To me the big question is can we do better.
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I think it’s entirely possible to understand why they made the mistakes they did without excusing them.
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Not like we built this world and what people consider “respectable.” It’s not our fault that women who act feminine are considered frivolous and dumb.
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Exactly! We are making and remaking it all the time. I guess this is why I am a bit ambivalent about all the pictures of sward brandishing maidens that are being posted in comments to this news around the interwebs. That’s an image straight out of teenage boys’ wet dreams! It sure resonates with that part of my personality, but is it really fighting patriarchy? Or is it actually reinforcing it by creating some mirror image of it?
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I doubt that anyone thinks they are actually ‘fighting the patriarchy’ by merely posting images online.
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Yet they are reacting to the news, which implies some degree of emotional response. Which brings us back to us making and remaking the society. We are shaping our own reality even when we are not thinking about it.
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Okay.
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Well thanks for dropping by.
Don’t be ridiculous; I live here.
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I’m not sure rejecting the warrior princess motif out of hand, because of all that, is helpful either, though. Especially since we have plenty of evidence that such women did in fact exist in history - including today. Are women marines any less women, because they’re engage in what’s considered a traditionally masculine field (which never was, of course, as this Viking discovery illustrates).
The reality is that all kinds of women, whether warriors or feminine, are going to be objectified. It’s the objectification I think we should reject, not the celebration of one kind of woman over another, yeah?
It’s entirely true that we’re making and remaking society, but as Marx noted, we do make our own history, but not in situations always of our own making. “The traditions of all dead generations weights like a nightmare on the brain of the living.” We can’t just ignore the past and the structures that were created long before any of us were born. We have to understand it if we’re to move ahead and change anything. This sort of historical revisions, that women were as much warriors as they were mothers, wives, care takers, and objects of beauty, are critical to frankly humanizing women (in the sense of us not being stereotyped and objectified as one thing or another).
lastly, I’m just not sure it’s helpful to tell women how they should understand their own empowerment, whether that’s through knowing women engaged in traditional male roles or born children and raised families. As Buffy reminded us (problematic Joss Whedon aside), a woman can kick ass and dress in heels if she wants.
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Brava!!!
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As always, you’re too kind!
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Well I am not really talking about that, neither am I disputing any of that. All I said is that I am ambivalent about sort of images that are being posted in comments to this news. This is quite a different thing. You are referring to the past, I am talking about our current attitudes. Also what I find problematic is fetishisation of kicking ass.
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There is plenty in @anon61221983’s statement that speaks to the present, and to peoples experience other than yours.
What you find problematic has been noted, I’m sure.
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Indeed… if the personal disdain is for the “fetishisation of kicking ass” then the issue is with American pop culture in general, because that’s kind of our thing; it’s what we do…
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If you really are worried about that, a more appropriate focus for your concern would be traditional models of toxic masculinity that promote both the fetishisation of violence and the objectification of women, rather than women’s excitement about historical wrongs being righted, and futher evidence of complex femininity.
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With this I agree wholeheartedly!
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That’s fair enough. But I think it’s also fair enough that some of us might disagree.
But I’d also argue that we can’t talk about present attitudes, without understanding past attitudes, though. It’s not disconnected from the past somehow.
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And this is why I avoid most of that crap like a plague… Don’t watch superhero movies… don’t read superhero comics… Don’t play FPS games… etc etc etc
