Firefly/Serenity from the perspective of a "Feminist."

[Cell]

This was good for a laugh on my end, and it really shows how far feminism has fallen from when it actually meant something. My thoughts will follow,

http://users.livejournal.com/_allecto_/34718.html

Unfortunately feminism as it stands today is pretty much a joke, and is no different than any white supremacist group searching for reasons for someone to be inferior or black power groups searching for reasons for the white man to hold them down. There are still people out there who understand what feminism really is, but the great majority do not and so they post trash like this. To be honest, it's like my grandpa used to say, "If you go into a commode looking to find shit, well then you're going to find shit." She/he went into watching Firefly/Serenity looking for attacks against women and so she made them up at every chance she had and took things out of context or twisted them to suit her own needs at every turn. As a simple, little hint, when you want your argument to be taken seriously then don't go searching and digging for the proof that you want to find, instead look at something simply and objectively and if your proof is there it will show itself.

But, everyone really should have stopped reading, myself included, the moment she made her first argument about a black woman saluting and yelling sir at a white male. In the armed forces they don't give a shit if you are white, black, yellow, pink, purple, green, or maroon or if you are man, woman, transsexual, dinosaur, dog, or rodent, if you are addressing a superior officer then you salute when required and call whatever that superior officer may be "sir" every damn time you address them. That is the way the military life works, and any moron would know this, well I guess any moron but this author.

Edit: Also, I wasn't sure if this belonged here, or in another forum, so feel free to move it if it is in the wrong place.

 

[Chilli]

That is a mind-bogglingly stupid post. Thanks for sharing, also if I wish that stuff like this would just disappear in some kind of black hole. It's a pity to see people discredit valid causes, such as feminism, with crap like this.

 

[KoshFan]

Ahh, you found this, did you... I discovered this a week or two back. I wrote up a response on Facebook. Here's the link to the original page, and I've reproduced it below. http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10505937961&id=64901098&index=0

This morning I woke up, hopped on the net, and somehow found myself reading the following essay:

http://users.livejournal.com/_allecto_/34718.html?page=1#comments

For those of you who can't bring themselves to read it, it's basically a review of the first episode of Joss Whedon's "Firefly." The author concludes that Joss rapes his wife on a daily basis, and finishes her essay by saying, "Skip Joss Whedon's women-hating bile."

Now, I could leap to Joss's defense, but I'll just let the man speak for himself:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=cYaczoJMRhs (skip to 2:00 for Joss himself, although Meryl Streep's introduction is quite nice)

http://whedonesque.com/comments/13271

So, you can decide for yourself if Joss spews women-hating bile. (I'll admit that "Firefly" is definitely his least feminist work.) But this morning, until I had thought things through a bit more, I was really rattled by the article. I mean, Joss is one of my heroes and I wanted to stand up for him, but I have this feeling that nothing I could say would persuade "Allecto," the author, of my point of view. To quote one of Joss's characters, "I don't see this being settled with logic." In other words, there's not a thing I could say. The author has, in essence, taken my words away from me.

And that makes me profoundly uneasy, because whatever strength and goodness I have is in my words.

It was a humbling revelation, to see that I'm utterly powerless when confronted by someone so caught up in the fervor of their own ideas that they will not listen to me at all. Not that I want to have power over the author, or because I feel that I need to "set the author straight," but because I try to serve the truth, always, and try to make the world a better place, and I can only do that through words.

No weapon will ever terrify me as much as the utterly closed mind. If I ever get so far beyond reasoning, kill me. I'm quite serious.

 

[jnk5y]

Oh my that woman is an idiot. Now does that make me an anti feminist? In her stupid mind it does. My favorite part (i didn't read it all, it was too stupid) was when she mentions Shepherd and makes sure to mention he is black. I'm sure that point is very important. Why didn't she mention everyone else's race? So using her own stupid reasoning I am going to assume she is anti black.

And it's called SARCASM! She obviously has never heard of it b/c it's throughout Firefly and she mistakes it for anti feminism.

To sum up... I DON"T HATE YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE A WOMAN, i HATE YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE AN IDIOT.

Thanks for your time and good luck out there especially with these types of people wandering the earth.

 

[Truth_Seeker]

Perhaps the woman who wrote that thinks that B5 is also a show that does not respect women because everyone refers to Kosh as "he".

