rambling about how much sexism sucks

So I've been catching up with what's been going on in fandom lately, and it's kind of turned into another rant....

Here's Joss Whedon complaining about misogyny on Whedonesque. I have plenty of issues with the way Joss writes women, and I'm annoyed at the implication of some of the comments that this issue is suddenly worth talking about because a man brought it up. That said, I very much appreciate that Joss is upset by the utter ubiquitousness of misogyny in our culture, and that he feels compelled to post about it.

I was reading Fandom Wank yesterday, and I got so sick reading the discussions surrounding the repulsive Mary Jane statue from Sideshow Collectibles (I'm never buying anything from them again). Specifically I was disgusted by the men popping up and complaining about how it's not a big deal, about how the "feminazis" need to shut up and leave them alone, about how oppressed the poor men are by the evil women, blah blah blah *TEARING MY HAIR OUT* BULLSHIT. And then someone reverses the genders and portrays a male character in the over-the-top sexual way that women are used to, and suddenly the men are throwing hissy fits. (Also amusing: this reversal of Spiderman and Mary Jane's positions--scroll to the end of the entry.)

( me raging about how men just DON'T GET IT )

Anyway. I did follow this crap to a link to Anti-Comics-Feminist Bingo, which is brilliant. (I'm not really a comics reader, but these arguments pop up everywhere.) It's got more detailed explanations here.

jaydk, drujan, and I went to see Spiderman III together, and afterward jaydk told us about this rule, which I forget the name of, that asks whether a movie passes the following test: does it have 1) at least two women, who 2) talk to each other 3) about something besides a man.

We started going through our favorite movies and TV shows and realized that almost none of them even come close to passing this test. (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, Spiderman, Pirates... I could go on.) Buffy, at least, passes it. But it's so incredibly depressing to realize how much doesn't.

In large part this is because so many writers, when creating an ensemble, treat male as the default, with a variety of personality types within it, and then throw in one token "girl" as if "the girl" is the only personality type a woman could have. Girl-Wonder.org actually has a really great article about how to write female characters well. I know so many well-meaning but clueless male writers who could benefit from this.

Perhaps I'm feeling overly sensitive to this stuff due to recent experiences...

Oh yeah, and then there's this FanLib thing (which is also all over metafandom), in which a bunch of male venture capitalist creeps are trying to profiteer off of fandom. I can't even begin to say how repulsive this is, on so very many levels, but luckily practically everyone in fandom already been posting about how much it sucks. It... just... see, I get inarticulate with rage.

I guess that what sickens me most is that it takes away literally EVERYTHING THAT IS GOOD about fandom: ( do you want to read yet another fan bitching about FanLib? )

I know I'm way behind the times in posting about all this, but I'm trying to catch up and I couldn't help ranting after reading all this crap...


On the plus side, I'm off to see Pirates 3 tonight. At least there's still some good stuff in the world. :P