You have GOT to be kidding!

[voxwoman]

Click The preceding link, brought to you by my brother's blog provided me with a head tilting, confused dog reaction to the person's initial premise, that apocalyptic films are "antifeminist".

He then goes on to dissect a whole bunch of box office hits and an episode of Futurama (that coincidentally parodied a good percentage of those hit movies).

Now, up until about 3 seconds ago, if you had asked me if I was a feminist, I would have said "yes" without hesitation. But if a feminist would pick apart a movie like Deep Impact (which had so many OTHER holes -- like in the science) and say that the woman who gave up her seat in the "last chopper out of NY" to a woman and her small child, to go reconcile with her estranged father on the beach and get smashed by a tsunami is "anti-feminist"... WTF? I mean, really. So it's now "antifeminist" to choose to let 2 people live instead of 1? I thought that was "self-sacrificing" -- or is self-sacrifice somehow antifeminist?

I didn't realize feminism meant sticking with your career and corporate employers even in the face of the apocalypse. Or that having a relationship with a man, or, heaven forfend, your father is somehow subordinate and subservient. I thought your growth as a person depends on your relationships with other people, rather than kowtowing to your Corporate Overlords. Although, if you were good at that, you will be all set to suck up to the aliens when they invade. If feminism means "career over all" then I'm going to have to retire my feminist badge.

I thought that a "feminist" was someone who advocated equal rights for women. Sigh.

And then he has the gall to slag Futurama. This whole paper has got to be the biggest crock I've ever seen. Most of those apocalyptic summer blockbuster movies were large piles of stinking dog feces when it comes to story, character development and plot. It's all about eye candy, SFX, and mindless entertainment.

And I think if the planet's human population were decimated, that "repopulating the planet" would be an important thing on everyone's mind. Not in a Niven/Pournelle disaster story way (where *all* the women were preggers at the end of that particular book, whose name I have blocked out), where they're wondering how they're going to eat through the winter, but hey, let's double the population of our little clan as fast as possible! Maybe they are planning to eat the babies if things get really tough. I hadn't thought about that until just now.

I suppose that's a question for the author of this stupid essay that's got me all riled up: Is it "feminist" to eat a baby if you're starving?

Update: the Niven/Pournelle book mentioned above is "Lucifer's Hammer"

In my brain, probably because I grew up in the middle of the bra-burning "femninist movement" when the title "Ms." was invented, and all astronauts had to have a penis (the 1960's and 70's for the historically challenged), I think femminism had the qualities of "fariness", "equality", and "activism". A lot of the other, man-hating weirdness that people nowadays seem to equate with feminism, I think more matches "Dianic Wicca".

Comments

[krikkert.livejournal.com]

Well... Not really. A feminist, in my definition, is one who wants increased rights for women. To which point they want the rights to increase - there's the differences.

Yup.

[lionsphil.livejournal.com]

And most of them who brandish the label seem to be at the 'whackjob' end. 'Feminism', IME, is the female set of 'chauvanism'.

That's 'brandish'. As in 'waves it around in everyones face like some kind of title or qualification'.

Re: Yup.

[voxwoman.livejournal.com]

Probably because women HAVE achieved so much in the past 30 years (at least in the US) a lot of the more reasonable feminists have dropped the label and figure, "OK we got what we were fighting for" and are basically done, leaving the whackjobs. That and the conservatives inventing words like "feminazis" and trying to turn "feminist" and "liberal" into epithets.

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

Self-sacrifice isn't a merely feminine trait. Look at all the he-men in movies who sacrifice themselves for the greater good: the Terminator in the first movie, Bruce Willis' character in "Armageddon", loads of Westerns carry that theme. There are a massive number of people who even revere a guy who supposedly sacrificed himself two millennia ago.

Isn't "self-sacrifice" the point of soldiering (typically a "man's" job?

[voxwoman.livejournal.com]

That meme is drilled into young men, because they are the ones who are going to be asked to take a bullet for Uncle Sam at some point. If self-sacrifice isn't part of the culture, then no one will be willing to "die for their country".

I prefer to think of self-sacrifice as one of the attributes of sentience, as explained by Draal, when he meets Delenn in the corridors of Green sector on Babylon 5.

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

That was a pathetic piece of analysis. Don't let it rile you up. It's not worth it. I wrote better analyses of films when I was in college. You're right: it's a crock.

My brother emailed me about it

[voxwoman.livejournal.com]

and actually apologised for getting me all riled up :-D

He pointed out that the guy who wrote that crappy paper didn't see the irony of the Futurarma episode, that was poking fun at these films.

Be a "humanist" instead :-)!

[saminz.livejournal.com]

I have had the fortune to be raised by a strong woman, and had a hard time "getting" the concept of feminism. Weren't we the strong and able ones anyway ;-)? Of course, if you look way back in history, where self-sacrifice (and babies!) was about the only thing women were considered any good at, you might see where the idea came from. But nowadays, I find it more important to get rid of ANY stereotype, be it male, female, mother, career-person or whatnot.
Nice rant, though - if the morons of this world bring forth such brilliance, they are good for *something*, at least ;-).

Re: Be a "humanist" instead :-)!

[voxwoman.livejournal.com]

I was writing a response to this, but it was getting very long, and deserves its own journal entry...

It's "antifemist" to *have* babies, duh.

[lionsphil.livejournal.com]

Besides, feminism is just a group of conspiracies by the Coca-Cola corporation to encourage employee obedience fnord.