 

[A_M_Swallow]

{snip}
But, everyone really should have stopped reading, myself included, the moment she made her first argument about a black woman saluting and yelling sir at a white male. In the armed forces they don't give a shit if you are white, black, yellow, pink, purple, green, or maroon or if you are man, woman, transsexual, dinosaur, dog, or rodent, if you are addressing a superior officer then you salute when required and call whatever that superior officer may be "sir" every damn time you address them. That is the way the military life works, and any moron would know this, well I guess any moron but this author.

A lot of feminists do not like the military. They want equality and no killing - exact opposite of the military. They also like to blame men for everything - which means they do not have to accept responsibility for their mistakes and is an excuse for being rude.

 

[Jade Jaguar]

Unfortunately feminism as it stands today is pretty much a joke, and is no different than any white supremacist group searching for reasons for someone to be inferior or black power groups searching for reasons for the white man to hold them down. There are still people out there who understand what feminism really is, but the great majority do not and so they post trash like this.

That post is of course, totally psycho BS. But, you are very wrong is stating the above. I go to two or three NOW meetings every year, and I know a lot of feminists. None of them think like that. Of course, there ARE a few high profile wackos who do, like Andrea Dworkin, and Catherine McKinnon. But they are a tiny minority. You couldn't be more wrong when you make ignorant and insulting statements like the above.

 

[Chilli]

Oh my that woman is an idiot. Now does that make me an anti feminist? In her stupid mind it does. My favorite part (i didn't read it all, it was too stupid) was when she mentions Shepherd and makes sure to mention he is black. I'm sure that point is very important. Why didn't she mention everyone else's race? So using her own stupid reasoning I am going to assume she is anti black.

And it's called SARCASM! She obviously has never heard of it b/c it's throughout Firefly and she mistakes it for anti feminism.

To sum up... I DON"T HATE YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE A WOMAN, i HATE YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE AN IDIOT.

Thanks for your time and good luck out there especially with these types of people wandering the earth.

I don't think she is anti-black .. from what I can tell, she is half-black or something like that herself.

Which lead her to some very interesting conclusions such as that because she never experienced any healthy relationships between white men and black women, she assumes they don't exist .. and that thus, Wash is a rapist.

This is not our earth logic. And it's actually pretty anti-feminist - it's devaluing the severity of rape.

I'm with JJ, basically, here .. in that feminism remains a very valid cause, as sexism remains a very real problem. A handfull of psychos pledging themselves to the case doesn't change that.

I read a analysis on DW by an "anti-racist", who thought Doctor Who season 3 was totally racist, because the doctor didn't love Martha. Oh, and Sarah Jane adventures was racist because we see a black kid fall off a skateboard at some point. And Torchwood is racist because we see less Toshiko-having-sex than we see other characters having sex (never mind that Toshiko had an own lesbian sex episode, and that her libido was one of the main plot lines of season 2)

That analysis discredits the author. It doesn't discredit the cause of opposing racism.

 

[Cell]

That post is of course, totally psycho BS. But, you are very wrong is stating the above. I go to two or three NOW meetings every year, and I know a lot of feminists. None of them think like that. Of course, there ARE a few high profile wackos who do, like Andrea Dworkin, and Catherine McKinnon. But they are a tiny minority. You couldn't be more wrong when you make ignorant and insulting statements like the above.

You know two or three, which supports my statement. I never said all feminism, I actually made sure to say that there are still some people who understand what feminism is and follow its tenets. However the great majority of feminists, or people who call themselves feminists do not, instead views such as the ones posted in the article are now the predominant view. It is a sad state of affairs, but the smart feminists, or the ones that actually understand feminism and what it means are having their voices and views squashed down by the extremists like this one that have now become the majority. That is the state of feminism today, and it is quite sad.

 

[Zarto]

What really scares me is the number of comments after the post that agrees with author.


I think radical feminist do give the whole feminist movement somewhat bad name. As those radical ones tend to be the ones with loud voice, expressing themselves everywhere they can.

And the name feminism gives a pro-female ring to it, same as masculism gives pro-male ring to it. Both groups are trying to get equality to their own gender.
And both groups have chauvinistsin their ranks who show their dislike for opposing gender same time attacking the ideological core of their own group.

