• CBS: *casts Lucy Liu to play character originally written as a white dude*
• Brinydeep Catfishbits fans: how DARE they!!! this is a travesty! a mockery of the source material! a fundamental betrayal of the spirit of canon and the essence of the character! Arthur Conan Doyle would be spinning in his GRAVE!!!
• Paramount: *casts Bassethound Cul-de-sac to play character originally written as desi*
• Bumpersticker Cardigan fans: jeez, calm down everyone, it's just ACTING. i'm sure they just picked the most talented actor for the role! Benny is so talented he could play any role, and the franchise should be grateful to have him!

condesces:

ponchartrained:

whenever people say that something is “for teenage girls” or w/e as though that makes it inherently lesser quality i get sO MAD like theres nothing wrong with being a teenage girl and liking stuff do u even realize that your logic behind this is just women like thing women are bad therefore thing is bad like that so fucking gross i cANT STAND IT WHEN PEOPLE USE SHIT ON TEENAGE GIRLS DONT EVEN TALK TO ME

screw it i’m reblogging my own tags

#SEE ALSO: THE DISPARAGEMENT OF THE ENTIRE GENRE OF THE ROMANCE #SEE ALSO: THE DISPARAGEMENT OF THE ENTIRE GENRE OF POP #THE ANTIPATHY FOR BOTH OF THOSE THINGS IS ENTIRELY PREDICATED ON THE IDEA THAT THEY ARE WOMEN’S MEDIA #THE ROMANCE WAS A RESPECTED GENRE UNTIL IT BECAME CODED AS FEMININE #AND THUS LOW QUALITY TASTELESS WORTHLESS ””POPULAR””’ DRECK #RATHER THAN HIGHBROW MASCULINE INTELLECTUAL MODERNIST ””LITERATURE”” #I CAN’T SPEAK WITH ANY AUTHORITY ABOUT POP BUT MY IMPRESSION IS THAT THE PROCESSES ARE SIMILAR #LIKE LET’S LOOK CRITICALLY FOR A SECOND AT THE TREATMENT OF BOY BANDS AS FRIVOLOUS AND WORTHLESS #I AM MAKING NO CLAIMS ABOUT MUSICAL MERIT HERE #BUT THE LEVEL OF HATRED AND CONDESCENSION TOWARD GROUPS WITH PRIMARILY YOUNG FEMALE AUDIENCES IS INCREDIBLE #NOT DUE TO THE QUALITY OF THE MUSIC #BUT BECAUSE MEDIA CREATED FOR THE ENJOYMENT OF WOMEN IS CONSIDERED WORTHLESS BY VIRTUE OF ITS CONSUMPTION BY WOMEN #THIS IS NOT TRUE FOR TEENAGE BOYS WHO LISTEN TO FUCKING EMINEM OR SLIPKNOT OR WHAT HAVE YOU #THERE IS NOWHERE NEAR THE SAME LEVEL OF CATEGORICAL CONTEMPT AND SCORN #AND THERE IS NOT A COMPLETE NORMALIZATION OF CONTEMPT AND SCORN TO MAKE IT SEEM NATURAL AND COMMON SENSE #(IF A BOY OR GOD FORBID A MAN WERE TO LIKE JUSTIN BIEBER DO YOU THINK FOR A SECOND HE WOULDN’T BE RIDICULED AS EFFEMINATE) #(LIKE DO YOU NEED ANY MORE PROOF THAT POP AND BOY BANDS ARE CODED AS FEMININE AND NEGATIVELY SO THAN THAT) #THE DEVALUATION OF THESE TYPES OF MEDIA IS SO INSIDIOUS THAT THE BALDFACED MISOGYNY OF IT IS ALMOST INVISIBLE #BUT THE LOGIC IS THAT *THESE MEDIA ARE FOR WOMEN AND THUS MUST BE WORTHLESS*#AND THAT IS * F U C K E D * U P * #SEE ALSO: THE LEGITIMIZATION OF MY LITTLE PONY BY A PRIMARILY MALE AUDIENCE

durendals:

on a textual level, a female character can dress however she wants and shouldn’t be slut-shamed and hated for what she prefers to wear.

on a metatextual level, she might still have been designed with an intention to provide fanservice.

this means that criticising a design, as opposed to a character, is neither misogyny nor slut-shaming. being displeased about the way a character has been designed is not synonymous with hating her. 

have i made myself clear?

