Hopefully all yall can find your appropriate responses cause I just put them into one post
The only thing that bothers me with that is "training". Regardless it's nothing to throw a fit over imo, just don't buy the shirt. Some people might like the significant other aspect to the shirt. I do, I'd consider buying a "Wonder Woman's Husband" shirt if it had a cool design, nothing offensive about the significant other aspect of it.
That's...a view I didn't expect to see, or an angle I didn't think of. Would you mind saying what you think? Regarding "training"
But in general women ARE physically weaker. And there is NOTHING wrong with that. Nor with joking about it, as you can joke about men being childish or brute.
(image removed because it's large, if people want to go see it they can still check out crackdude's original post)
okay, so first note, what does this have to do with my original question about what sexism is "good"? like, I'm not debating on average that women are physically weaker than men today, but what meaning does that have anyway? we used to deal with lots of cultural messaging in the past that suggested women to be docile, like The Cult of Domesticity and certain excerpts from Poor Richard's Almanac. Also, I am very slender as a guy and lightweight, I don't think it means anything. It's one thing to be attracted to softspoken women, women who like to shop or gossip, or women who exhibit traits considered conservative or stereotypical or whatever, it's another thing to see it as a fundamental essence of being.
second, what is that? is that an image from a gay pride parade, how is it radical pro-gay? the whole point of LGBT-affirmative events (basically movements or events that promote LGBT stuff) is that they are underrepresented in society and are maligned by some people, in a way that is generally not experienced when someone is straight or "cis." all you have to do is look at some jokes about fags, dykes, etc, use of "gay" as pejorative. that isn't particularly radical.
I mean, "die cis scum" would be kind of dumb, but that's not what's going on here =P
When I mentioned it being a 'fad' I should have clarified that I meant in relation to things like 'pop culture critics' and nonsense like that. I don't mean meaningful forms of anti-racism and feminism, I'm talking about this weird 'slactivist' phenomena where people petition Nintendo and complain on NeoGAF about not being able to play a transgender in a video game or about characters not having French accents in a fantasy game or something.
As for the idea of right-wing governments I'm mostly referring to Europe. Look at Greece, Golden Dawn is a far-right fascist party that gained enough support to enter parliament. Look at the Austrian MP Ewald Stadler going ballistic against the Turkish ambassador in relation to the 'One way tolerance' towards Turks.
Obviously it's not related to things like 'Social Justice Warriors' directly, but I do feel that the backlash against them leads to more conservative political views as a direct contrast/counter.
Regarding transgendered characters in games, are you talking about stuff like Mass Effect and Tomodachi Life? Because I've seen some of those discussions. I don't see what the problem would be...but for the fact that in order to be transgendered you have to either formerly be a different gender or desire to be a different gender, and you can't really convey that with
one avatar, as far as we know.
French accents, are you thinking of VA's from different countries? That might be cool actually, I thought Xenoblade's VA cast was pretty refreshing. Some games can get stale with the VA cast, Johnny Yong Bosch, Yuri Lowenthal, Laura Bailey, etc. unless you are just throwing out hypotheticals for fun. anyway, slacktivism is a thing, but in any given cause some people are slacktivists and some people aren't, it's not really possible to judge that just by evaluating any one issue, has to be judged per person.
As for your political points, I'm sorta familiar with that, and Golden Dawn, which took parliament two years ago IIRC. The racially motivated ones are often a form of populism that involves into protofascism. Greece was in a crisis situation and in crisis political climates it's easier to convince the public of scapegoats for countries' problems. Cause people tend to want a solution. It doesn't help that sometimes Golden Dawn had decent PR, because they'd offer to help Greek citizens with like, food or something. I forget.
Your point about Social Justice Warriors and conservatism, well first I want to make the distinction between conservatism and autocracy/authoritarianism. You can have social hierarchy without government, there are some conservative people (or conservative-ish) who are, to put it MEGA broadly, anti-government. Anyway I think I know what you're generally saying. In political circles of minority ideologies, people are sometimes tempted to either violent or aggressive behavior, polemic, or autocratic governments so they can get their changes made quickly. i.e. Ecoterrorism, Pol Pot, etc.
That being said I don't see anything like that happening with feminism and racial equality stuff and etc. There is no organization that takes those issues seriously enough to do that right now, and no government who will do that. I don't figure the Black Panthers/White Panthers were facist, for example. They were anti-capitalist, and they had aggressive members, but I don't think they fit your description.
I just saw those T-shirts, and I really think this is a case of someone rushing to be outraged so they can look important. 'I only date heroes' being offensive because "WOMEN CAN BE HEROES TOO". Really? Holy shit, it's a $5 shirt made to sell to nerd couples who just walked out of watching the latest summer blockbuster.
Maybe I should get offended that a woman chooses to ignore men who don't conform to their unrealistic ideals of what a Hero is, and that shirt makes me feel inadequate and depressed because I don't have a physique like Superman or Batman, and it belittles me and emasculates me because of that.
As Taro said above, who would get up in arms if there was a 'Looking for my WONDER WOMAN!' shirt for guys?
Well, if you feel like some women do have unrealistic ideals about men, that could be totally fine and be something to explore, as long as nobody hates either gender. That was a central point for one female character in this (IMO great) movie, Don Jon, which came out a year ago... The whole idea here is that sometimes in media certain ideal of people are propped up above others and that ideal is often suggested to be more desirable. The argument is the industry is structured so that different depictions of people are drowned out and not everyone has the ability to separate reality from fiction.
As for Taro Yamada's idea, well in some of the shirts the problem also lay with the image, not just the words. =P But the whole point of feminism is that it suggests that society generally suggests women and men to be not equal in terms of worth and individuals supporting this view do harm. And that this is all A Very Bad Thing.
Just the words that Taro was suggesting seemed not big a deal though
No shit sherlock. But that one had the most complaints. Which is the reason why Hollywood reporter had that as their MAIN Image. And the reason why i went with THAT image. Geez...use you're frigging brains.
They all had complaints. Your second post that I replied to only referred to one shirt. I could still argue how that original shirt is potentially problematic though less so than some of the others IMO. The totality of the responses to all of the apparel in question is what prompted DC's acknowledgement.
I generally think that your portrayal of the issue was dishonest, tacit assumption that feminism is a frivolous concern aside. Sure, you disagree with the protestors' premise, that's fine. And I don't think overly formal writing is necessary either. But people criticizing DC's shirts were responding to a lot of their apparel, it wasn't just some isolated incident and the opening post misrepresented the issue.
This whole concept that feminism is frivolous is something I don't understand either. What is it that we assume people sympathetic to feminist ideas are going to be doing with their time instead of being interested in depictions of women in media? Do people raising issues related to feminism somehow take too many hours in a day/days in a year or otherwise cause too much hassle for media companies, artists, legislators, etc.? They're all getting paid either way.
