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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.”
“Suppose, for instance, that men were only represented in literature as the lovers of women, and were never the friends of men, soldiers, thinkers, dreamers; how few parts in the plays of Shakespeare could be allotted to them; how literature would suffer! We might perhaps have most of Othello; and a good deal of Antony; but no Caesar, no Brutus, no Hamlet, no Lear, no Jaques –literature would be incredibly impoverished, as indeed literature is impoverished beyond our counting by the doors that have been shut upon women.”
— Virginia Woolf (A Room of One’s Own)
“Women feel more guilt than men, not because of some weird chromosomal issue but because they have a history of being blamed for other people’s behaviour. You get hit, you must have annoyed someone; you get raped, you must have excited someone; your kid is a junkie, you must have brought him up wrong”
— Germaine Greer, Guilt Poisons Women
How profitable an industry is seems to be related to how regulated said industry is. Consider the length of time necessary to regulate tobacco and disseminate the information that, yes indeed, smoking is bad for your health.
Pornography, also bad for your health and your relationships, is in the same category and for the most part is left to its own devices. The damage caused to society by pornography is enormous and will only get worse if nothing is done.
“Those who claim that pornography is simply “fantasy” with no bearing on reality will have a hard time explaining the prevalence of pubic hair removal among young women in Western cultures; the dramatic increase in the demand for labiaplasty; or the fact that anal sex has increasingly become part of the heterosexual repertoire, despite both young men and women expecting it to be painful and unpleasant for the woman. It is singularly unconvincing to argue that pornography is not influencing current sexual norms, and that those sexual norms do not primarily involve the objectification and violation of women’s bodies.” – Julia Long
The pornification of our culture is happening right now, and as Ms.Long says, it happens to be revolving around the objectification and violation of women’s bodies which bodes ill for all of society.
“When someone says “this social phenomenon is not always empowering and in fact is coerced” they are not robbing you of agency or victimizing you. Radical analysis of the functions of power is just analysis. The analyst or theorist does not harm you, power does.”
The liberal feminist response to critical and radical inquiry into the disciplinary aspect of gender norms is always “but I find this norm empowering, how dare you take that from me.” This not only misses the point, but assumes that an individualistic approach to a norm ought the trump the collective and social harm it creates.
-Quote found on “These are some things“.
You can find the original conversation here. As this appeared on tumblr I’ve taken some editorial liberties with correcting spelling and grammar and adding titles to the speakers. I’ve had versions of this conversation before and of course, I was not nearly as eloquent as the final response was.
POMO: Terfs are always demanding a definition of womanhood– and its like… Idk what to tell ya. Its all made up. The only reason they demand a definition is because they think womanhood is based solely around genitalia… which is ironic because who else does that? Misogynistic cis men…👀
Material Reality: This is so incoherent lmfao
POMO: is it incoherent to you because you are uncomfortable that your politics line up with misogynists…? 🤔
MR: I don’t really care if you believe me or not but gender is made up. Its fake. Pretending there are “biological truths” to gender is not only illogical but hurts women.
MR: Also frankly I don’t give a fuck what you think of this post. It’s rather short and straightforward and you not understanding kind of seems like a personal problem. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
MR: Gender isn’t real, any radfem can tell you this lol we invented that just so you know. What’s incoherent is that if gender doesn’t exist, which is doesn’t, then the only way to define a woman is an adult human female :)
POMO: And here we get to the major issue.. which is that you seem to think that the (also fake, also constructed) “biological” naming of gender is somehow the “valid” version… is that it? Because if we are being honest here, what you just wrote is incomprehensible and laughably hypocritical.
POMO: If you want to continue putting people in boxes based on the shape of their genitalia (which i wouldn’t advise because quite frankly its reductive and insulting) then you should just use the technical terms. Acting like you believe and understand that gender is fake while simultaneously and desperately clinging to biological essentialism is inherently contradictory.
POMO: The thing is, you are still assigning gender to people, you’re just using different words. and to be quite honest, the only people who reduce women to their genitalia and call women “human females” are misogynistic cis men, which brings me back full circle to my original point which is to say that you lot have more in common with misogynists and there is really no way around it. You can keep trying to deny it but you simply cant make the above statement insisting that it makes any kind of sense. it just doesn’t. The fact that you refuse to see the faulty logic says more about your stubbornness and ignorance than anything else.
POMO: Now, since I’ve made my points and reblogged this ridiculous response, I will be disengaging from this conversation. Kindly read my words and do some thinking before responding, thank you.
——
MR: Postmodernism is a plague.
-Noam Chomsky
Okay. Let’s do it like this:
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…