Last Friday I wrote a post about the prevalence of female violence against men in the media and the double standards regarding it versus the portrayal of male violence against women. Then later in the weekend, I saw the first episode of Farscape for the very first time (yes, I realize that it came out eleven years ago). Early on, there's a scene where a human man from Earth is in a cell in an alien ship with a figure in a flight suit and helmet. The person takes off their helmet, revealing a female human face. The man goes over to talk to her and the woman apparently thinks he's a deserter or spy and proceeds to attack him by kneeing him, punching him, knocking him to the ground, and standing over him with her foot on top of him. Naturally, she suffers no consequences for her brutal assault, whereas in TV and film, any man who merely hits a woman will have something bad happen to him, usually at the hands of the woman he hit and probably involving a groin kick.
Now, if the roles were reversed, even today feminist blogs would still be ranting about this as evidence of the "prevalence" of "violence against women" in movies and TV. Instead, this kind of assault is viewed as empowering grrl power, even though the man basically did nothing wrong. Indeed, it seems to be a requirement that if a woman is to be shown as a "strong, empowered woman" she has to beat up one or more men. The only exception I can think to this trope is in Starship Troopers (the movie, not the book) when Dizzy fights a drill sergeant for the right to join his training unit... and ends up loosing (though the drill sergeant respects her and ends up accepting her into the unit).
I've noticed that a lot of this grrrl power and glamorized female-on-male violence comes from movies and TV directed at nerds, such as sci-fi, fantasy, and comic book films (such as in Iron Man 2 - discussed today by Elusive Wapiti at The Spearhead). For a while I've been thinking that Ferdinand Bardamu was correct when he called gamers and nerds manginas over at The Spearhead and that I was wrong when I defended them.
Showing posts with label violence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label violence. Show all posts
Monday, May 10, 2010
Friday, May 7, 2010
Movies' Female Violence Double Standard
In modern American media, with the exception of video games (which are unsurprisingly hated by the establishment) the standard relationship between violence and gender looks something like this:
Male on male: entertaining, amusing
Male on female: abusive, sexist
Female on female: hot (especially if they are scantily clad)
Female on male: empowering, humorous
Despite the feminist whining about "violence against women" in the media, male on female violence much rarer than female on male violence in modern movies. If it is present, it is usually either used to show how evil a villain is or is used in a fight scene that the female character wins (usually unscathed). As TV Tropes notes, it is possible to discern the villain and hero in most fight scenes based on gender alone. Note that there are some exceptions to this model, such as Inglorious Bastards, but that isn't exactly an average movie.
The white knights of both the liberal mangina and chivalrous conservative variety out there will probably argue that "violence against women is always wrong" and spout out something about not hitting women and respecting them. But it's interesting to note that the people who essentially laid the foundations for our society, the ancient Greeks, did not have this taboo in their myths. Greek mythology was full of antagonistic goddesses, evil queens, and even had an entire nation of villainous women. Pretty much every Greek hero ends up fighting and killing a female villain at some point. Contrary to their portrayal in feminized popular culture, the Amazons were not heroes in Greek mythology, but were villains and several of the Greek heroes (Achilles, Heracles, and Theseus come to mind) fought them. Somehow I doubt we will see any movies involving Heracles killing Amazons and "stealing the girdle" of their queen.
Anyways, what got me thinking about this topic was watching the Iron Man 2 trailer, which towards the end shows Scarlett Johansson's character beating up a bunch of male security guards. Naturally, most members of the current generation of young men, after thirteen to seventeen years of feminist indoctrination, probably thought that scene was "badass." Somehow I doubt modern American women would consider Heracles killing Amazons to be "badass." They'd probably complain to their congresswoman.
I've noticed in the past couple months that female violence against men is common in movie trailers. Hot Tub Time Machine's trailer showed a woman slapping a man in a bar, Kick Ass's showed a young girl killing a dozen men, and Death at a Funeral's showed a black woman punching a white man. Naturally, in any cases, the reverse would never be shown in a trailer. I'm sure feminists and "family values" conservatives would unite to condemn it. They did last year over the fact that a mere 11% of the violent acts on TV are committed against women.
Also, it's worth noting that those trailers are available for viewing on MTV's website. This is the same MTV that, when a woman got punched in the face in a bar during an episode of the reality show Jersey Shore, blacked out the punch and ran a public-service announcement saying "Violence against women in any form is a crime" and giving the number to an abuse hotline.
That there is a double standard regarding to portrayal of male-on-female and female-on-male violence in movies and TV is unsurprising. We live in an era of double standards.
