The Girl Guides Association was on the Today programme this morning (BBC Radio 4) talking about their opposition to Page 3 of the Sun. For anyone not in the UK, one of our national newspapers has printed a photo of a nearly nude young lady on their page 3 every day since - well, pretty much forever, actually. Which is a lot of naked young ladies.
Every now and then, a few women get together to say they don't like it, but the Sun carries on regardless.
There are lots of other good reasons for not buying the Sun - this is just one of them.
The campaign reminded me of the excellent blog by Jim C Hines, though.
Occasionally, he pokes fun at the improbable poses of young ladies on SF book covers by attempting to re-create them with himself as the model. It's very funny, and it also makes the serious point that the covers are sexist and stupid.
A little while ago, he got a group of SF writers together to pose together. The event was ConFusion, and the group pose has raised over $15,000 for the Aicardi Syndrome Foundation. Details are here:
http://www.jimchines.com/2013/01/group-cover-pose-reveal/
(Sorry I can't manage links, but copy and paste will get you there!)
Showing posts with label sexism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sexism. Show all posts
Wednesday, 10 April 2013
Sunday, 30 December 2012
Female Characters in Middle Earth
I've been thinking about The Hobbit - I could hardly avoid it at the moment, with the new film out - and what a very masculine story it is. A male hobbit, thirteen male dwarves, and a male wizard go on a quest. About the only woman in the film is Galadriel, and I'm not sure she's in the book.
And today I found that someone has actually worked out the ratio of male to female characters in Tolkein (there is only one dwarf woman mentioned, who is the mother of Kili and Fili - she's called Dis).
The original graph can be found at http://lotrproject.com/statistics/#raceandsex and it boils down to 19% female characters to 81% male characters.
And today I found that someone has actually worked out the ratio of male to female characters in Tolkein (there is only one dwarf woman mentioned, who is the mother of Kili and Fili - she's called Dis).
The original graph can be found at http://lotrproject.com/statistics/#raceandsex and it boils down to 19% female characters to 81% male characters.
Saturday, 29 December 2012
"Captain's Share! I Bespeak Her!"
I've been watching The Crimson Pirate over the holidays, and remembering why it is one of my favourite pirate films of all time. Burt Lancaster and Nick Cravat swinging on ropes and bouncing around all over the Italian fishing village that was standing in for the Caribbean, daring escapes and double crosses, and even a hot air balloon! It's all great good fun.
But.
Light-hearted or not, from the first moment Eva Bartok as the beautiful Consuela sets foot on the deck of Captain Vallo's ship, she is at risk of rape.
"Why did you bolt your cabin door last night?" Vallo (Burt Lancaster) asks her.
"If you know it was bolted, you must have tried it, and if you tried it, you know why it was bolted," she says, having already pulled a knife on two pirates who were leering at her.
And later, after a couple more twists of the plot, she and her father are the pirates' prisoners - so they put her in a swing, up in the rigging, and set up a greasy pole to it. Whoever climbs the greasy pole, gets the girl - whether she wants it or not.
Captain Vallo stops that, but it's all presented as "a bit of fun".
The Crimson Pirate isn't the only film with this attitude. Okay, it was made in 1951, and The Black Swan (one of my other most favourite pirate films of all time) was made in 1943. That's where the title for this blog post comes from. In the first scene where Tyrone Power meets Maureen O'Hara, he sees her only as part of the plunder from the castle his men have stormed to rescue him. He claims her for himself, knocks her out cold, and then dumps her on the floor like a sack of potatoes.
Later in the film, he attempts to woo her in a more gentlemanly way - but that doesn't stop him from kidnapping her when it appears she's about to marry the wrong man! The boyfriend turns out to be one of the villains of the piece, though, so that's all right!
Kirk Douglas was doing the same sort of thing in 1959, when he made The Vikings. Again, it's one of my favourite films of all time - Vikings storming a medieval castle by throwing axes at the gates and climbing up them! Wonderful stuff! Tony Curtis almost getting eaten by crabs while tied to a stake in a rock pool! And Einar (Kirk) capturing Janet Leigh, who he keeps aboard his ship while the Vikings party - and gets drunk, and rows over to the ship to have his evil way with her. It's fortunate that Tony Curtis is a gentleman, and manages to rescue her.
So, three films that I grew up with, and love dearly, despite their flaws when it comes to women. It would be nice to think that film makers have become more enlightened since the 1950s - but I'm not sure there's been all that much improvement, or we wouldn't have something like the Beschdel Test to see how fairly women are portrayed now.
But.
Light-hearted or not, from the first moment Eva Bartok as the beautiful Consuela sets foot on the deck of Captain Vallo's ship, she is at risk of rape.
"Why did you bolt your cabin door last night?" Vallo (Burt Lancaster) asks her.
