By David Futrelle
In these troubled times, it’s good to know that the guys at One Angry Gamer have their priorities straight. Forget police violence, forget the tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths caused by Trump’s utter mishandling of the coronavirus. The crucial issue of our time is exactly how short the shorts of Faye from Cowboy Bebop should be.
As you may know, Cowboy Bebop is a famously sexy Japanese anime show from the nineties that Netflix is resurrecting as a live-action series.
But one element of the original might not make it into the reboot: the exceedingly skimpy clothing of the character Faye. In an interview with io9, you see, show writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach mentioned that Faye’s outfits will be toned down a scootch because “we need to have a real human being wearing that.”
Naturally this has made Billy D of One Angry Gamer even angrier. Accusing Netflix of having
a certain kind of formula … which almost always undermines the original work to push some kind of subversive, Left-wing oriented message,
he laments that their version of the
Cowboy Bebop show will not be faithful to the original, especially when it comes to how sexy Faye is supposed to be dressed.
Who likes short shorts? Apparently not Netflix.
Billy is especially outraged by the idea that cartoon Faye wears clothes not fit for a real human.
So basically, wearing short-shorts, thigh-high stockings, thong suspenders, and a cropped V-neck sleeveless halter-top isn’t something “a real human being” would wear?
Well, no, it’s not. I’ve seen plenty of skimpy outfits in my day but I’ve never seen anyone dressed like Faye walking down the street.
You mean to tell me that real women have never worn what Faye has worn?
Generally speaking, no.
So the women who attend sporting events in the summer wearing cropped tops and short-shorts aren’t real human beings?
He then shows women wearing much less revealing shorts than Faye. And without the thigh-high stockings.
You mean to tell me that celebrities like Lady Gaga wearing cropped tops and short-shorts with heels are women who aren’t real human beings?
Well, no, but to be fair Lady Gaga once wore a dress made entirely of meat that has its own entry on Wikipedia. One time she wore this. And another time she wore this. In other words, she’s not really a good bellwether for “what real people wear” in the real world.
In the comments, One Angry Gamer’s completely normal readers responded in completely normal ways.
“I’m just done,” wrote one.
let this shitty society burn and let the kikes take over and let everyone go extinct
Another responded:
Nah.
lets burn the kikes instead and take BACK the society we once held dear
only this time, no more sympathy for subhumans
Huh. If I were running One Angry Gamer I’d be a little more perturbed by my own readers’ inhumanity than by the exact shortness of Faye’s short shorts.
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@Gaebolga
Sorry if I put words in your wife’s mouth, but I get the feeling that your wife may be pondering on whether or not transwoman received some amount or sort of male privilege while they were growing up? I’m not going to be able to answer this question as I’m not qualified to, but maybe framing her thoughts in this manner could help her clarify her questions and reach answers?
Or maybe I’m way off base and I’m putting words in her mouth. Apologies if I am.
@personalpest
Yes, that’s what I was talking about.
@numerobis:
Well, everyone hates Autodesk. Even more since they tightened the terms of their educational license for Maya.
@Allandrel : you seem biased too, and should check that. I cited things the alliance did in particular, and denying it is probably what make you look the most biased. And the fact I noted that the leadership of the horde is shown as evil don’t mean everyone else is exonerated ; it just mean the fact the evil leaders are alway horde is quite repetitve and annoying.
Note the important part : the horde storytelling is made to make the alliance look like a bunch of fascist. I don’t know if it’s the same for alliance, but it’s likely. Conversely, the worst excess of both side is seen mostly when they are opponents. If you play the Horde, you see the horde as light grey and the alliance as a very dark grey, I expect the opposite on alliance. And once again, if you don’t believe that, you probably should take a long, hard, look to your bias.
John Cho is playing Spike in cowboy bebop so i’m looking forward to it. They shut down production for 8 months when he hurt his knee on set and then the pandemic hit.
I liked The Middleman (too short a series!) so that’s another plus for me that Javier Grillo-Marxuach is a co writer. They also have Shinichirō Watanabe of the animated series as consultant so hopefully its as good as a live action series can get.