I am so sick and tired of people calling female characters ‘useless”. 

fatespectrum:

nijireiki:

actualcanadiansherlockholmes:

lennat:

Women.

Are.

Not.

There.

To.

Be.

USED!

Do you ever read something that changes the entire way you think?

Holy shit.

YOU DON’T OWE USEFULNESS TO ANYONE.

YOOO.

… I needed this.

onionjulius:

recapitation:

This, everyone. I want to write a companion piece to this. Wow. YES.

UGH THIS IS GR9

It has been very hard for me to watch AMC go from “That other channel where I can watch cool old movies” to a haven of white guys and their suburban fantasies of masculinity.

Some of the shit here makes me wanna vom:

Whether it’s a problem built into the antihero drama, a reaction to haphazard character development, or just plain old-fashioned sexism, wife-bashing is for many viewers an integral part of the AMC experience. Even professional TV-watchers have joined in the hate: In her recap of Lori’s farewell episode,Vulture writer Starlee Kine declared, “Take that, Fat Betty; that is how you ‘correct’ an unlikable character.”

GROSS. You should feel bad Starlee Kine, you should feel very very bad. Gross gross gross.

Obviously I love Mad Men but even if you grant it the best of intentions it’s clear that it attracts fans with disturbing and disappointing tendencies. I will never ever ever join a fandom for the other two shows, never ever ever ever. Because I’m not stupid and I know what it’d be like.

Okay, I can get behind most of this article (calling out fans on blatant misogyny, calling out writers on enabling it) but, um—

“And because television is still written predominantly by men, about men, even the most forward-thinking writers will resort to a certain shorthand when it comes to female characters, says Alyssa Rosenberg, a TV columnist at Slate and the Atlantic. ”Skyler nags, Betty is cold and personality-less. Lori is lame and stupid enough to get pregnant during an apocalypse.

Maybe Alyssa Rosenberg said that in a sarcastic tone of voice or something?  At least I hope she did?  But right now that (especially the Lori bit) really reads as buying into the shaming and hating of the same female characters this article is trying to defend, which is pretty shitty.  Obviously no one’s obligated to reclaim every female character from poor writing, but if you’re a paid feminist TV columnist you should prooobably making it clear you hate the way these women are written, not the women themselves. 

"She had a curious faith in movies and in books; she admired anything that made her feel and did not require responsibility from her, because then she produced happiness like silk for herself and others."

whoistorule:

I recognize that this is probably a joke, but this attitude frustrates me so much. Characters don’t have merit just because they’re female and that’s not why I’m interested in the female characters I’m interested in.

I love violent, vile, cruel, selfish, powerful women, I love women who want control, I love women who see opportunities and take them without remorse, because as a woman who frequently feels like I have no control, that’s really appealing to me.  I love female characters who make interesting choices regardless of whether or not morally good, regardless of how it affects the people around them, because it represents an avenue I feel like I never have access to.

I like seeing women transcend archetypes they’ve been stuffed into for thousands of years, I love seeing female characters who are people and not tropes, I love watching the disenfranchised reclaim their agency and fuck over the system in every single way that they can.

I don’t love female characters because they’re female.  I love the ones that matter to me.  But there are so many poorly written female characters, and boring ones, and bad ones, and I think it’s lazy as fuck to expect me to love them because they’re women.

