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Oh, it was that easy? :)
The new Ghostbusters Movie looks like a lot of fun. What is not so much fun, the overwhelming negative reaction to the trailer mostly by man-babies who have to get their winge on because an all female cast of a rebooted franchise is ruining their lives. But hey, take a look at the trailer and form your own (slightly framed by me) opinion on the upcoming reboot.
There. Now that wasn’t so bad now was it? To my informed readership there could be issues with the dialogue, what is considered funny, how much can one really glean for a trailer – the usual suspects when it comes to evaluating a possible film to watch.
Then there is this dude. Welcome to Ground Zero of glibly earnest misogyny. Feel free to stop the vid at any time. It doesn’t get any better.
The pattern laid out by the douche-nozzle above can be found replicated in the comment section of the movie. But before we get to that, the we should examine the numbers of the situation.
At the time of this screen capture, 877k of negative votes for this movie. Similar trends for other movies?
Evidently not, especially note the Adam Sandler, a movie crafted with all the care and attention a drunkard has while taking his mid bender shit of the day. For this toadstool of a movie, 13k people have rated it negatively. Yet, how did Ghostbusters earn so many down-votes? Could it be the threat of male-centric media dominance ever so slightly slipping way? The plaintive wails from thousands of fragile male egos, given an anonymous forum, showing how threatened they are?
Quite possibly.
I shan’t talk about the Green Lantern – its better and more humane that way.
A small sampling of the comment section:
Now before I go on my spiel, I managed to find a comment hidden in this thread that is golden as it encapsulates the phenomena at hand.
Well there you have it. Problem named. Male entitlement and the reaction to the threat of not being centre of the media universe, for just one movie. The amount of push-back over the new Ghostbusters movie is quite staggering, as it is in fact, just one summer movie and unlikely to change the dominant mode of production in Hollywood.
If we put on our sociological glasses and get our hypothesizing boots out we can appreciate the fertile ground the discussion of this movie brings about. Can we perhaps extrapolate to other venues in society that have been traditional bastions of male power and the backlash that must have been experienced by women trying to change the status quo?
Consider the amount of misogyny present, even in the small sampling presented here (you can go see much much more in actual thread if you’d like) and what does that say about about our society? I would say that despite all the hurley-burley about social justice warriors and their ilk ruining *everything* that one of the dominant themes in our constructed social existence is the hatred of women.
This hatred of women is a learned generational feature – the commenters on this trailer are of the new ‘enlightened’ generation. This is scary frakking shite we have here, because without direct attention to the processes that form this toxic hate, nothing will change. Deprogramming the patriarchal misogyny that cripples men and destroys women must be moved up the priority list (stat!). We have wasted too many generations on a system that is destroying us.
My eyebrow arched with considerable alacrity while reading the title of this opinion piece from The Independent
(‘Jaden Smith as a new face of womenswear might seem progressive – but he’s on transgender territory.’) While reading and fighting the loss of my irony meter (boundaries not being respected…) said brow remained frozen in place at how amazingly silly the authors points are. Let’s get started.
“So, it’s been announced that 17-year-old Jaden Smith, son of American actor Will Smith, is to be the new face of Louis Vuitton clothes. To be more specific, the womenswear section. And I didn’t even know they had an old face – clearly I’m out of the fashion loop.”
[…]
“Jaden seems to be up for this gender-neutral, equal clothing rights thing which allows men to wear women’s clothes without any fear of ridicule. But there is another, more important issue afoot.”
Another important issue? Hmmm… Considering that a major fashion label is promoting gender non-conforming behaviour, this issue must be very important indeed.
“There’s a reason why men wear men’s clothes and women wear women’s clothes, and why they are generally so different. OK, I know women have been wearing trousers for decades but they’re usually a femme version of the male equivalent – and I’m not talking about unisex clothes like jeans and t-shirts.
I’m talking about basic clothes norms that depict which gender is wearing them, even in the modern world. Stereotypically, men wear trousers and women wear dresses and skirts. That’s the ‘norm’ and it’s more than that – it’s a uniform.”
The argument for why gender norms are good for you is about to be made. Please keep in mind that gender is a hierarchy designed to distinguish the dominant class from the submissive class and that said gender hierarchy is toxic for both women and men.