But sure lets avoid it because of what Faye is or isn’t wearing. I mean the rumor that Ein was a husky was ok with him.. (don’t worry Ein is apparently a corgi. The production has mentioned it in interviews.)
@Naglfar
The other Jewish coded character in hp is Snape. The long black hair his nose all common english code for Jewish. Rowlings has long had problems with BAME characters (turned the last asian female character into a snake!) and has not shown a willingness to change despite people pointing out the racism. I am not surprised she’s made the slide into a full card carrying Terf. Just angry she could have listened and chose not to.
@Gaebolga
Argumentum ad alligatorum: if you haven’t been chased by alligators, how can you really understand women’s struggles anyway?
I’ve always thought of Vulcans as British coded: an ancient, emotionally-repressed society compared to the American coded humans.
Hello.
I can not say a lot about the anime stuff, being far far more a manga reader than an anime viewer (may have voluntarily seen about ten, mainly from manga i like), and i have not seen CBB. But in any case, if this person is not able to make the difference between reality and fiction, too bad for him.
> Naglfar
> Warhammer
May i say the interpretation may vary depending the viewer ? When i began to play it at the beginning of the 90′, the young me had seen the descriptions this way :
– a big island with one race considered by a lot of player as very (sometimes too much) powerful, closed to an island called Albion (where there were Fimirs, an old reminiscence of Heroquest), in a game made by english people ? Ah ! Who high elves can represent ?
– a feud with other elfs, seen as “dark” elves (mainly by clothes and “morality”, rather than skin), mainly due to a religious matter ?
– as a matter of fact, the last most famous elf faction is the Sylvan one, whose celtisism is so obvious it may not need more specification.
– a close continent with : an human empire called Reik and an emperor called Karl Franz, neighbour to a decadent kingdom called Bretonnia with cities like Lyonnesse and Bordeleaux, and an Arthurean flair ? Na, can not put real nation names on that… No more than i can not put spaggethi on the Tilea and other border princedoms.
– Nordic barbarians with drakkars ? Never existed in reality. A border kingdom between the “old continent” and those norsemen, lead by a Tzar ? The originality bears no limit.
– a bit to the east of the humans are the dwarves, serious workers, love to drink (at least, this is a common, it seems, in fantasy worlds). Just add them some solidarnosc, a reputation to keep grudge for long, and you can easily track their roots in reality (to note, i do not know if communism was seen in England as bad as it has been seen in USA at this time. Which may explain why the standard dwarves are seen as a “good race”).
– their “dark” counterpart, who have zigguraths, a cult linked to a kind of bull god (and not a bulldog), and whose beards are so freezy you may want to yell “THIS IS (not funny) NOT PERSIA !”. Oh, and they have Hobgobelin “Assassins”. Not as a special unit of one man, like dark elves ones, but as units constituted of them only.
– there are halflings, because the term “hobbit” was already branded, but at least, they do not seem to represent any nation(s) in particular.
– vampire stuff had been a more developped lore after my first impression, so i do not count them here. At first, vampires were just an option in undead armies.
– speaking of the deads, if we take appart local necromancers in the “old continent”, they mainly come from the big continent to the south of the old one, which happen to have a big desert, a big country called Araby (so original) with brown to black population (not considered as “evil”, though). If we do not count for the standard skeleton, you had mummies, ghouls and zombies (and we know from where this folklore come from). And this was before they had the Tomb Kings flair in their lore.
– now, this is probably where your mileage may vary. If they had made the orks like Tolkien (with brown to black skin colors, if i remember right), this would has been obvious. And i think they would not wanted to look racist to some potential customers (even if i doubt that 12 years olds have this kind of considerations). However, habits died hard, and so, in a time when the “yellow peril” was very present and vivid in minds (at least in western europe), here was the “green(skin) peril” (often named like that in the lore, to note), coming from the East, full with cheap weapons, armors and equipments. Add to that the Mongolian look of the more recent Ogre faction, from Cathay (even if there are humans kingdoms/empires there, they were never really developped as a full army list). So, that may have to do with a bias from me as a half asian person, but i am quite not sure that “black orcs” were a hint to “black persons”.
