conservative Christian theology of “single blessedness,” beyond “stay home with your folks, girls.” This isn’t the ancient Roman Empire, after all.