Male on male: entertaining, amusing
Male on female: abusive, sexist
Female on female: hot (especially if they are scantily clad)
Female on male: empowering, humorous
Despite the feminist whining about "violence against women" in the media, male on female violence much rarer than female on male violence in modern movies. If it is present, it is usually either used to show how evil a villain is or is used in a fight scene that the female character wins (usually unscathed). As TV Tropes notes, it is possible to discern the villain and hero in most fight scenes based on gender alone. Note that there are some exceptions to this model, such as Inglorious Bastards, but that isn't exactly an average movie.
The white knights of both the liberal mangina and chivalrous conservative variety out there will probably argue that "violence against women is always wrong" and spout out something about not hitting women and respecting them. But it's interesting to note that the people who essentially laid the foundations for our society, the ancient Greeks, did not have this taboo in their myths. Greek mythology was full of antagonistic goddesses, evil queens, and even had an entire nation of villainous women. Pretty much every Greek hero ends up fighting and killing a female villain at some point. Contrary to their portrayal in feminized popular culture, the Amazons were not heroes in Greek mythology, but were villains and several of the Greek heroes (Achilles, Heracles, and Theseus come to mind) fought them. Somehow I doubt we will see any movies involving Heracles killing Amazons and "stealing the girdle" of their queen.
Anyways, what got me thinking about this topic was watching the Iron Man 2 trailer, which towards the end shows Scarlett Johansson's character beating up a bunch of male security guards. Naturally, most members of the current generation of young men, after thirteen to seventeen years of feminist indoctrination, probably thought that scene was "badass." Somehow I doubt modern American women would consider Heracles killing Amazons to be "badass." They'd probably complain to their congresswoman.
I've noticed in the past couple months that female violence against men is common in movie trailers. Hot Tub Time Machine's trailer showed a woman slapping a man in a bar, Kick Ass's showed a young girl killing a dozen men, and Death at a Funeral's showed a black woman punching a white man. Naturally, in any cases, the reverse would never be shown in a trailer. I'm sure feminists and "family values" conservatives would unite to condemn it. They did last year over the fact that a mere 11% of the violent acts on TV are committed against women.
Also, it's worth noting that those trailers are available for viewing on MTV's website. This is the same MTV that, when a woman got punched in the face in a bar during an episode of the reality show Jersey Shore, blacked out the punch and ran a public-service announcement saying "Violence against women in any form is a crime" and giving the number to an abuse hotline.
That there is a double standard regarding to portrayal of male-on-female and female-on-male violence in movies and TV is unsurprising. We live in an era of double standards.
Friday, April 2, 2010
RapeLay and Ignorant Video Game Bashers
Feminists and the Old Media have rediscovered RapeLay, the Japanese rape simulation game that video game bashers love to use to attack gaming.
Before I discuss that, I wanted to mention an ignorant video game bashing (and male-bashing) article from the Times-Herald of Dubuque, Iowa, which I found via GiantBomb. I am posting the article in its entirety due to the fact that online newspaper articles, especially those from papers with relatively low circulation, have a tendency to link rot.
The article reeks of the chivalrous male-bashing common among conservative nice guy manginas. He writes about how we need to teach boys to respect women and girls, etc., etc. Of course, no mention is made of teaching girls to respect boys and men. I am used to reading that kind of drivel so to me that was not the dumbest part. This was:
It's obvious that this man has never played or even researched much about the GTA series. He's just a lemming who read an article in the newspaper or saw a report on Fox News telling about how players in GTA can commit violence against women.
The truth is, GTA has less violence against women than most modern games. True, you can have sex with prostitutes, then kill them and take the money, but this is not part of the main storyline. Pretty much all of the enemies you fight and kill in GTA, including both police and criminals are male (which is odd considering women make up like 20% of most big city police departments), unlike in many games where there are many female enemies. So I wonder why Tim Moothart didn't say that GTA disrespected men?
Via Feministing, I found a story from CNN regarding a video game called RapeLay. First off, RapeLay has been out for four years and RapeLay has been known among gamers and the Internet subculture for a few years. It is pathetic that CNN is only catching on now. The Old Media is utterly useless when it comes to Internet-related news.
Anyways, the whole point of RapeLay is to rape women. It seems sick, right? But when you think about it, there are a lot of sicker games out there. In first-person shooters you slaughter hundreds of people, including unarmed civilians in some cases, to complete the game. In games where there is some sort of morality system present, such as alignment in Dungeons and Dragons-based games and the Renegade/Paragon system of Mass Effect, the player can do horrible things to people. In Mass Effect 2, you can beat information out of a prisoner (there's actually a few parts of the game that involve beating information out of people) and execute unarmed civilians and surrendered enemies if you go for the Renegade path. In Bioshock, you can kill little girls if you play as an evil character. True, you aren't required to do evil acts like you are in RapeLay, but the potential is still there and a lot of players do so.