That being say, i was quite young at this time, so this interpretation was done with my knowledge and mind at this period. I may (and surely is) wrong on many points that true fans of Warhammer lore could point and correct at their leisure.
Gaebolga says:
As Naglfar notes, there is no “the” experience of growing up as a girl within society. So many things can affect how one experiences girlhood: race, class, religion, ethnicity, immigration status, mental or physical health, speed of development, etc.
My white wealthy cis girlhood probably shares more in common with any given white wealthy trans woman’s girlhood than it does most black poor cis women’s girlhood. And I sure as hell can’t claim aspects of a poor black woman’s experience as part of my femaleness, but what does that even matter? Why place so much importance on the cis/trans distinction and not all these other just-as-relevant factors?
Apparently your wife can see that growing up FLDS is a unique experience. She should use that to question how FLDS girls experiences of girlhood compare to those of other girls.
Can non-FLDS ever really grasp what it’s like to grow up as a girl within a FLDS society? If anything, that’s more of a divide than the one between cis and trans. Most non-FLDS girls, whether cis or trans, are exposed to all sorts of representations of girlhood whereas FLDS girls are prescribed a very particular and often traumatic one. Does that have implications for the femaleness of either FLDS-raised women or non-FLDS-raised women?
It’s very weird to assume solidarity on the basis of the genitals one was born. Once you look at things closer, you see how diverse girlhood is in reality. Trans girlhood is just another element of that diversity.
@snowolf100
Interesting, I didn’t notice that. Where I live in America, Jews are usually stereotyped as having curly brown hair, rather than black hair like Snape. Looking back I can see how Snape is a problematic depiction as well.
Definitely. She named one Asian character “Cho Chang,” and one of the only Black characters is a sports commentator with little depth.
There’s also an issue with anti-Irish stuff, seeing as one of the only Irish characters blows things up (this was written right around the tail end of the Troubles in Northern Ireland).
@ victorious parasol
yes thank you for providing the link
Myself:
This should have a “with” at the end.
OT: TERFs are now speculating on whether BLM is a secret trans* plot.
Can your wife pin down what specific immutable elements make up “growing up as a girl”? Because I guarantee you that there are some cis women out there who have not experienced some common aspects of “growing up as a girl”, and that doesn’t seem to invalidate their womanhood in the eyes of TERFs.
For example, in our culture, many AFAB people are, from a very young age, discouraged from being as physically active as their AMAB counterparts. And this is a shitty, systemic thing, and something we should try to change. But there are cis women out there who did not experience that, or who have grown up in cultures that do not practice this. Does this make them somehow less woman-y than the people who have?
Many cis women menstruate. But there are people who through accidents or illness or genetic aspects who never experience menstruation. Does this make them somehow less woman-y than the people who have?
What about feral children? Children who grew up outside of human society entirely? They haven’t experienced “growing up as a girl”. Do we need a special category of women for cis women who grew up among animals? Are they less woman-y than the people who grew up in society, somehow? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child
And leaving that aside, a lot of the experiences of “growing up as a girl” also apply to trans women, as a fair amount of the experiences involve witnessing violence and dehumanization against other women and realizing that society views us in a similar fashion. And trans girls, surprise surprise, also identify with the women that they witness going through this. (Hell, they may be exposed to even more of it than cis girls, since a lot of misogynistic men are a lot more willing to let that flag fly when they perceive that they are only among other men.)
Yes, there are certain experiences that, statistically, a demographic of people are very likely to have gone through. However, there are always exceptions, and being exclusionary about this either means that the exclusionists don’t give a shit about splash damage, or are only using the argument as a dogwhistle to avoid saying the less socially acceptable reasons they have for wanting the exclusion. Usually it’s both.
@Gaebolga
The big thing here looks to be the TERFy denial of intersectionality. There is One True Axis of Oppression, and it is all that matters.
@Ohlmann
The thing that you specifically accused the Alliance of was religious persecution of the Mag’har. That was not the Alliance, that was the Lightbound, a faction made up of former allies of both the Alliance (Draenei) and Horde (Frostwolf) that formed after both factions had left alt-Draenor. There’s no indication that the Alliance even knows about this.
