It’s a time honored tradition to hate on things not aimed at your demographic! Kids hate on cartoons aimed at younger children, little boys scoff at things aimed at little girls, and little girls scoff at things aimed at little boys. Men scoff at fashion magazines, and women scoff at sports illustrated (and not just the stupid swimsuit issue).
It’s hypocritical, it’s stupid, and it’s not really an act that I engage in myself. I have enough niche hobbies and passions that get hated on that I’ve come to realize that just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s bad. But I think calling it misogynistic might be a bridge too far, since I’ve seen this sort of mockery thrown at everyone: from children watching Barney to old men watching Matlock.
To be fair, I think people are more or less uniformly idiots and I reserve the right to be contemptuous of everyone, regardless of age or gender. The clue is in the username, see?
But seriously beyond that one joke I know nothing. It is easy to be cynical, but I stopped being cynical about young artists after DiCaprio became an actual amazing actor.
I scoff at anyone who whips themselves into a tizzy over something that – in the grand scheme of things – is really not very meaningful. Teenagers – male and female alike – are very, very good at spinning stupid, meaningless shit into The End of Life As We Know It. Anyone who was ever a teenager knows this. Anyone who now has teenagers of their own knows this acutely.
Personally, I didn’t see a lot of actual grief at the departure of Jeremy Clarkson, just some generalized moaning. That said, if anyone was bawling their head off about it – and speaking as a fan of the show myself – I’d be telling them to get over it already, that it’s just not that important. And I’d certainly say the same to anyone bawling about One Direction. The fact that one audience is male and the other is female has nothing to do with it.
TL;DR: In her haste to make this about gender, the author willfully ignored the much more meaningful (and obvious) difference between the two groups: emotional maturity. And I find that more than a little bit dishonest.
surprised made his or her points in a cogent, thoughtful and structured fashion. You may disagree with them, but that doesn’t make them a trolley, or clueless, or a knee-jerk male reactionary.
That’s up to you, but if you do, it would be good if you could show and where you think their privilege is showing, rather than flinging generic and content-free accusations around.
So, in the comments section on an article about how people shit on girl’s culture people actually shit on girl’s culture or don’t think it’s a problem because they’re not teenage fucking girls and you don’t think that’s privliege showing?
If you say that OneDirection fans are the victim of a special kind of mockery, and not the standard kind of mockery any group of irate idiots -male or female-, deservedly receives, you are really saying that men are capable of hypocritically berating women, but women aren’t capable of doing the same to men.
Which is observably untrue, and the problem with the whole misogyny argument anyway. It implies than men are somehow capable of being bigger assholes than women. But if some of us are assholes, and we’re all truly equal, then all of us can be assholes. The only real difference is what we are going to be assholes about…
Well first of all, I made no comment on whether surprised’s privilege was showing; I said that if you believed it was, it would be nice if you could demonstrate how.
Now, you’ve gone some way towards that with your assertion that he/she is “shit[ting] on girls’ culture”. Personally I think that’s a bit strong; he/she seems rather to be arguing that the manufactured nature of One Direction makes their fans’ reactions somehow less real than those of fans of more ‘organic’ entertainments, such as live sports. I see where he/she is coming from, though I’m not convinced he/she is right; but nor am I convinced your excoriation of him/her is justified.
However, whether he/she is right or wrong has nothing to do with any privilege he/she may have. Privilege can lead people into erroneous arguments; but an argument made from a position of privilege is not ipso facto erroneous. Surprised’s argument would be just as right or just as wrong whether he/she was a teenage girl or a male middle-aged Top Gear fan.
That’s not what the article is about and not what people are taking issue with. People are taking issue with the strawman based a false premise that is presented to try to make the article some sort comment on misogyny.
At the heart we have taken the article and turned it on itself to show how shallow an attempt it is to twist events to fit a biased world view.
Not everything can or should be filtered through every ones personal pet outrage.
People can be making fun of people over reacting to silly things because, they you know, think over reacting to silly things is well silly.
Plenty of people have pointed this out yet you remain willfully ignorant of their points and attack with ad homenims.
I now look forward to you labeling me even though you know nothing about or my stand on issues simply because I disagree with the over the top logically flawed approach the writers here have chosen to make their point.
I will again state for the record I think it’s silly how we judge others and certain fandoms are more culturally appropriate then others. I disagree that this involves misogamy and is in anyway unique to tween girls. My personal favorite example of this sort of attitude is, If you LARP on the weekend you are a loser who lives in your parents basement. On the other hand if you play golf on the weekend you are forward thinking aggressive go getter.
Taking cultural issues like these and distorting everything around them needlessly puts up barriers and creates tension and strawman arguments that distract from the more important over riding message. In this case that would be that regardless of gender there are forms of entertainment that are considered more legitimate then others.
Again I look forward to your totally irrational reply.
The opening of their argument is literally their privilege on display.
They joined Boing Boing just to post this little nugget. Wasn’t that sweet of them?
And @rider? It’s not irrational to be sick and fucking tired of Lewis’ Law being proven every fucking time there’s a post that has even a whiff of feminism about it. Every. Fucking. Time. Sick. And. Tired.
People on this BBS will argue about the premise of just about any article that makes any sort of claim. It’s part of the discussion, and doesn’t necessarily mean that people are anti-feminist (or whatever the position of the writer is), it means that a topic has been opened for discussion, and we can discuss it. If we can’t, it shouldn’t be here. It’s part of trying to understand a complex world from different perspectives. A lot of feminist posts make very bold and sweeping statements about the motivations of groups that the writer is not part of. It’s true that we’re all shaped by our cultures, but we are also complex people and can question the idea that quoting selected comments from a few articles gives you The Big Picture. People will mock 1D fans for many reasons, including (but not exclusively) because some people don’t respect teenage girls or their interests.
So, your premises are all true, and you never use them to hammer home your personal agenda via commentary? Sounds like a yes. So I can see why it would annoy you.
First of all, “we”?! Seriously, get the fuck over yourself. Secondly, all culture is fucking manufactured. Third, no, people like surprised mock 1D fans because they are easy targets and girls’ stuff is … well, for girls amirite?!
And clueless over here:
Comparing 1D fans to Top Gear fans is a fucking strawman but
is completely legit? FFS that’s the same principle in action! But LARP is totally not girly, while 1D is. So there.
