Thoughts on Years of Reading (Mostly) Women
Back in 2015, roughly 92% of the works I read were by women. This was mostly intentional, as The Skiffy and Fanty Show hosted a women-centric (and non-binary friendly) theme throughout 2015. In 2016, the numbers were less skewed, with 61% of works by women. Including my teaching numbers into this list is a bit too complicated, so I won’t bother including it here. Obviously, having a more “open” year for reading meant my numbers were more fluid. But even with that fluidity in place, there’s a clear indication that my reading habits have changed. So, here’s what I’ve learned from the past few years:
Addendum: Strong Male Characters (or, That Rogue One Review is Full of Crap)
Two days ago, I wrote a post about “strong male characters” that took to task some comments made in a review by Todd McCarthy. At the time, I had not seen Rogue One, so my argument essentially rested on the idea that we don’t need “strong male characters” in every movie. Now that I have seen the movie, I feel it necessary to come back to McCarthy’s review to address the substance of the claims. Expect some spoilers ahead! As a reminder, here is the relevant quote from McCarthy’s review: What the film really lacks is a strong and vigorous male lead (such as Han Solo or John Boyega’s Finn in The Force Awakens) to balance more equally with Jyn and supply a sparring partner. None of the men here has real physical or vocal stature, nor any scenes in which they can decisively emerge from the pack in a way that engages audience enthusiasm. Both Luna and Ahmed have proved themselves repeatedly in big-screen and television performances, but their characters never pop here, to the film’s detriment. And given that Jyn is rather less gung-ho and imposing than was Ridley’s Rey, there’s an overall feel of less physical capacity on the part of the main characters. None of this is remotely accurate. Actually, I’d hazard to call it complete and utter bullshit.
Strong Male Leads (Or, Why You Don’t Need Them in Every Goddamn Movie)
The Bourne Identity, 007: Specter, The Fast and Furious, The Dark Knight, Indiana Jones, and Rocky. What do these films have in common? Well, aside from being action films and most of them featuring the name of the main character in the title, all of these films have male leads and, at best, female supporting characters. Is this a problem for these franchises? Not really. A series about Rocky should probably feature Rocky, after all, and it makes sense that the same be true for most of the films I just listed. For the most part, men dominate action franchises, with some notable exceptions That’s been the way of things for decades, and only until recently has that power been properly challenged, with more and more female-led action franchises hitting our screens. It’s a good thing. Some of those new franchises are fan-friggin-tastic. And those other franchises are fantastic, too. We can have both! Which brings me to the latest “men aren’t getting their fair share” argument in film… By now, some of you have seen Todd McCarthy’s review of Rogue One at The Hollywood Reporter. As far as reviews go, it’s a fairly standard piece; read it if you like, but be warned there are some spoilers. Part of the reason McCarthy’s review has garnered a lot of attention, particularly on Twitter, is the following quote:
Why I’ve Quit Game of Thrones and Will Not Return
(Trigger warning: this post will involve discussion of sexual violence, homophobia, and related subjects. If you watch Game of Thrones, you probably already know what I’m talking about. I’m also releasing this post early because I can’t wait until Friday to drop it. I’m moving my Retro Nostalgia feature to Friday for this week only.)
10 Reasons I’m a Feminist
What’s that? I’m a feminist?! Yup. A wicked awesome feminist who wears Feminist Cannons on his shoulders and shoots Holy Feminist Balls at sexism. Or something like that. Something I’ve never done before is provide some kind of explanation for why I am a feminist. Hence this post. Here are the ten reasons I am a feminist. Feel free to list yours in the comments! 1. I am fundamentally opposed to all forms of inequality, whether intentional, structural, or otherwise. 2. Most of my life has been in the care of women. My mother and grandmother played pivotal roles in my life, most notably because they were the people who actually raised me. 3. I studied feminist theory in college before I was willing to call myself a feminist. In doing so, I learned about dozens of different interpretations and worldviews, some of them more radical than others. I also studied queer theory in college, though I was already pro-LGBT before that (for another time). 4. It took a lot of doing, but making myself open to the possibility that I might have things wrong meant I could hear what my female friends were telling me when they called me out on things. This willingness to “hear” people meant I learned far more than I otherwise would have, whether specific to feminism and women or to other issues (homosexuality, etc.). 5. Feminism has done extraordinary things. The Women’s Suffrage Movement. Abortion Rights. Changing the social fabric of much of the world. In brief, feminism has been one of the most influential ideas in human history. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that? 6. I’ve spent so much time online looking at how the world treats women that it’s difficult for me not to see the inequality all around me. I’ve even taught media representation at the college level in order to show how men and women are presented in advertising, and why that affects both men and women by imparting certain social and/or physical standards by which we are expected to live (not an absolute, of course). Being so embedded in this “world” means it is nearly impossible for me not to believe something is wrong and that we need to do something to fix it. 7. Feminism represents my interests, too. Fighting for maternity leave means fighting for paternity leave, too. Fighting for equality for women means fighting for equality for men! 8. Representation matters. Women make up roughly 50% of the population, so why would we accept a world in which our media doesn’t represent them as they actually are? I don’t. 9. I’m a science fiction scholar, which means my day job literally involves reading about the future in its myriad forms (and sometimes about weird alternate histories and the like). I see equality as the future for which we must always strive, so it makes a great deal of sense that I would be inclined towards ideas that are concerned with creating a better future. Feminism is, in a way, a type of theoretical science fiction. 10. Now, more than any other time in my life, there is a concerted effort to roll back the rights of women, whether by restricting reproductive rights, repealing or weakening laws that protect women economically or from abuse, etc. Now, more than ever, it is important to be a feminist, and openly so. And there you have it. —————————- This post was selected by voters on my Patreon page. To get your own voice heard, become a patron! $1 gets you voting rights.