As for Jaina’s “warmongering,” was that because she kept saying “we cannot trust the Horde, they will break any peaceb by attacking us” to the other Alliance leaders? Because she was right. The Horde started the Fourth War with an unprovoked attack where they deliberately targeted civilians and burned down Teldrassil to “kill hope.”
The fact that, as you point out, the evil leaders are always Horde and never Alliance is exactly my point. Blizzard keeps saying “neither faction is the Bad Guys” but only one faction had Orc Hitler and the Lich Queen.
But finally, your denial of my experience playing through every Horde storyline as “bias” shows exactly the bad faith that I expected. I’ve played through Silverpine, and Southshore, and TELDRASSIL. And in BFA especially the Horde war campaign, the Horde are consistently presented, in their own quests, as trying to wipe the Alliance out in a war of conquest, and the negative portrayal of the Alliance there consists mainly of contempt for “thinking they can stand against us” (invading their homes) and “they called us monsters, therefore they all deserve to die horribly.” And that’s not even getting into the plot with Jaina’s brother.
That’s not the Alliance storylines. Those are Horde questgivers.
So no, the one lying here has been you. There’s no point in continuing this.
OT to share some good news.
Guess who thinks she absolutely CRUSHED IT at her job interview this morning?
@Victorious Parasol
That’s great!
@ all:
Thank you for your responses; I appreciate all of your insights.
I suspect I may not have presented my wife’s position accurately, in that her issues are primarily philosophical and related to her work on the social construction of meaning, identity, and self-reflective activities (usually in the context of online learning), not some sort of defense of “true womanhood” or “league of genital homogeneity.”
I think.
…and that right there is the problem I’m having, because frankly, while I agree that one’s background, the society one is raised in, and the social role one is assigned within that society have huge, long-lasting effects on one’s conception of self, I don’t really understand why that should matter in terms of transfolk and gender, beyond the individual variations that everyone has. But my wife is also one of the smartest and most community- and justice-oriented people I’ve ever known, and her positon here doesn’t fit with literally everything I’ve seen, known, and experienced with her over the last 30 years, so I’m pretty sure I’m missing something fundamental about her argument…but I have no idea what it is.
For context, our daughter’s best friend came out as a transboy (given that he’s 10, I’m not sure I can call him a man yet) about 4 months ago, and my wife has spent the time since helping his mother come to terms with his coming out and was the one who finally convinced her to stop using his dead name. In similar fashion, one of the members of our church transitioned to female two years ago, and my wife was one of the most outspoken defenders of her right to have the congregation treat her as a woman. Which is why this is so damn weird to me.
I offer my general apologies for dragging the personal into this thread and thank you all for your input.
@VP
That is wonderful news!!!
@Gaebolga
FWIW, I wasn’t offended. Even if you think you may’ve fallen short of accurately explaining your wife’s position, I appreciated the conversation that followed. You gave other people here the opportunity to address talking points that we see elsewhere, from well-meaning allies (like myself) who are still educating themselves to people who’ve never had to think about trans rights before. So thank you for that, and thank you to the other regulars who shared their thoughts.
@Gaebolga
I’m not sure I understand the issue. It sounds like she’s supporting trans* people in your community, so her heart is in the right place. As for her philosophical position, I don’t think I understand entirely. If she thinks trans* folx should be treated as their gender identity, I’m not sure how that’s compatible with believing that people need to have a certain experience. Or maybe I’m just misunderstanding all of this. Apologies if I’m missing the point.
@VP:
That’s great!
@Gaebolga
Hmm, I think my post may have been a bit strongly worded. I didn’t intend to imply that your wife is a TERF. (I don’t know her, I can’t make that call one way or the other.) I was just addressing talking points that I’ve seen before regarding the “well, they didn’t grow up as a ______!” argument.
I can see how well-meaning progressive folks can fall into this trap. We do stress the importance of listening to people’s lived experience. However, just because someone has a different lived experience then the “norm” (whatever that norm is perceived to be), that doesn’t invalidate their identity. I, as a cis white woman, will never experience misogynoir or transmisogyny that other women sadly have to contend with. This doesn’t make my experience of womanhood any more or less valid than that of a black woman or a trans woman, it’s only different.
