Real Life vs Fantasy
May. 15th, 2007 03:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
semiotic_pirate"So a bunch of men in the world are in love with Mary Jane, and they buy a model of her standing in a sey pose. Big deal. You can belittle the men in this case all you want; and you’re probably right, who the hell pays 125 dollars for a comic figure. That being said, they arent the only men to ever fancy an unrealistic representation of a woman.
I will never understand what modern feminists are trying to accomplish. Equal pay for equal work, ok I can see that one. Fair representation in science and math? Maybe there wouldn’t be such an issue there if all of the “smart” women became mathematicians instead of women’s rights studies majors (yawn).
But seriously. On the one hand, you people are all about sexual empowerment and liberation. And then you complain when men look at you as sexual objects! You glorify the female body and defend the right of any women to dress the way she wants without attracting unwanted desires. And then you condemn men for picking out figures of women wearing sexy clothes. You obsess over shows like Sex and the City for depicting women in an empowered position. But when men see that show, all they see is four shallow, slutty, shoe shopping, man obsessed, gossipy, but most importantly, TYPICAL - as in fitting all of the most negative sterotypes men have about women. And yet somehow it is empowering. So we just dont get it. "
Quote from this reponse to a post by pandagon regarding the Mary Jane collector's statue ($125).
Okay, lets take this one point at a time, shall we?
1. "Love" is not what men feel for MJ, especially not this depiction. That would be lust, pure and simple.
2. By enclosing the word smart in quotation marks, this person, whose screen name is White Male, is deliberately implying that women in general are not smart at all and that is why there is not equal representation in math and science. That it has nothing to do with decades of socialization, etc.
3. Sexual empowerment & liberation does not equal being objectified. It means that we can be sexual beings who can make their own choices about when, where, how, and with whom. It does not mean that we want to be objects, implying that we are just property to be bought. It is one thing for a man to admire and desire a woman (or even a distorted representation of a woman) it is another for that man to want to OWN said woman, as an object - that said woman is not a person in her own right.
4. Women who like Sex & the City do so because the women depicted are the ones CHOOSING to do what they do. They make their own money, and spend it the way they want. They make their own decisions about who, where, and how to satiate their sexual needs. They are a community of four, who are growing and evolving in their wants and needs through life. Are they "shallow" because they think about themselves?
Please, someone else give me a hand in explaining the HUMAN side of this explanation.
This is the image of the statue in question:
I liked this (quoted on pandagon from feministe in another response) take on the whole issue much better: "When a girl or woman picks up “Wizard” and can’t make it 5 pages in without being grossed out by the softcore and the sexist jokes, or when a woman walks into a comics shop and sees statues like MJ, Emma and Supergirl proudly displayed in a place of honor, and when (as you said) she can’t buy JLA without the Peej cover– or when a woman goes to a website and sees misogynist ads with a woman who’s got a lock over her mouth– more likely than not, she’s going to put down the magazine, walk out of the comics shop, and close the website. If the creators and retailers are okay with the fact that, *to the average person*, they look like a bunch of creepy perverts, then fine– they don’t need to change anything they’re doing.
But I don’t think, judging from the response from DC, that they even realize how bad the Peej cover looks. They really just do not *get* that most people, if you showed them that JLA cover without any context and asked them to guess what the comic is about, and who it’s for, would probably guess “It’s about huge breasts, and it’s for men who want specialty fetish porn about huge breasts.”
They don’t realize *how they look* to people that aren’t familiar enough with the superhero comics industry to know that this crap is just business as usual. *That’s* what makes this a big deal.
The women who got their comments deleted from Sideshow’s website– most of ‘em, I can say with some degree of confidence, are Internet nerds of one stripe or another, and most of them are probably within the target market for Sideshow’s Buffy or LOTR or Star Wars or manga collectibles. Sideshow just spit in their faces. Similarly, the women who left reasonable comments on Quesada’s blog and got those deleted? Yeah, they basically just got told by Marvel’s *Editor-in-Chief* to get the fuck back in the kitchen and make him a sammich.
And for every woman that left a comment and got it deleted, there were probably 20 more lurkers that watched it happen. And again, that’s what makes this a big deal– the fact that a lot of the people who are *really upset* about this *could* have been comics fans, and now probably never will be. I know a lot of people on my livejournal friendslist, mostly women, who have never bought comics before– but lately, they have been going into comics shops to buy the Buffy S8 comics, or the Supernatural prequel comics, or Joss Whedon’s run on “X-Men” or “Runaways.” And I know a lot of people who like the Spider-Man movies, and back when the last movie came out, I was recommending Ultimate Spidey left and right.