Predictably feminists are outraged over it. I agree that stores should probably not be selling it, but their public outrage is only going to cause it to spread even further. It is something known as the Streisand effect - things that people try to censor on the Internet end up getting spread around more than they would have if they were just left alone. Indeed, CNN shockingly notes that the game went viral as a result of the feminists' protests and people can download it through tubes of the Internets. Who would've thought?
Of course, a bunch of feminist activists and Old Media reporters - or do I repeat myself? - wouldn't know anything about the Streisand effect or Internet culture in general. Which is probably a good thing. If they dug deeper into Internet culture, they would undoubtedly be horrified by what they would find, and we would get even more articles like this.
Predictably, feminists have a solution and it involves government regulation. For the article, CNN "interviewed" Taina Bien-Aime from Equality Now, one of the people who helped get the game removed from the shelves last year. Bien-Aime wants Japan "to ban all games that promote and simulate sexual violence, sexual torture, stalking and rape against women and girls." The fact is, as distasteful as games like RapeLay are, they do not hurt anyone. 0s and 1s are being "raped," not real women. Also, if governments can ban RapeLay, they will probably try to ban violent games and games with politically incorrect content later on. Yes, that involves a slippery slope, but when discussing government regulations the slippery slope is not a fallacy, it is generally a legitimate concern.
Perhaps Taina Bien-Aime and her Equality Now should put more effort into fighting real, tangible oppression towards women, instead of calling for governments to censor video games they don't like in First World countries where women are very well off.
Before I discuss that, I wanted to mention an ignorant video game bashing (and male-bashing) article from the Times-Herald of Dubuque, Iowa, which I found via GiantBomb. I am posting the article in its entirety due to the fact that online newspaper articles, especially those from papers with relatively low circulation, have a tendency to link rot.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Change 'culture of violence'
Teach boys that abusing women and degrading others will not be tolerated.
BY TIM MOOTHART
You and I began life as a being without a propensity to harm others. All of us, yes even the mass murderer on death row, began life as a child who would never think of harming another human being.
However:
* Some 18 percent of women in the United States have been victims of a completed or attempted rape.
* Riverview Center in Dubuque served 1,100 children and adults this year related to violence.
Who is performing this violence?
* Some 64 percent of women who reported being raped, physically assaulted, and/or stalked since age 18 were victimized by a current or former husband, cohabiting partner, boyfriend, or date.
* Typical perpetrators are not aliens or misfits. They are your neighbors, your relatives, your co-workers.
What happened?
Jackson Katz, noted expert on gender violence, says, "Most men who assault women are not so much disturbed as disturbingly normal ... they are influenced by broad cultural beliefs about manhood that shape their psyches and identities. And ours. They not only learn to be violent, they learn that violence is manly."
Yes, all of us together have created a "culture of violence" and live with its logical outcome, a society racked with pain and suffering inflicted upon each other by acts of violence. Violence is a learned behavior and all of us have been its teachers.
What can we do?
Like any skill or learned trait, we can learn to approach gender violence from a different perspective. We can all be teachers of a new approach.
First, it requires all of us to believe that WE have the responsibility to change our culture. It's not just the perpetrators or "them" that have to change, it's all of us.
Next, reject the idea that violence is inevitable and that some men abuse women. Hold yourself to a higher standard. Boys learn how to be men from observing other men. In Dubuque, let's make sure they observe that degrading women and abusing others is not part of manhood and will not be tolerated.
Take a look inside yourself. Men, do you believe that men should be in control in a relationship? Do you act as if males are "the stronger gender"? Do you treat and talk about others as if they were objects rather than fellow humans?
Show our children how to respect others even when you disagree with them or they have hurt you in some way.
Take advantage of those teachable moments. Let's say your 12-year-old boy asks you to buy him the wildly popular video game "Grand Theft Auto." Tell him, "I don't want GTA in my house because it is disrespectful to women. It teaches boys to think that violence against women is just a big joke. As a man, I will not spend my money on this and I don't want it in my house."
Join us as we work to change the culture of our community and our attitude toward gender violence. Help us educate all community members on its negative impact and what ALL of us can do to prevent it by the way we live.
Together we can learn to eliminate gender and domestic violence! What are you teaching?
The article reeks of the chivalrous male-bashing common among conservative nice guy manginas. He writes about how we need to teach boys to respect women and girls, etc., etc. Of course, no mention is made of teaching girls to respect boys and men. I am used to reading that kind of drivel so to me that was not the dumbest part. This was:
Take advantage of those teachable moments. Let's say your 12-year-old boy asks you to buy him the wildly popular video game "Grand Theft Auto." Tell him, "I don't want GTA in my house because it is disrespectful to women. It teaches boys to think that violence against women is just a big joke. As a man, I will not spend my money on this and I don't want it in my house."
It's obvious that this man has never played or even researched much about the GTA series. He's just a lemming who read an article in the newspaper or saw a report on Fox News telling about how players in GTA can commit violence against women.
