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Women in Star Wars


DANA-kin Skywalker
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The reason this topic began was not because I said people need to deal with the situation. It was because it is alleged that the film makers backed down due to a protest from feminists about female under representation in the principle cast.

 

Then it turned in to Stevil hates women.

 

And now Stevil the white male supremacist (and friends) are telling everyone to deal with it.

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In related news, Denver Comic Con had a Women in Comics panel today with no female panelists. Claimed they couldn't find any. Because sometimes it just so hard to ask a woman her opinion and listen.

I'm sorry to hear that Mara. I find that quite appalling.

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The reason this topic began was not because I said people need to deal with the situation. It was because it is alleged that the film makers backed down due to a protest from feminists about female under representation in the principle cast.

 

Then it turned in to Stevil hates women.

 

And now Stevil the white male supremacist (and friends) are telling everyone to deal with it.

Sieg Heil!

 

Heil Stevil!

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And yet by saying that you're doing the same thing in a different way. You're the white male saving the oppressed from other white males' rescue attempt.

OMNG the poor oppressed white guys! Hopefully they can muster the strength to manage!

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In related news, Denver Comic Con had a Women in Comics panel today with no female panelists. Claimed they couldn't find any. Because sometimes it just so hard to ask a woman her opinion and listen.

The panel probably had some kind of time limit.,

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The reason this topic began was not because I said people need to deal with the situation. It was because it is alleged that the film makers backed down due to a protest from feminists about female under representation in the principle cast.

 

Then it turned in to Stevil hates women.

 

And now Stevil the white male supremacist (and friends) are telling everyone to deal with it.

Sieg Heil!

 

Heil Stevil!

There will be no women in the fourth reich...

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OMNG the poor oppressed white guys! Hopefully they can muster the strength to manage!

You didn't make that up all by yourself, did you? Because I've NEVER seen that before. That's really witty and original.

 

Academic and internet feminists whining because the latest science fiction or Marvel superhero film lead wasn't a single woman of color kicking the patriarchy's ass is a far cry from "oppressing" angsty white dudebros, I'll grant you that. But these same academic and internet feminists aren't exactly Holocaust survivors themselves. The female lead ended up being ... the male lead's love interest! OMG! Domestication! Objectification! Such horrific persecution! My God, who let the Taliban into Hollywood?

 

The whole thing's an effing farce. It should be a Monty Python routine. Please internet, can we please stop making a mockery of the whole idea of "oppression?"

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Of course it's all ridiculous. I just call BS on white males telling anyone else to either get over it or that they understand and have it figured out.

 

When you have never been racially/sexually/classistly discounted you can't claim to fully understand the effect of it.

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The core problem is that we've commodified victimhood. We've turned claims of oppression into a kind of binding moral authority. Whoever has the more numerous and credible claims to marginalization is given a sort of de-facto right to dictate, to claim the last word, to guilt trip. Given this, the eagerness with which all kinds of groups will cry "oppression" at the slightest offense is somewhat understandable, however laughable their claims may be. White nationalists and MRAs make me cringe with their baseless claims of "reverse discrimination" but I have a hard time sympathizing with academic feminist and anti-racist bloggers too. Being offended by a Star Wars character's accent ain't exactly the gulag, I'm afraid. I'm far from convinced that anyone in the western world is truly oppressed, but even if they were, that would still not give them the right to tell everyone else to STFU.

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You have a seriously negative view of the human race. So much so that you seem completely incapable of taking anyone's criticism or message as anything but total political BS. Is it possible that instead of EVERYBODY ELSE "crying victim" and "oppression" that maybe possibly you're just viewing everything through your jaded lens?

 

Nobody has told anybody to STFU in this thread, and certainly not any of the women (whom this thread is supposedly about.) Nobody is crying victimhood or placing blame on any specific group of people. We're simply discussing an issue that exists. Nobody is going on SJW in here, but here you are with the same rhetoric you're constantly spouting off in the Lyceum.

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But Kurgan hits a key note.

 

We haven't been able to have a discussion in this topic without people taking sides and assuming stances. In fact a lot of the good points I've mentioned were overlooked in favour of taking my comments out of context to paint my argument and sometimes me in a different light.

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And yet by saying that you're doing the same thing in a different way. You're the white male saving the oppressed from other white males' rescue attempt.