On Agency: Strong Female Characters, the Myth of Non-Action, and Jupiter Ascending
By now you’ll have heard the “Jupiter Jones doesn’t have agency” criticism of Jupiter Ascending (dirs. the Wachowskis; 2015).[1] The gist of the argument, as far as I can tell, is that Jupiter doesn’t have agency (or enough agency) because she does not become a “strong female character” until the last possible second. Andrew O’Hehir, for example, wrote in his Salon.com review that Jupiter has less female agency than any character ever played by Doris Day. Compared to this movie, the Disneyfied feminism of “Frozen” and “Brave” and “Maleficent” feels like Valerie Solanas’ “SCUM Manifesto.” Peter Debruge wrote in Variety that [although] clearly conceived as an empowered female heroine, poor Jupiter spends most of the movie being kidnapped and shuffled from one unpleasant situation to another, whether that’s being nearly assassinated during an egg-donating operation or pushed into a marriage with a two-faced Abraxas prince. Sam Maggs wrote in The Mary Sue: When I hear “Mila Kunis black leather space princess,” I want to see her bulked the hell up, Emily Blunt style, kicking ass and taking names. We don’t get to see Kunis looking really cool until the very end of the film, at which point I wanted way more of that. Which, I guess, means I would pay for a sequel. The most damning claim about Jupiter’s agency, however, comes from Tim Martain’s review for The Mercury: There’s a little test I like to apply, where you try to describe a character without reference to their physical appearance or occupation. If you can come up with three clear character traits, then you may have a well-crafted character. If not, well, you have a cardboard cutout. Jupiter is a big ol’ flat piece of nothing. She is a name and a device, nothing more. Her character is not developed in any way beyond “special girl who everyone is fighting over”. She is Cinderella with even less motivation or personality. In other words, Jupiter isn’t even a person. She’s a thing. Because she is passive. Because she doesn’t fight (until the very end). Because she is manipulated by others. Because she is a toilet cleaner. Because she is everything other than a “strong female character.” One must ask: why does Jupiter need to take names? Why can’t she just be a space princess? Why can’t she simply get sucked into a world where space princesses are real and people like her (like us) have to learn to navigate the absurd bureaucracy of space royalty? Why can’t she be a confused, naive person like, well, a real person might be? Why isn’t that enough for her to have agency or for her to escape the charge that her agency is nearly absent? Why can’t this also be a story about someone discovering or developing a different kind of agency? Isn’t that enough? Frankly, I’m not sure these individuals understand what “agency” means. At its most basic, “agency” refers to one’s ability to take action to affect their own lives; as such, agency exists on a continuum that is affected by social status, culture, upbringing, economics, and so on and so forth. The degree to which we all have agency, in other words, depends on how well equipped we are to affect our daily lives. Agency can be individual, collective, immersed within or isolated from a specific dominant culture, and so on. In other words: agency is pretty damn complicated, as is clear when you start to look into the sociological, psychological, and feminist struggles to adequately define the concept in a way that incorporates the full range of social interactions. For women, agency has been a key component of the feminist fight for equality. Since the world has historically (and still is to a large degree) favored men in nearly every avenue, women’s access to “choice” in its broadest conception has always been curtailed. Worldbank notes that “across all countries women and men differ in their ability to make effective choices in a range of spheres, with women typically at a disadvantage” in the avenues of control over resources, free movement, decisions about family formation, freedom from violence, and freedom to have a voice in society and politics. Oppression does not necessarily mean that one loses all agency, though. Indeed, how one exerts influence can take myriad forms, including subversive actions within an oppressive situation. Women in violent, patriarchal societies do not lose agency simply by being oppressed; their abilities to affect their own lives, however, do change, limiting the degree of agency they might have, or, in some cases, simply changing how agency is perceived. Lest you think only overt oppression can steal one’s agency, remember that we are all to varying degrees limited by social, economic, and other factors. Some of us, such as myself, just have more advantages — in my case because I am white, male, American, and educated.[2] But in a world where pop criticism often stands in for professional criticism, the buzzword definitions are replicated ad naseum. Women who punch bad guys or take direct action against oppression or in some way “act” in a manner that makes them visibly opposed to a system or individual or in a position to “make things happen” are women who have “agency.” Every other woman? Well, she might have “agency,” but not enough that her agency is worth talking about, except to note that she doesn’t have any (or very little). If she subverts the system, her agency is only valued if her subversion is aggressive. Passive subversion won’t make her “strong.” If anything, “passive” is just another word for “worthless” or “oppressed.” These limitations on “agency” are so pervasive that they affect how we even talk about female characters, particularly when the term “strong female character” crops up. Sophia McDougall’s essay in the New Statesman (“I Hate Strong Female Characters”) points out that the phenomenon of the “strong female character” seems particular to women: No one ever asks if a male character is “strong”. Nor if he’s