The truth is, GTA has less violence against women than most modern games. True, you can have sex with prostitutes, then kill them and take the money, but this is not part of the main storyline. Pretty much all of the enemies you fight and kill in GTA, including both police and criminals are male (which is odd considering women make up like 20% of most big city police departments), unlike in many games where there are many female enemies. So I wonder why Tim Moothart didn't say that GTA disrespected men?
Via Feministing, I found a story from CNN regarding a video game called RapeLay. First off, RapeLay has been out for four years and RapeLay has been known among gamers and the Internet subculture for a few years. It is pathetic that CNN is only catching on now. The Old Media is utterly useless when it comes to Internet-related news.
Anyways, the whole point of RapeLay is to rape women. It seems sick, right? But when you think about it, there are a lot of sicker games out there. In first-person shooters you slaughter hundreds of people, including unarmed civilians in some cases, to complete the game. In games where there is some sort of morality system present, such as alignment in Dungeons and Dragons-based games and the Renegade/Paragon system of Mass Effect, the player can do horrible things to people. In Mass Effect 2, you can beat information out of a prisoner (there's actually a few parts of the game that involve beating information out of people) and execute unarmed civilians and surrendered enemies if you go for the Renegade path. In Bioshock, you can kill little girls if you play as an evil character. True, you aren't required to do evil acts like you are in RapeLay, but the potential is still there and a lot of players do so.
Predictably feminists are outraged over it. I agree that stores should probably not be selling it, but their public outrage is only going to cause it to spread even further. It is something known as the Streisand effect - things that people try to censor on the Internet end up getting spread around more than they would have if they were just left alone. Indeed, CNN shockingly notes that the game went viral as a result of the feminists' protests and people can download it through tubes of the Internets. Who would've thought?
Of course, a bunch of feminist activists and Old Media reporters - or do I repeat myself? - wouldn't know anything about the Streisand effect or Internet culture in general. Which is probably a good thing. If they dug deeper into Internet culture, they would undoubtedly be horrified by what they would find, and we would get even more articles like this.
Predictably, feminists have a solution and it involves government regulation. For the article, CNN "interviewed" Taina Bien-Aime from Equality Now, one of the people who helped get the game removed from the shelves last year. Bien-Aime wants Japan "to ban all games that promote and simulate sexual violence, sexual torture, stalking and rape against women and girls." The fact is, as distasteful as games like RapeLay are, they do not hurt anyone. 0s and 1s are being "raped," not real women. Also, if governments can ban RapeLay, they will probably try to ban violent games and games with politically incorrect content later on. Yes, that involves a slippery slope, but when discussing government regulations the slippery slope is not a fallacy, it is generally a legitimate concern.
Perhaps Taina Bien-Aime and her Equality Now should put more effort into fighting real, tangible oppression towards women, instead of calling for governments to censor video games they don't like in First World countries where women are very well off.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Politically Incorrect Old Movies
I enjoy watching many older movies and one thing I notice is how despite the content restrictions placed on movies prior to the mid-1960s, they often contain political incorrectness that would either get them never made today or would cause people to picket theaters showing them. Today it's acceptable to show dozens of men being graphically killed in action films and show completely gratuitous sex scenes and nudity in any R-rated film. Yet, if you happen to offend one of the myriad victim groups or show something that the elites object to, expect to be badgered by myriad liberal or religious conservative activist groups.
Last night I watched Battle of Britain, a 1969 film. There's a scene where a British pilot is shot down over London and parachutes to safety. A young boy witnesses this, runs into his house, and returns with a box of cigarettes, offering one to the pilot.
If that had been scene had been in a modern movie, the reaction would have been enormous. Various "public health advocates" would have been decrying the fact that the film glamorized smoking. Liberals would rant about Big Tobacco corrupting children. Even the religious right would find something to find offensive (they always do).
Speaking of old movies in the modern era, the 1950s film The Dam Busters is being remade, produced by Peter Jackson. They are running into trouble because the name of the squadron's commander was "nigger." Of course, the studio will probably have the remake be much more violent than the original was, yet they probably won't be able to say the word "nigger."
Last night I watched Battle of Britain, a 1969 film. There's a scene where a British pilot is shot down over London and parachutes to safety. A young boy witnesses this, runs into his house, and returns with a box of cigarettes, offering one to the pilot.
If that had been scene had been in a modern movie, the reaction would have been enormous. Various "public health advocates" would have been decrying the fact that the film glamorized smoking. Liberals would rant about Big Tobacco corrupting children. Even the religious right would find something to find offensive (they always do).
Speaking of old movies in the modern era, the 1950s film The Dam Busters is being remade, produced by Peter Jackson. They are running into trouble because the name of the squadron's commander was "nigger." Of course, the studio will probably have the remake be much more violent than the original was, yet they probably won't be able to say the word "nigger."
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