OMNG the poor oppressed white guys! Hopefully they can muster the strength to manage!

No, just pointing out your hypocrisy.

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I'm not discounting somebody's perspective I couldn't understand, so I don't think I'm being a hypocrite. I understand the white male experience generally speaking since that's what I am. One can only speak for themself.

 

Again, my only point is-- unless you are part of a group of people being somehow oppressed/judged/misrepresented you don't have the right to tell them to get over it or somehow explain why their feelings don't count.

 

It's very simple.

 

I don't deny there's a victim culture, but I also don't deny that there is a serious power structure in place in our world that benefits rich old white dudes.

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You have a seriously negative view of the human race. So much so that you seem completely incapable of taking anyone's criticism or message as anything but total political BS. Is it possible that instead of EVERYBODY ELSE "crying victim" and "oppression" that maybe possibly you're just viewing everything through your jaded lens?

 

Nobody has told anybody to STFU in this thread, and certainly not any of the women (whom this thread is supposedly about.) Nobody is crying victimhood or placing blame on any specific group of people. We're simply discussing an issue that exists. Nobody is going on SJW in here, but here you are with the same rhetoric you're constantly spouting off in the Lyceum.

 

I'll refer you to the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf, Cerina. Our entire social discourse is built around models of faux victimhood and manufactured outrage. And please don't patronize me with hollow, misdirecting talk of "simply discussing an issue that exists." "Issues that exist" imply equations of accusations and victimhood, and base these accusations and assertions of victimhood on social theories that propose whole categories of people in the western world as being systemically oppressed and persecuted. Don't try and tell me otherwise. And it's complete rubbish. Simple as that.

 

Is there unfairness, is there bigotry and even discrimination? Certainly. And I don't condone it. But academics whining about the representation of certain groups in popular culture are something else entirely. It's a fat culture of entitlement crying and whining about how hard they have it because their feelings are hurt by a character's make-up or accent in a stupid adolescent science fiction movie. And it's fuelled and enabled by a sensationalist mass media that panders to crap like this. Guess what? NOT OPPRESSION. People who survived stuff like the Holocaust and other genocides can claim to have been oppressed. People who've fled political repression or civil wars in their home lands can claim to have been oppressed. Americans who actually lived through things like Japanese internment or Jim Crow laws can claim to have been oppressed. Women who lived in an age when they could not own property, divorce and marital rape was legal can claim to have been oppressed. Sniveling hipsters who were born decades after all of this stuff cannot be, and furthermore, they insult the very struggles they profess to champion. Doubly so when they use these issues to try to get up on a moral high horse, sermonize and guilt trip people. They can fry in hell as far as I'm concerned.

 

Jaded lens? Maybe. Cynical view of human nature? Perhaps. Dare I suggest we as a culture have more of it.

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Complete rubbish? Can you honestly tell me that you believe that women are treated equal to men in most situations? And blacks treated equal to whites?

 

If you can, then we're done with this conversation. I'll just leave you in la-la land.

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This isn't really about men vs women. This is about a self appointed intellectual and cultural elite manufacturing, or at best usurping, so called women's issues to position themselves as moral authorities, and using that to attack the effing entertainment industry, and trying to pass this off as a serious challenge to entrenched power. If we want to tackle social issues, how about our broken political system or grotesque economic inequality. But hey, the view the academics and bloggers enjoy from up there on that high horse sure is great, ain't it?

 

Again, my only point is-- unless you are part of a group of people being somehow oppressed/judged/misrepresented you don't have the right to tell them to get over it or somehow explain why their feelings don't count.

Which is why I take claims of oppression coming from 3rd wave feminists - highly educated and established in academia and with no lack of access to media, the legal system, lobby groups and so forth - with a grain of salt. Not that the people they criticize are the wretched of the Earth, but it's a poor reflection on our intellectual culture that the definitions of who's "oppressed/judged/misrepresented" and therefore somehow beyond scrutiny or criticism were themselves formulated in no less a bastion of privilege than Ivy League colleges.

 

Besides, if they really wanted to go after power and privilege, why not the sundry corporate lobbyists? Why not the military industrial complex? Why not the Fortune 500? Why are their targets so often things like the movie industry, comic books or video games? You're not quite storming the Bastille here, I'm afraid. Especially given that their issues usually boil down to aesthetics and sexuality - near nudity in video games and so forth. Much closer to the Catholic Church than the Sparticus League, I'm sorry to say.