But these days, man. I just cringe when I think of a friend of mine walking into a comics store and seeing that Peej cover, or other covers like it. *I love comics*. And I love superhero comics. But some days, they do stuff that’s just indefensible, and I can’t in good conscience recommend DC or Marvel comics to my friends any more. And, yeah, that’s what makes this a big deal."
This is so true. I was a major comic book geek-fan throughout the late 70's and 80's. Life started happening and I fell away from that part of my life, but now I have begun to look back and to check out what's on the shelves at the local stores. When I would occasionally see stuff between then and now, it would all be about the extreme distortion of both male and female physiques. It made a parody of what the human body actually looks like, the story-lines were degraded and overly oriented towards sexualizing and objectifying the women. The dross outweighed the good stuff and made it so I couldn't make myself wade through the morass to get to it either. We will see if I can find anything worth getting hooked enough on this time around to subscribe to.
Another pet peeve: Before, the universe of characters were loosely knit, that way if you just wanted to read ONE series, you could, and not suffer from missing "vital" parts of the story-line. These days, you cannot do that. They cross-market and cross-pollinize their story-lines all over the place. Talk about annoying.
I will never understand what modern feminists are trying to accomplish. Equal pay for equal work, ok I can see that one. Fair representation in science and math? Maybe there wouldn’t be such an issue there if all of the “smart” women became mathematicians instead of women’s rights studies majors (yawn).
But seriously. On the one hand, you people are all about sexual empowerment and liberation. And then you complain when men look at you as sexual objects! You glorify the female body and defend the right of any women to dress the way she wants without attracting unwanted desires. And then you condemn men for picking out figures of women wearing sexy clothes. You obsess over shows like Sex and the City for depicting women in an empowered position. But when men see that show, all they see is four shallow, slutty, shoe shopping, man obsessed, gossipy, but most importantly, TYPICAL - as in fitting all of the most negative sterotypes men have about women. And yet somehow it is empowering. So we just dont get it. "
Quote from this reponse to a post by pandagon regarding the Mary Jane collector's statue ($125).
Okay, lets take this one point at a time, shall we?
1. "Love" is not what men feel for MJ, especially not this depiction. That would be lust, pure and simple.
2. By enclosing the word smart in quotation marks, this person, whose screen name is White Male, is deliberately implying that women in general are not smart at all and that is why there is not equal representation in math and science. That it has nothing to do with decades of socialization, etc.
3. Sexual empowerment & liberation does not equal being objectified. It means that we can be sexual beings who can make their own choices about when, where, how, and with whom. It does not mean that we want to be objects, implying that we are just property to be bought. It is one thing for a man to admire and desire a woman (or even a distorted representation of a woman) it is another for that man to want to OWN said woman, as an object - that said woman is not a person in her own right.
4. Women who like Sex & the City do so because the women depicted are the ones CHOOSING to do what they do. They make their own money, and spend it the way they want. They make their own decisions about who, where, and how to satiate their sexual needs. They are a community of four, who are growing and evolving in their wants and needs through life. Are they "shallow" because they think about themselves?
Please, someone else give me a hand in explaining the HUMAN side of this explanation.
This is the image of the statue in question:
I liked this (quoted on pandagon from feministe in another response) take on the whole issue much better: "When a girl or woman picks up “Wizard” and can’t make it 5 pages in without being grossed out by the softcore and the sexist jokes, or when a woman walks into a comics shop and sees statues like MJ, Emma and Supergirl proudly displayed in a place of honor, and when (as you said) she can’t buy JLA without the Peej cover– or when a woman goes to a website and sees misogynist ads with a woman who’s got a lock over her mouth– more likely than not, she’s going to put down the magazine, walk out of the comics shop, and close the website. If the creators and retailers are okay with the fact that, *to the average person*, they look like a bunch of creepy perverts, then fine– they don’t need to change anything they’re doing.
But I don’t think, judging from the response from DC, that they even realize how bad the Peej cover looks. They really just do not *get* that most people, if you showed them that JLA cover without any context and asked them to guess what the comic is about, and who it’s for, would probably guess “It’s about huge breasts, and it’s for men who want specialty fetish porn about huge breasts.”