"TRIGGER WARNING: Domestic abuse, emotional manipulation, threats to commit

What’s horrifying about Walt’s response to Skyler is not just that it’s a manifestation of his own personal monster, but that he channels generations of men in their confident efforts to control women. When Walt tells Skyler “No more like you’re still struggling. So maybe next time I have you committed, put you in an inpatient facility while I take care of the kids,” he echoes the men who had difficult wives lobotomized, or had their memories ruined with electroshock therapy, whether in pursuit of their own tranquility, in evasion of their own guilt and related emotions, or in an effort to evade responsibility for their crimes. He brandishes the prospect of their children watching Ratatouille (another evocation of food as cue back to childhood and domestic tranquility) at their aunt and uncle’s as proof of Skyler’s dereliction of her domestic duties, ignoring his own treatment of Scarface as appropriate family fare—one set of standards for Walt, another, vastly more stringent, for Skyler. At the end of the episode, Walt flaunts Jesse’s present to him, saying “I want to show you something. See that. It’s a birthday present. The person who gave me this present wanted me dead, too. Not that long ago…He changed his mind about me, Skyler. And so will you.”

But what’s immutable isn’t Walt’s greatness, as he seems to believe it is, secure in the idea that he will always be vindicated, that he can, and indeed should, make sure that “nothing stops this train,” not even his own wife. No, what lasts forever, and what rebukes Walter White’s uniqueness even as he believes he’s asserting it, is the long tradition of domestic bullies Walt has fallen in line with. He’s another angry, controlling man. And the only comfort I have is that I know Walt will be alone on his next birthday, unable to maintain by dictatorship what he couldn’t build through love. I only hope he’s alone because he’s thoroughly broken and abandoned, not because Skyler is dead, by his hand or her own, this time for real."

"People hate Skyler White.

I know this because I’ve written about her sympathetically; I may as well have written COME AT ME, BRO in all caps. Remember when Walt bullied and bullshitted his way back into their home in Season Three, daring her to rat on him, knowing she couldn’t? Remember how awful and gross that was? I called that one of Walt’s lowest lows; some commenters felt differently. “That was a friggin’ high point for Walt, it showed he STOPPED being a pushover to his overbearing wife, and started fighting back.” Because Walt had been such a milquetoast up until that point? “[What about] men who don’t want women to kick them out of the houses they bought with their money? What legal right did she have to kick him out? none! Good on Walt for ‘brutalizing’ his wife into obeying the fucking law and letting him use his own hard earned property.” Well, we certainly wouldn’t want anyone on Breaking Bad to disobey the law.

This kind of reaction is not uncommon, for Skyler in particular and for women – often wives – on top-drawer TV dramas in general. Characters like Skyler become targets of vituperation unimaginable to their male counterparts, most of whom engage in vastly more destructive and immoral behavior every episode. By failing to indulge every whim of the the male antiheroes around whom their shows are built, the women become obstacles to those men getting exactly what they want when they want it at all times, which is the core fantasy of antihero fiction. Cold cunning, ruthlessness, rage, self-interest, a propensity for physical violence – we gender these unheroic characteristics as male, and celebrate them; passivity, bitterness, grief, emotional enmeshment, a knack for attacking and deflating egos – we gender these unheroic characteristics as female, and loathe them. (Alyssa Rosenberg has nailed this phenomenon.) Skyler White, Betty Francis, Megan Draper, Catelyn Stark, Sansa Stark, Cersei Lannister, Carmela Soprano: On the sole count of “being women,” Fan Court finds you guilty as charged."

myladymother:

when i say “if you strongly dislike (x) character i strongly dislike YOU” i don’t mean “we disagree and therefore i despise you” i mean “if you can find it in your heart to truly hate a character like this then idk if we’ll get along very well b/c it says something about the way you view people in general”

jeuxdeau:

a thing about queerbaiting

• a great deal of show creators/writers are aware of fandom and slash. people have been tweeting creators/actors their fanfiction for a really long time. 
• also Google is a thing. 
• as is the New York Times, TIME, The Guardian and many other news sources. 
• fandom and fanfiction is not a secret; the idea that slash is popular among women is not a secret and that involvement with fandom creates loyal fans.
• thus creators and writers will throw little bones to fandom via queerbaiting
• this is sort of bad
• queerbaiting involves fetishizing queerness but never committing to it. queerbaiting is like playing gay chicken, queerbaiting is meant to tantalize but not explore the relationship, queer baiting is the equivalent of telling your friend you care but then screaming loudly as possible NO HOMO
• queerbaiting is not progress
• thank you for letting me use bullet points

superhumangirl:

Sometimes I really do get overwhelmed by how many TV shows, movies, and books I want to experience and I think about how I want to reach into the media’s chest and just grab its still beating heart and devour it and maybe this isn’t for fun anymore. 