I would say it would be about time that feminism and masculism would join together in one big movement. Equality to both genders, not just one. There are laws and legistlations in the world that discriminates and diminish members of both genders. And in that kind of Equality-movement there would be no place for radical-feminists or masculists to drive their agenda agaisnt the other gender.

Not to talk about bigger issues like equality among people of all races and gender alike, what is the thing humanity should thrive for.

I consider myself not feminist, not masculist, but equalitist who supports complete equality between the genders. (I support equality between all races of men as well, but this is gender discussion so il leave bigger discussion of that to some other time and place.) It's easy to forget or not to see what your gender has better and other worse if you are in one camp. People have tendency to see and care about things that affect themselves in gender and personal levels.
It is sad to see how much anger and hate of men the writer of that Firefly post had. She sees herself and all women as victims and all men as bad anti-woman rapists. That is a very sad and twisted way to see the world. Unfortunately she is not alone, as we can see from comments on that post.

I watched a while ago some movie, Last man on earth or something like that, where women made Y-bomb that wiped out most of the male population of the world. Men that survived were either prostitutes in a brothels or living in small colonies hunted and killed by women. Movie dealt with radical feminism as well as feminism, masculism, chauvinism and equality between gender issues. Women feared violent men, but in the end women were as violent as men would have been, doing genocide and trying to wipe last surviving men out. I guess the teaching of that movie was that: Women and men are different in many ways, but in the end we are all humans and that unites us in good and bad.

 

[Galahad]

I don't believe "radical feminism" is feminism at all... it's merely the female equivalent of misgyny. That is to say, it is misandry.

 

[Cell]

That is the logical and correct way to look at it, but unfortunately the people that partake in that version of feminism or misandry, have shown to be far from logical. So they continue to march forward presenting their views as the feminist ideal on a daily basis and they get louder and louder while collecting more and more followers. Meanwhile the actual feminists can't do anything to combat this. If they oppose these radical viewpoints loudly then it simply will give those views more of an avenue to be heard. If they sit back and do nothing then they do nothing and the extremists continue to grow. All they can do is what they continue to do, present their views and hope that some day those that have fallen under the thrall of the now dominant "feminist" view will realize that they aren't partaking in feminism at all and that they will then come back to a more realistic and truthful feminist ideal.

 

[Galahad]

Also... the words misandry and misandrist have not really entered into the public conscience as widely as misogyny and misgynist... so it's not so easy for people to condemn the behaviour when they see it.

It is so much easy to condemn a practice or person when we have a label for what they are doing. The human race seems obsessed with pigeon holeing everything.

I don't think there is anything wrong with calling someone out on misandric behaviour. It's about someone did... and now I know the word exists... I'm going to put it to good use.

 

[Alluveal]

I'm all for someone having their opinion, but this is invincible ignorance at an all new level. And I thought the "God Hates Fags" jerks were messed up.

I really don't have much to say about this, other than I'm ashamed to be the same gender.

 

[Recoil]

Wow, that really was one of the worst things I have read. I agree with Cell's comment that you really got a taste of how stupid that blog was going to be when the author pointed out that Zoe calls Mal "sir" in the opening scene and she remarks "well this isn't a good start." It's called "addressing your superior officer" and there is nothing diabolically woman-hating about it.

The post itself was wrought with ignorance and as someone posted in the comments below it, that the author clearly went into the series with a pre-determined hate for the content, and was going to find bad things no matter how much reality needed to be distorted.

What really disturbed me more though, are all of the comments below supporting it! Those people are more whack than the author! Its really scary to think there are small circles of people like this that spin so much ignorance and hate, and continually feed off of each other. On the other hand, I really genuinely feel sorry for those people. I would HATE to go through life looking at the world as they do. Perhaps some of them have had terrible things happen to them to make them that way, and that's always a tragedy. I'd bet though, that a majority of them have not, and really just boils down to simple ego. But still, even with that, I wouldn't want to look at the world as they do. What a waste.

 

[GKarsEye]

However the great majority of feminists, or people who call themselves feminists do not, instead views such as the ones posted in the article are now the predominant view.

Prove this.

I would say it would be about time that feminism and masculism would join together in one big movement. Equality to both genders, not just one.

They have. It's called "feminism." "Masculism" isn't an actual movement.