So the author states that clothes have a normative value in distinguishing between the two biological sexes.
“When you get out of bed in the morning the most important thing you have to do all day is tell the world what your gender is, because from that, everything else flows.”
Really? I thought the most important thing in the world is my first cup of coffee. Coffee addiction aside, I might suggest that the most important thing in the world is agreeing to be kind to those around you, and trying to a creative, productive member of society. Following a codified notion of gender would seem to be in sync with the sexist stereotyping feminists have fought against (and continue to fight against) for decades.
“You may think that your job is to be an office supervisor or a stockbroker or police officer but these are all human constructs. Deep down your real job is to reproduce, and showing other humans your gender is the first step on that path.”
Wow. Gender essentialism for $500 please Alex. Reproduction takes place on the idea of sexual attraction – specifically heterosexual attraction. We invented this thing we call gender on this basis and from this sprang the constructed societal norms we expect women and men to perform. These constructed roles are not written in stone, nor are they necessarily correct.
“So, to help make it plain for anyone to see which gender you are, you put on a uniform. Men put on trousers and have men’s haircuts, and women put on dresses and skirts, feminine tops and tights and women’s shoes to show their femininity and declare to the world that they are female.”
None of these ‘declarations’ are necessary. Society, as a whole, can generally identify male bodies and female bodies without the gendered stereotypes mentioned here. Again, the author sounds as if perpetuating these stereotypes is somehow beneficial to society.
“They have women’s hair-dos and they put use cosmetics to make themselves look nicer and more presentable and to reinforce the female uniform a bit more.”
Really? Compulsory femininity for the winz? I can’t even…
“Male-to-female transgender people rely on props like clothes, shoes, make-up and hairstyles to create the gender identity they want to portray to the world because most of the time their bodies alone are unable to do that. There are a few lucky ones who don’t have to do a thing to put across a female persona, but most trans women have to work hard at it.
The danger for trans women is that if wearing what are traditionally women’s clothes becomes the norm for men too, then trans women will no longer be able to rely on these props to help them display a female gender identity – and for many, that could be a serious problem.”
Read those two paragraphs carefully. The author is defending the harmful hierarchical system of gender and gender roles. Quite the conservative stance, no? Gender non-conforming behaviour (going against the system that is bad for all of us) is being portrayed as a threat to those rely on traditional gendered roles to express themselves.
If your inner rad-fem isn’t blowing a lobe by now, then Huston, we have a problem. But wait, it gets better.
“But trans people should be aware that well-known faces like Jaden Smith are starting to encroach on our territory. They’re starting to wear the trans uniform without actually stating that they are transgender, and they’re claiming it for themselves under the guise of gender-neutral fashion.”
Yep, Jaden Smith is encroaching on trans territory because he’s not conforming to the gender hierarchy. His gender non-conforming behaviour challenges the socially constructed norms of what is for men, and what is for women a.k.a actions that subvert the norm as opposed to the author’s defence of supporting the toxic gender hierarchy.
“All of which begs the question: where does that leave us?”
Reading further that question is quite clearly answered in the article from the ‘other side’ of the story:
“Jaden Smith isn’t wearing a dress because he wants to identify as female; he’s wearing a dress because he rejects strict gender norms. And if someone identifies as something other than ‘male’ or ‘female’, and they feel comfortable and happy in doing so, then I struggle to see why we should support that sort of expression being stifled.”
Lateral awareness, or the ability to discriminate left from right is an acquired skill. Most people have it by age 10 and most people start to lose in after age 50 (good times). Lateral awareness, of course, falls on a spectrum and here are the results so far:
“A recent survey of 800 people found that 9 percent of men and 18 percent of women report a problem with left-right discrimination. And when 290 undergraduate medical students from Ireland were tested on laterality using a series of stick-figure images, more than half of them had trouble, scoring less than 77 percent (the test had 144 questions). Both of these studies found that women struggled more than men; one of the world’s leading researchers on this subject, Dr. Gerard Gormley of Queen’s University Belfast, became interested in the subject because his wife often mixed up her left and right. (She’s a righty who also mimes writing to set herself straight.) The studies also found that lateral awareness did not affect intellect—although in practice, spatial reasoning troubles can make you feel like a doofus, in fact they do not indicate inferior intellect. (Phew!)”
