Suddenly Feminist Dad

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
petercoffin

Fury Road: when there are enough women

weareallfromearth

When there are enough women in your cast, not every woman has to represent all women and they can have individual flaws and strengths.

When there are enough women, some can fall apart and others can hold things together.

When there are enough women, you can literally name a character Cheedo The Fragile without making a statement about feminine fragility.

When there are enough women, you know the action movie doesn’t have to preserve the one woman in order to ensure you have one woman left in your cast at the end, so women might die, just like men, and the stakes are high and real and the plot is not predictable.

When there are enough women, you can cast women with different ages and looks and body types based on what makes sense for the story - beautiful women who were selected for beauty by a character who valued women’s bodies more than their whole selves, wiry muscular women of middle and older age, built to survive, mothers who were used for the things that come with their fertility and have the fat to show for it, old fragile women who took care of others while rarely stepping outside, disabled women affected by their environment and experiences.

When there are enough women, the world feels real.

seanchaidh101
onethingconstant: “songbirde108: “mercurialkitty: “emmagrant01: “clevermanka: “youcangofindatree: “moremetalthanyourmom: “Okay but after seeing this I started doing it too and it’s amazing how many men I’ve run into bc they expected me to...
moremetalthanyourmom

Okay but after seeing this I started doing it too and it’s amazing how many men I’ve run into bc they expected me to move

youcangofindatree

Gotta try it

clevermanka

I work (and walk) on a college campus. I’ve lost count of how many men I’ve smacked shoulders with.

emmagrant01

Recently, I was standing outside my son’s classroom waiting to talk to his teacher. I stood on one side of the hallway, not even close to the center. At some point, a man came walking along. I was standing right in his path, but the hallway was empty, so I logically expected him to swerve around me. Instead he kept walking right toward me, got to me, and stopped, as if waiting for me to get out of his way. I didn’t; I just smiled politely at him. He finally walked around me, clearly annoyed that I hadn’t leapt out of his manly path.

Now I’m wishing I’d leapt aside, taken off my jacket and laid it on the floor before him, then bowed deeply and said, “My Liege!”

mercurialkitty

I also work at a college campus. I smack shoulders sometimes, but I find that if I stare straight ahead and follow the advice below, people get the heck out of the way.

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songbirde108

Honestly this post changed how I carry myself when walking alone in public, or in a situation where I’m the one leading. People definitely move for the murder gaze.

onethingconstant

Confirmed. I once had to rush back inside a convention hall as the con was closing in order to a retrieve a sick friend’s medication, and I didn’t understand why people in the crowd were jumping out of my way (literally—one guy vaulted a table) until I realized I was dressed as the Winter Soldier and doing the Murder Walk because that’s just how I walk in those boots. I got the meds, got out, and made a mental note.

I repeated the experiment later, wearing the boots but otherwise my usual clothing and mimicking the expression I thought I’d had at that moment. People parted like I was Charlton Heston.

I now wear that style of boots whenever possible. I recently had a man do a double-take as I walked by and ask me, politely, where I had served because I “looked like a soldier.” I’m not current or former military. I was wearing a flowy purple peasant top and looked as un-soldierlike as possible.

Moral of the story: wear comfortable shoes, square your shoulders, and walk like you’ve been sent to murder Captain America.

I Don’t Care Whether or Not Mad Max is “Feminist”

There has been a lot of debate on feminist Twitter in the last few days about whether or not the new Mad Max movie is a feminist movie. I’ve read a lot of reviews calling it “feminist”. Yesterday, popular YouTube feminist critic and GamerGate boogeyman Anita Sarkeesian said it isn’t feminist.

I have avoided getting into this argument, for three reasons:

  1. I haven’t seen the movie.
  2. I don’t really feel qualified to decide which movies are feminist.
  3. I don’t really care.

Now, when I say that I don’t care, it doesn’t mean that I don’t care what feminists have to say about the movie, and it certainly doesn’t mean that I don’t think feminism should inform the way we think and talk about the movie. I do and I do, respectively. But I don’t think whether or not Mad Max: Fury Road is a “feminist” movie is a particularly interesting or useful question.

For one thing, I’m not sure I could find two feminists anywhere who would agree on what a “feminist movie” is, which means that this question quickly stops being about the movie and becomes a question about us – about our own criteria for what makes a movie feminist.

More importantly, though, labeling a movie “feminist” or “not feminist” doesn’t really get us anywhere. As I said, I haven’t seen Mad Max: Fury Road, but it’s a pretty safe bet that, like every other movie ever to come out of a culture that hasn’t purged itself of patriarchy, it contains some elements that are praiseworthy from a feminist perspective and others that are problematic. Regardless of whether or not we decide Mad Max: Fury Road is “feminist”, the praiseworthy still needs to be praised and the problematic still needs to be criticized.

With that in mind, here are some questions I think are much more pertinent:

  • Does the movie pass the Bechdel test?
  • Does it fall into established, sexist action movie tropes about women?
  • How does it handle violent and emotionally repressed stereotypes about masculinity?
  • How much time does the camera give to the male gaze?

These are all questions I’m very interested in as a feminist. Whether or not the film earns a particular (and entirely subjective) title? Not so much.

Thanks for reading.

mad max mad max fury road anita sarkeesian feminist frequency feminism strong female characters strong women sudfemdad sexism
cbolender
sudfemdad.tumblr.com

The Last Thing I'm Ever Going to Write About #GamerGate
sudfemdad

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Before I start, a few notes:

  • First, if you are one of my readers who don’t know what GamerGate is, you are a lucky person. Keep your happiness. Stop reading this right now and do your best to never learn anything about GamerGate ever.
  • Second, this piece is going to borrow heavily from a …
cbolender

You have never read the zoe post by Eron, have you? Yet choose to judge him in the manner you do. What if Eron and Zoe’s genders were reversed? Same behavior from you?

sudfemdad

(1) GamerGaters love to tell me that I wouldn’t judge them so harshly if only I’d read this/watch this/listen to this. Yes, I’ve read it; yes, I’ve seen it; yes, I’ve heard it; and yes, GamerGate is still horrible. It is monumental arrogance and delusion on the part of GamerGate to assume that everyone who disagrees with them (which, by the way, adds up to almost everyone who’s heard of them) just doesn’t have all the information. As I said in the piece, there are no secrets. GamerGate has been around for seven months, and it hasn’t exactly been quiet in that time. There is no nugget of unknown information you can produce now that will suddenly change how people feel about GamerGate.

(2) If Eron and Zoe’s genders were reversed, there wouldn’t have been an internet hate mob ready to attack. So your question, as the Buddhists say, is a question wrongly asked.

(3) Thanks for the reblog.