 

It's a farce, folks. Not to say it's all wine and roses being a woman as opposed to a man either. But this looks a lot more like a war of rival cultures than a revolt of the downtrodden against the powerful.

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It's a fat culture

Whoa! I draw the line and body shaming, bud.

Maybe people should stop whining about petty crap like the way groups are portrayed in entertainment and actually, you know, take responsibility for the quality of their lives.

In a sense i agree with you: being able to whine about "petty crap" and privilege on the Internet is a form of privilege in and of itself, and too many people think their happiness and actualization are being held hostage by the words, actions, even opinions of others.

 

That being said, if somebody's day is ruined because there aren't enough female Gungans with dialogue in the new Naboo movie while they make nary a peep about some guy in some other culture legally beating on his wife, that's their prerogative.

 

Everybody is a beautiful, beautiful butterfly, and me, you, we aren't the arbiter of what is or what should be important for others.

 

Because what is, especially when feelers are concerned, can be be largely a matter of perspective.

 

So yeah, I think you're barking up the wrong tree there. Telling somebody their opinion on a certain issue is less authentic because they don't focus on what you think is important is just as arrogant and ignorant as telling somebody they cant have an authentic opinion on an issue like "Women in Star Wars" because they are a white male. There are unique vantage points both from within and without the personal experience.

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NOTE: this isn't to say you should avoid pointing out illogical or fallacious statements, or calling people out for evading uncomfortable hypocrisies; absolutely do that. And rub their noses in it. I just get uncomfortable with the idea that it's OK to dictate other people's focus or invalidate their experience.

 

Probably because most of my problems are first-world issues like the city telling me I can't build a driveway where I want.

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Kurgan, this isn't the Princeton Women's Studies department, it's Nightly.Net. All the railing against academia and intellectuals is beside the point here. Some nerds who happen to be women are saying that the way women have been written and represented in a sci-fi series is kind of lame, and could be done better. I get what you're saying about oppression. But I think it's fair to complain that women have not been potrayed well in sci-fi, probably because it is assumed the majority of fans of the genre are male. Whether or not that's true is not an excuse. We're just asking them to do a better job.

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Plus, entertainment is hugely influential on people whether you think it should be or not. Countless people have been inspired to become scientists, etc due to science fiction, especially Star Trek. (Mae Jemison, first African American woman in space, was inspired by Uhura and later guest starred on Nexf Gen.) Not to mention that boys being told girls don't like Star Wars or Disney not wanting girls to like their "boys" property can have a huge influence on the way they grow up thinking about gender.

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Kurgan, this isn't the Princeton Women's Studies department, it's Nightly.Net. All the railing against academia and intellectuals is beside the point here. Some nerds who happen to be women are saying that the way women have been written and represented in a sci-fi series is kind of lame, and could be done better. I get what you're saying about oppression. But I think it's fair to complain that women have not been potrayed well in sci-fi, probably because it is assumed the majority of fans of the genre are male. Whether or not that's true is not an excuse. We're just asking them to do a better job.

Well said, Destiny.

 

I revel in the sputtering, often incoherent and contradictory indignation of 21st century identity politics as much as anybody, but that doesn't change the fact -- and yes, it is a fact -- that the Star Wars movies have been pretty lame in regards to their quantity and quality of female characters (and let's not even get into the merchandising and such). Even if you allow yourself to entirely forget whatever the Princeton Women's Studiers have to say about this issue, the new movies should still have more female characters if for no other reason than to have a more diverse, interesting cast of characters.

 

:eek:

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I'm not discounting somebody's perspective I couldn't understand, so I don't think I'm being a hypocrite. I understand the white male experience generally speaking since that's what I am. One can only speak for themself.

 

Again, my only point is-- unless you are part of a group of people being somehow oppressed/judged/misrepresented you don't have the right to tell them to get over it or somehow explain why their feelings don't count.

 

It's very simple.

Oh well I wasn't doing any of that so we're cool. Your first statement was vague and appeared directed at everybody above so I took it as you saying "white guys defending women need to shut up" while you were a white guy defending women with that statement.

 

I get what you're saying now man.

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