quote:Originally posted by cleome45: [Uh, what? Superman didn't wipe Lois' mind because he was ashamed of himself for having sex with her. He wanted to spare her having a broken heart.
And Imra wasn't ashamed of having sex because it made her a slut, she was ashamed of having sex because it would lead to jealousy that would ruin the Legion. Of course, you can read subtext into it, but anyone can read subtext into Superman and Lois as well.
quote:Do you honestly think that what most feminists dream of is an "equal" world where women run around brutalizing and brainwashing men out of revenge?
No, but it seems that many of them don't dream of an "equal" world that is actually equal, either. "No matter which side has the woman on it, that shows that women are being treated poorly. After all, it's a patriarchy" is not equality, it's a double standard.
In fact, it's circular. You're using the patriarchy to justify interpreting the scenes as oppression of women, and then the fact that there's so much oppression of women proves the existence of the patriarchy.
quote:I don't know what that has to do with anything else we've discussed.
Sorry, bad editing. The Earth-Man comment was relevant to Set, not you.
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quote:If there are fewer women than men in comics, and if women are more prone to die, to disappear, to be depowered and maltreated in ways that have specifically sexual overtones --if they are not blatantly sexual-- then yes, it does have to do with sexist attitudes towards women.
So let me get this straight. A man and a woman with similar backgrounds and powers are both killed off at the same time by the same cause, in the same issue (even the same panel), and this is an example of comics being sexist towards women?
cleome46
or you can do the confusion 'til your head falls off
posted
No, it's not double standards. Why is this so hard to understand?
Imagine you take two glasses -one of which holds 24 oz. and the other of which holds 12 oz.
The glasses don't hold an equal amount of water. Stamping your foot and saying, "They do! They do! They do!" doesn't change that, okay?
Now dump 10 oz. of water out of each glass. You have dumped an equal amount of water from each one, but they did not start out with same capacity. The glass with the larger capacity is only somewhat empty. The glass with the smaller capacity is now almost completely empty.
And BTW, I'd call it debatable at the very least to say that men in comics are just as prone as women to suffer the same kinds of injuries and punishment-- the same degree of bad writing, and the same degree of gratuitous deaths. But even when I pretend they do, your kvetching about "Double Standards! Double Standards!" is bogus. Where two parties start out unequal, the principle cannot apply. If you levy even equal punishment against two unequal parties, the one lower down on the food chain is going to feel the punishment more acutely.
It ain't rocket science, Dude.
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From: Vanity, OR | Registered: Dec 2008
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cleome46
or you can do the confusion 'til your head falls off
posted
quote:Originally posted by Ken Arromdee: And Imra wasn't ashamed of having sex because it made her a slut, she was ashamed of having sex because it would lead to jealousy that would ruin the Legion.
But why would Levitz put this idea in Imra's head? Why would sex (however ill-considered) between two people who had a terrible day and drank too much beforehand lead to jealousy. Imra wasn't Garth's property, or any other man's. She had every right to make one stupid decision without feeling like it made her responsible for the "ruin" of two men and an entire team. And even if there were jealous feelings, why would they be enough to ruin the Legion?
No, no. I'm not buying that at all. It's entirely about the author's hang-ups. It's got nothing to do with how a woman who had pretty high moral standards in her original incarnation is going to behave just because she made one not-very-thought-out decision.
And "subtext," my rear end, Dude. You compared apples and oranges by dragging Superman II into this. Give me a break. The situations aren't the same. Furthermore, that movie is about thirty years old. I would hope by this time, writers might have a little more awareness of how it looks when their heroes run around wiping one another's minds because of personal issues.
quote:In fact, it's circular. You're using the patriarchy to justify interpreting the scenes as oppression of women, and then the fact that there's so much oppression of women proves the existence of the patriarchy.
Yes, it is circular. Congratulations. You've perceived that one feeds the other, like a snake biting its own tail. Where you fall down is in your conclusion that this renders the theories in question invalid. It doesn't render them invalid.
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From: Vanity, OR | Registered: Dec 2008
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posted
Cle, I am not defending Levitz writing of this story in any way...as I thought it was extremely ill conceived, at best...but, stating categorically that it is entirely his hang ups that took him down the road to write the story that way is a little over the top in my opinion. None of us here know Paul Levitz at all, let alone well enough to determine what his personal hang ups might actually be. For all any of us know, you could very well be right...or could be way off base.