They don’t realize *how they look* to people that aren’t familiar enough with the superhero comics industry to know that this crap is just business as usual. *That’s* what makes this a big deal.
The women who got their comments deleted from Sideshow’s website– most of ‘em, I can say with some degree of confidence, are Internet nerds of one stripe or another, and most of them are probably within the target market for Sideshow’s Buffy or LOTR or Star Wars or manga collectibles. Sideshow just spit in their faces. Similarly, the women who left reasonable comments on Quesada’s blog and got those deleted? Yeah, they basically just got told by Marvel’s *Editor-in-Chief* to get the fuck back in the kitchen and make him a sammich.
And for every woman that left a comment and got it deleted, there were probably 20 more lurkers that watched it happen. And again, that’s what makes this a big deal– the fact that a lot of the people who are *really upset* about this *could* have been comics fans, and now probably never will be. I know a lot of people on my livejournal friendslist, mostly women, who have never bought comics before– but lately, they have been going into comics shops to buy the Buffy S8 comics, or the Supernatural prequel comics, or Joss Whedon’s run on “X-Men” or “Runaways.” And I know a lot of people who like the Spider-Man movies, and back when the last movie came out, I was recommending Ultimate Spidey left and right.
But these days, man. I just cringe when I think of a friend of mine walking into a comics store and seeing that Peej cover, or other covers like it. *I love comics*. And I love superhero comics. But some days, they do stuff that’s just indefensible, and I can’t in good conscience recommend DC or Marvel comics to my friends any more. And, yeah, that’s what makes this a big deal."
This is so true. I was a major comic book geek-fan throughout the late 70's and 80's. Life started happening and I fell away from that part of my life, but now I have begun to look back and to check out what's on the shelves at the local stores. When I would occasionally see stuff between then and now, it would all be about the extreme distortion of both male and female physiques. It made a parody of what the human body actually looks like, the story-lines were degraded and overly oriented towards sexualizing and objectifying the women. The dross outweighed the good stuff and made it so I couldn't make myself wade through the morass to get to it either. We will see if I can find anything worth getting hooked enough on this time around to subscribe to.
Another pet peeve: Before, the universe of characters were loosely knit, that way if you just wanted to read ONE series, you could, and not suffer from missing "vital" parts of the story-line. These days, you cannot do that. They cross-market and cross-pollinize their story-lines all over the place. Talk about annoying.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-05-16 12:27 am (UTC)I have absolutely no problem with any kind of pornography (naturally preferring mine with less boobage) where people choose to display their bodies in an erotic fashion (I can even see the empowerment of it). Because though the women there are sex objects, so is everyone else. The whole thing is a sex object. The men, the women, the director, the producer, the cover artist, the (*laugh*) writer, the set. It’s one great big unashamed sex object.
I do think more clue stick whacking needs to go round when you produce things like the uber-breasted super hero wearing tight spandex and are in utter denial of the sex object element. This bothers me more than porn because in the former there is no denial - the women are in the picture for sex. the men are in the picture for sex. It’s all sex. In the comic there’s a denial element - no, this overly sexualised image isn’t about sex. Honest. Which means that this portrayal is seen as typical, normalised if you will. How to say it? The objectification is not in a context where objectification is accepted and admitted and unusal and atypical - the objectification is in a context which implies the objectification of women is typical or normal. It is not in an objectification genre, it is in a completely different genre - and the objectification is assumed.
And this is exacerbated by this idea of “feminazi” or “overly sensitive woman” which means people tell misogynist jokes and just dismiss (and delete) any criticism. A woman has an issue with something like this model and you can already see the eye-rolling. That feeds into it - women complaining about misogyny are considered unreasonable - which in turn implies that misogyny is REASONABLE.
Still, I suppose it’s getting better. No more comics of Super woman refusing to remove her blind fold because her “feminine vanity” could not stand the idea of it tearing out her eyelashes.
oops,. that was loooong
It wasn't long at all, it got through as a reply, didn't it? :D
Date: 2007-05-16 02:03 am (UTC)I think the best tactic that misogynists came up with is to diminish and delete the opposition by creating and supporting stereotypes that encourage others to dismiss their objections to the misogyinists behavior. Kind of like Christians saying that the best thing Satan ever did for himself is convince us he doesn't exist. Yeah.
Yay for Superwoman! Thanks for you input, feel free to give more - I like it when people pop up and start chatting.