Now, I for one am a white straight male, who proudly calls himself a "feminist," has patronized the services of prostitutes, considers rape a capital crime (including within a marriage), is pro-choice and a relationship traditionalist. To some, many of those are contradictory, but not to those of us who refuse to insist in the kind of shrill, poor-me mindless bitching of that Firefly review or some of the nonsensical women-fearing responses in this thread.

 

[Cell]

Prove this.

It's been proven over and over by the responses in that thread. It has been proven by the number of literary works on feminism over the past few years that have taken on the same tone as the article in question. It has been proven in interviews with various real feminists that decry this type of feminism yet admit how many followers and power it has gained all at the same time. Now, if you are asking for hard statistics, then no, there is no way to prove this. However i don't think one should need hard statistics to see and recognize the radical shift in the power structure of the most prevalent feminist views that has been taking place over the past 10 or so years.

Unfortunately this is the way of things, extremists can speak louder and more passionately than the traditionalists can, and this draws more followers in. Even if their views are wrong and abhorrent and go against everything that feminists do in fact stand for, that doesn't matter to them because they are being loud and putting forth their view of feminism.

 

[GKarsEye]

Obviously the responses in an individual blogger's thread will sympathize with the blogger, that's how web-sites work.

You yourself point out that extremists and crazies will be noticed more- so isn't it more likely that this fact colors your perception of feminism than the idea that this covers most feminists?

Yours is the same reasoning that leads people to conclude that most Muslims are extremists, that blacks are thugs or "reverse racists," that Jews run America because of Hollywood, etc.

I had my "anti-feminist" phase when I was the only man in a Women's Studies Literature course in college, so I've certainly been exposed to all the theory and literature. But then I got to know them as people and took a step back and thought about it and grew up.

 

[Cell]

Obviously the responses in an individual blogger's thread will sympathize with the blogger, that's how web-sites work.

You yourself point out that extremists and crazies will be noticed more- so isn't it more likely that this fact colors your perception of feminism than the idea that this covers most feminists?

Yours is the same reasoning that leads people to conclude that most Muslims are extremists, that blacks are thugs or "reverse racists," that Jews run America because of Hollywood, etc.

I had my "anti-feminist" phase when I was the only man in a Women's Studies Literature course in college, so I've certainly been exposed to all the theory and literature. But then I got to know them as people and took a step back and thought about it and grew up.

Where am I being anti-feminist? I have pointed out many times over that there is a genuine feminist cause, and that her view is the extreme and should not be viewed as the correct feminist view point. However there are more people now taking that extreme view of feminism than the traditional more, correct if you will, view of feminism. I have made my point very vehemently that there is a good feminist movement out there that has existed for years, whereas this more extreme view point cropped up a decade or so ago and has gained so many followers that it is now viewed as "real feminism" when it isn't. Don't get me wrong, I have my issues with what I would consider the "good" or "real" feminism as well, but I haven't once brought those up in this topic.

Stop and read what I've actually posted and then maybe it will make more sense to you, because I don't know how you can get me saying over and over again that, "her views are extreme and do not represent real feminism" to somehow mean I am anti-feminist. People who view the situation like I do have the correct view and realize how out there she is, the ones you need to worry about are the ones that think her view is all that feminism is and don't realize that the true feminism is still there hidden behind all the extremist crap. Something I have pointed out from the beginning in this thread.

 

[Alluveal]

The feminists I know (and trust me, my family has some hard-core ladies) laughed their asses off when I sent them this link--even my cousin who has her BA in Women's Studies and teaches Women's Studies in the university. She said that sites and "essays" like that make it so much harder for those truly trying to make things more equal for men AND women (i.e. women making less than men do on average, etc.)

I love Firefly and I find the female characters within representative of a broad spectrum of how the woman figure in our society: from the docile to the submissive (at times,) to the strong and the invincible.

I guess what gets my goat the most about this is that Firefly is a fictional universe (no matter how badly I want to believe Mal is running around out there waiting for ME, sheah!) So, if someone writes a character about a racist, he or she (the author) must in turn BE a racist? Is there no creativity allowed because you risk offending a special interest group?

I honestly think this has to be a joke. Someone responded, "this is a joke, right?" And I agree. Either people really are this stupid, ignorant and utterly one dimensional, or it's a hoax. Unfortunately, I think that some people really are this narrow-minded. Sad, but the more I think about it, the less I want to spread this link around as to give this person anymore attention.