I will say that I do not remember any interviews at that time with him discussing his hang ups at the time this came out.
From: Turn around... | Registered: Jul 2003
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cleome46
or you can do the confusion 'til your head falls off
posted
Dev, I've struck it out of respect for your feelings.
Honestly, though. I compare what he wrote in the later run versus what he wrote back in the day. (Or at least what the older stuff was back in my memory.) And I can only shake my head. It's so damn disappointing. I really, really hope that whole plot turn will just be quietly forgotten by everyone.
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From: Vanity, OR | Registered: Dec 2008
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posted
I agree that the story sucked beyond ll belief...and hope that it is just ignored from here on out, like a lot of what Johns did was (and is) being slowly dismantled or completely wiped out.
From: Turn around... | Registered: Jul 2003
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quote:Originally posted by cleome45: But why would Levitz put this idea in Imra's head? Why would sex (however ill-considered) between two people who had a terrible day and drank too much beforehand lead to jealousy.
... among 14 year olds. Why? I couldn't imagine why. I mean, all 14 year olds are very level-headed and mature, especially when it comes to sex. And Lightning Lad is the most level-headed of them all.
And once you start saying "well, it says one thing, but the author's intentions were still sexist", you're heading into unfalsifiability. If you're allowed to guess at author motivations, you can prove anything to be sexist.
quote:Congratulations. You've perceived that one feeds the other, like a snake biting its own tail. Where you fall down is in your conclusion that this renders the theories in question invalid.
cleome46
or you can do the confusion 'til your head falls off
posted
quote:Originally posted by Ken Arromdee: ... among 14 year olds. Why? I couldn't imagine why. I mean, all 14 year olds are very level-headed and mature, especially when it comes to sex. And Lightning Lad is the most level-headed of them all.
Some would be, some would not be. It's still terrible writing, and feels out of place in the environment that I associate with these characters. If I wanted to see teenagers doing goofy and/or creepy things to each other in the name of sex, I'd go out and rent American Pie again.
quote:And once you start saying "well, it says one thing, but the author's intentions were still sexist", you're heading into unfalsifiability. If you're allowed to guess at author motivations, you can prove anything to be sexist.
You have no more of an insight into Levitz' intentions than I do. Nor did I say that he consciously wrote something sexist. It's just that I don't take much consolation when I read bad writing in thinking that the author not have meant any malice when they wrote it. It's still bad writing, regardless of authorial intent.
quote:Circular reasoning is invalid.
To you, maybe. You seem to have a tremendous personal stake in misreading feminism, but you could at least not put words in my mouth. I never agreed with you that your scenarios were an example of circular reasoning. RL culture reflects culture as we see it in fictional works. But that fiction also helps create and/or maintain what we think of as cultural norms as they play out in RL. Both these things can be true and are true, and if the culture at large is sexist, it will be reflected as such in both fiction and RL. There is no contradiction.
Or you could go back and read razsolo's comments again. I think he did a good job of explaining the issue.
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From: Vanity, OR | Registered: Dec 2008
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posted
This excellent post seems to have been turned into a soundbite and then dismissed.
Yet it's validity still stands.
quote:Originally posted by razsolo:
quote:Originally posted by Ken Arromdee: Of course, you could easily spin this the opposite way: when a woman wipes a man's mind of sex, it's slut-shaming and shows how badly the media treats women. When a man wipes a woman's mind of sex, he's violating her for his own convenience and it still shows how badly the media treats women.
Well...yeah. Both those examples ARE anti-woman. Can you honestly say one of them *isn't?*
I mean don't get me wrong, neither example is greatly complimentary to men either...in the example of Imra wiping Rokk's mind, there's an assumption that his big head isn't capable of overriding his little head, so she needs to take that choice away from him. Making men look like they're not responsible for their sexual urges IS historically an anti-woman tactic, because then it shifts all the responsibility/blame for sex onto the woman...but it also makes men look like easily manipulated animals with no self-control, which makes it weird to me that so many guys are more than happy to use that as a defence.
In the example of a guy mindwiping a girl...well hopefully, I don't actually need to point out how that makes the guy look bad...
It's not like there's only one way that you can display misogynistic tendencies; there's no reason one of those examples above invalidates the other, they can both be as lousy as each other...and being a misogynist doesn't automatically make you a champion of men either. Sometimes it's just symptomatic of a shitty attitude towards humans in general.
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