"[TW: mention of self-harm]

“As soon as teenage girls start to profess love for something, everyone else becomes totally dismissive of it. Teenage girls are open season for the cruelest bullying that our society can dream up. Everyone’s vicious to them. They’re vicious to each other. Hell, they’re even vicious to themselves. It’s terrible.

“So if teenage girls have something that they love, isn’t that a good thing? Isn’t it better for them to find some words they believe in, words like the ‘fire-proof and fearless’ lyrics that Jacqui wrote? Isn’t it better for them to put those words on their arm in a tattoo than for them to cut gashes in that same skin? Shouldn’t we be grateful when teenage girls love our work? Shouldn’t that be a fucking honor?

“It’s used as the cheapest, easiest test of crap, isn’t it? If teenage girls love a movie, a book, a band, then it’s immediately classified as mediocre shit. Well, I’m not going to stand for that. Someone needs to treat them like they’re precious, and if nobody else is ready to step up, I guess it’s up to us to put them on the path to recognizing that about themselves.”

"

queerlitsuperhero:

it is never just a show

it is never just a book

it is never just a movie

it is never just a comic

The way we treat characters in media reflects the ideas we have about real people, and then our media goes on to enforce how we treat those real people.

I am all for enjoying the media I consume (and contrary to how it must look, I do enjoy a lot of media) but I am critical of everything I enjoy. No media exists in a vacuum. No media does not shadow the social system that constructed it. 

de-capslocked version. 

demarches:

Fandoms the world over like to talk about how Lady X doesn’t deserve Dude Y.  This may be a fandom constant, though perhaps there are the illusive fandoms that get out of it unscathed.  It may not even be a predominant fandom or ship-fandom opinion, but still it seems that somewhere in the fandom blob exists criticisms of some lady who dares to be human and make her own choices as “She doesn’t deserve him.”  I feel like the earliest I encountered this was way back in the Dawson’s Creek fandom (lord have mercy on us all), and it really doesn’t let up.  Buffy fandom had it, Lost fandom had it, list continues.  And it’s always about positing the dude in this het paradigm as somehow better or infallible, someone who we unilaterally support to get what he deserves.

But people are not prizes.  You don’t deserve them; this isn’t a scholarship or whatever, it’s not a competition, you don’t get stuff based on how well you’ve done in math class.  No one deserves anyone at all, not you, nor I, nor Peeta Mellark, nor James Sawyer.  The fact that this claim is never, in my experience, reversed — I’ve yet to see someone say Pacey doesn’t deserve Joey, or whatever version you’d like to throw in here — should be indicative that what is going on here is a gendered practice, where men deserve things and women need to live up to a potential that we, as viewers, have somehow established for them to merit the company of our favorite gentlemen.  That’s gross.  I’d like to write a long sentence explaining the sociological process in which women are held up to impossible standards and fandom is somehow a cesspool of exacerbating that, but what it really comes down to is: that’s gross, and to uphold and perpetuate that is gross.

Further, when we find texts such as Bella Swan thinking she doesn’t deserve Edward Cullen, or Katniss Everdeen being explicitly told in text that she could live a hundred lifetimes and never deserve Peeta Mellark and, worse, agreeing, that is also gross.  I don’t care if it’s in-text, out-of-text, your OTP or otherwise.  You can still ship things and recognize their problematics, and if your ship is posited around a lady thinking she does not deserve something, that’s fucked up internalized sexism all the same, either on the part of the author or the character or, most likely, both.  As responsible people in fandom, which is of course very srs and etc., we should be rejecting these concepts, not buying into them.  My problem is not fandom in and of itself; it’s that when fandom believes and acts according to these gender paradigms it’s just upholding the systematic devaluation of women that we experience every day outside of fandom.  We didn’t develop these notions in a vacuum; they come from the outside world and we bring them in to the way we do this.  And I don’t like that messy sexist business in my fandoms or my outside world.  I don’t like it at all.