Truth time gentle readers! I’m pretty good with left and right, but the cardinal directions always send me for a loop – especially when travelling South. Everything just feels wrong as I’m navigating through the directions. I keep hoping that my sense of unease will diminish, but as of yet, no luck. Successfully navigating to a school across town is the first victory of the day, getting attendance is the second. Once those hurdles have been overcome, the easy part of the day, teaching ambivalent children can begin.
My google map experiences are one thing, but getting mixed up as health care professional can have obvious deleterious consequences.
“However, the field under the most pressure to avoid lateral confusion is medicine. In the dentist’s chair, there’s money wasted when hygienists x-ray the wrong tooth. It’s even worse when a left-right-disoriented dentist pulls one or more teeth from the incorrect side of the mouth. It’s even more serious in general surgery: A 2011 report estimates that there are 40 wrong-site surgeries done weekly in the U.S., and many of those involve mixing up a patient’s left and right. This is a devastating problem: If a doctor removes the healthy kidney and not the cancerous one, the results can be fatal. Wrong eye? Now we have a fully blind patient.
Healthcare professionals work in tricky circumstances that make laterality harder. For them, distinguishing left from right almost always requires rotation. During a consultation, a patient is often sitting up, but that same patient is likely lying down during the subsequent procedure. The doctor or nurse’s perspective in the operating room could then change if he or she moves around the room while the patient stays stationary.
In addition, in medical situations—and in the transportation and aviation industries—there’s often time pressure and a bustle of other things going on. A 2015 study of medical students found that distracting people with sounds impacted their ability to tell left from right, and interrupting them with cognitive tasks made matters even worse. This is why the second item on the WHO’s Surgical Safety Checklist asks if the surgical site is marked—ideally by someone not distracted, and well in advance of the pressures of the operating suite.”
So, when at a hospital and if conscious make sure you talk to your surgeon and have them mark the procedure beforehand. Just to be safe.
“That leaves us with our mnemonic devices. Some wear a wristwatch. Others make a capital “L” with their fingers. But it’s been shown that people who use mnemonic devices, particularly in a medical setting, are those the most likely to make mistakes. Our tricks fail, in other words, and practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect.”
Yeah, so mnemonic devices are out. Pretty bleak picture eh? :/ While I was reading this, I thought of the common practice of turning down the radio while looking for parking or following directions. We often see on the internet people making fun of the practice, but as this study indicates loud noises/distractions hinder our ability to make left/right distinctions. So perhaps the radio-muters might just be on to something. :)
And no, religious friends, you don’t get to follow up with the working in ‘mysterious ways’ dodge either.
Tatsuya Ishida creates the internet comic Sinfest. Sometimes his insight hits the proverbial nail on the head.
Korobeiniki” (Russian: Коробейники, lit. Peddlers) is a nineteenth-century Russian folk song that tells of a meeting between a peddler and a girl, describing their haggling over goods in a veiled metaphor for courtship.
The song “Korobeiniki” is based on a poem with the same name by Nikolay Nekrasov, written and printed in the Sovremennik magazine in 1861.[1] Due to its increasing tempo and the dance style associated with it, it quickly became a popular Russian folk song.[2]
Korobeiniki were peddlers with trays, selling fabric, haberdashery, books and other small things in pre-revolutionary Russia.[3] Nekrasov’s poem is a sad story about the love between a peasant girl, Katya, and a young peddler. They meet each other in a rye field at night where he has promised her a good deal on the goods he carries, before they are sold in the market at day. Only the night knows what happens between them in the rye field, but she is not so simple and does not take any of the goods which he offers her. What is the point, she figures, to have all that without him – her first and only love? She takes only a small turquoise ring, as a memory, and he promises to marry her when he comes back from his commerce trip. He continues his journey and she waits for him with caution. His business goes very well and he makes a lot of money, but on the way back he is killed and robbed by a forest ranger whom he asks for directions. So he never comes back to marry Katya. The song is the beginning of the original poem; it only recounts Katya’s first meeting with the young peddler when their relation is getting off to a happy start.
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