And leaving that aside, I personally feel that tying the validity of one’s identity to the level of oppression that you do or do not face is… Troubling, at the very least. Don’t get me wrong, we are right to focus our attentions on righting the injustice and oppression that has been leveled against marginalized groups. But to say that someone “doesn’t really count” as part of the community because they haven’t experienced a certain kind of oppression is messed up. For one thing, because there are lots of different struggles and the oppression olympics is crappy. And for another, what does this say about progress? If we succeed, if future generations of girls no longer experience the misogyny that we had to deal with, are those girls somehow lesser than ourselves? Why would they be? Isn’t the protection of those who come after us part of why we strive to make things better?
@personalpest
I think Nemodians are a different stereotype; greedy Japanese/Chinese businessmen. Which is far, far worse, because there’s less of a cultural basis that’s become somewhat divorced from its own racial caricature stereotype – that’s a very modern one, so there’s less of an excuse.
On the subject of Warhammer Orcs; I think they were building on some dark things initially, but part of the issue is that they were meant to be a faction in a wargame. They can never stop fighting in the game’s universe, otherwise it loses purpose. Orcs/Orks/Orruks are meant to be a species perfectly adapted to that; one could call them “savages”, but there’s an underlying question is wondering if it’s really the right term, given how their world rewards being the biggest and meanest already; it’s hardly “primitive” if it’s the best possible solution.
I think they’ve made a work-around by making it clear that Greenskins are not actually that human; they’re pretty alien no matter the setting. As in, they reproduce through sporulation, especially that caused by violent death (so war is literally a part of their lifecycle). Then it goes from there to explore how that fundamental change in their basic biology changes their entire culture; to the mind of a Greenskin, violence is a basic physiological need to continue the species. So, everything they are revolves around violence or the pursuit thereof. Thus, they dissociate from any actual culture (except the very white one of football hooligans) ironically because they’re treated with cultural empathy.
It’s not perfect, and there’s area where it doesn’t work (Norsca at their worst is a parade of poor assumptions about Scandinavian culture), but there’s a reason the faction that is closest to being the “barbaric forest people” stereotype, Beastmen, is made of literal inhuman monsters who lack any kind of cultural marks at all – who have an ideology that explicitly resembles fascism and genocidal racism than any actual oppressed people. I think GW knew what they were doing when they said “in Age of Sigmar, the people who thought that Beastmen were a product of miscegenation ended up being so horrible that the elites promptly mutated into Beastmen when the going got rough and they turned to cannibalism.” And when they made the Skaven Nazi-coded.
@occasional reader
The Warhammer World is an analogue to Earth, but that’s hardly “unoriginal.” It’s part of the basic concept.
Also, the Elven continent Ulthuan is nowhere near Albion, and there is nothing English about the High Elves. Their Earthly analogue is the mythical empire of Atlantis, and visually they have a strong Bronze Age look.
Not seeing the “Dwarfs are Polish,” either. They’re based on the dqarfs of Norse mythology, and show it. Their culture is all about honor and grudges, they are fine craftsmen who put knotwork and magic runes on everything… very Norse. They just happen to live east of the (Not-Holy-Roman) Empire. The Skaven are centered under Not-Italy, but there’s nothing Italian about them.
I also really don’t think the take on Warhammer’s greenskins as Yellow Peril stand-ins works. There’s nothing Asian about them, their equipment is a mish-mash of cultures. But most of all is that behaviorally, Orcs, Orks, and Urruks are quite explicitly based on English soccer hooligans, complete with exaggerated Cockney accents.
Also, there’s not really anything Mongolian about the Ogre Kingdoms. They are from the Mountains of Mourn, equivalent to west-central Asia, but culturally their theme is a combination of “eating everything” (one of the near-universal elements of folklore ogres) and “prehistoria” with their assortment of creatures. They’re basically very large cave men with an eternal hunger.
Beastment could easily have incorporated lots of tropes for “savage” humans, but they really don’t. They’re decidedly inhuman.
Now all of this is not to say that the Warhammers don’t have plenty of problematic aspects, but it is really not that bad, and GW has improved things over the years (consider how they moved the Chaos Dwarfs away from “cartoon Mesopotamia”).