"If you know it was bolted, you must have tried it, and if you tried it, you know why it was bolted," she says, having already pulled a knife on two pirates who were leering at her.
And later, after a couple more twists of the plot, she and her father are the pirates' prisoners - so they put her in a swing, up in the rigging, and set up a greasy pole to it. Whoever climbs the greasy pole, gets the girl - whether she wants it or not.
Captain Vallo stops that, but it's all presented as "a bit of fun".
The Crimson Pirate isn't the only film with this attitude. Okay, it was made in 1951, and The Black Swan (one of my other most favourite pirate films of all time) was made in 1943. That's where the title for this blog post comes from. In the first scene where Tyrone Power meets Maureen O'Hara, he sees her only as part of the plunder from the castle his men have stormed to rescue him. He claims her for himself, knocks her out cold, and then dumps her on the floor like a sack of potatoes.
Later in the film, he attempts to woo her in a more gentlemanly way - but that doesn't stop him from kidnapping her when it appears she's about to marry the wrong man! The boyfriend turns out to be one of the villains of the piece, though, so that's all right!
Kirk Douglas was doing the same sort of thing in 1959, when he made The Vikings. Again, it's one of my favourite films of all time - Vikings storming a medieval castle by throwing axes at the gates and climbing up them! Wonderful stuff! Tony Curtis almost getting eaten by crabs while tied to a stake in a rock pool! And Einar (Kirk) capturing Janet Leigh, who he keeps aboard his ship while the Vikings party - and gets drunk, and rows over to the ship to have his evil way with her. It's fortunate that Tony Curtis is a gentleman, and manages to rescue her.
So, three films that I grew up with, and love dearly, despite their flaws when it comes to women. It would be nice to think that film makers have become more enlightened since the 1950s - but I'm not sure there's been all that much improvement, or we wouldn't have something like the Beschdel Test to see how fairly women are portrayed now.
Friday, 28 December 2012
Women in Fandom
Women go to SF conventions.
Women have been going to conventions for a very long time - but over the past year, I've been hearing reports, mostly from the US, that women are not as welcome at conventions as they might be. The complaint, mostly from young white males, is that girls are "fake geeks" who only go to conventions and dress in skimpy costumes in order to get a boyfriend, and they don't actually know about the characters or the TV series or the comics.
This is an old refrain.
Thirty years ago, David Gerrold had a regular column in Starlog magazine, and in one of his columns he tackled the complaint that women were ruining fandom. Again, this was mostly in the US, and at that time it was mostly directed against Star Trek fans, who were overwhelmingly women. They weren't "real fans", and they were spoiling things for the true fans - who were all male, of course.
"Look, I'll tell you how women are 'ruining fandom'," David Gerrold said, and he filled the rest of his column with all the ways that women in fandom had improved things. It's a long time since I read the column (I kept it in a scrapbook for years, but all the scrapbooks had to go some years ago), but the main points I remember were that, because of women who were Star Trek fans, it had become normal for conventions to raise money for named charities, something that the old SF Cons had never thought of doing. They had also arranged blood donations in the US.
In that one column, he demolished any argument against women in fandom that existed at the time - and maybe someone should dig it out and repeat it, loudly, to this new generation of young men who don't like to see girls being interested in the same things as they are.
The "skimpy costumes" thing seems to be another problem for the complainers. But there's a point to be made here - right back into the dawn of SF history, costumes for women characters in comics and TV and film have overwhelmingly been designed by men, for men to look at. So the costumes available for women to dress up in are overwhelmingly skimpy and sexy if they want to portray certain characters. That doesn't mean that the women are making themselves available - it means that they are portraying that character, and that is all it means.
I remember going to Star Trek Cons in the 1980s, and the good thing about those Cons was that everybody felt safe. It was a place where a woman could wear what she liked, whether it was the green Orion slave girl or Starfleet Admiral, and she wouldn't be hassled. One man who tried to hassle girls, and took some girls in skimpy costumes to his room to "photograph" them, was quickly complained about, thrown out of the convention, and banned from all subsequent conventions that those organisers would put on. And the girls went up to his room, initially, because they felt safe - because that sort of thing wouldn't happen at a convention.
This is as far from "dressing up in skimpy costumes in order to get a boyfriend" as you can get.
Besides, do these men who are complaining really consider themselves to be so irresistible to women that they think a woman would spend quite a substantial amount of money to go to the convention, and time making a costume, just to get themselves a boyfriend? Could it not possibly be because they have an interest in SF, and want to have a good time, and meet other people with the same interests as they have? I'd like to know if any of these men doing the complaining have ever been approached by a girl in a sexy costume who wants him to be her boyfriend. I would suspect that it hasn't happened.
I grew up watching Doctor Who, and Classic Star Trek and Gerry Anderson. I've read SF and fantasy by many different authors. I've watched SF films. I've written Star Trek fan fiction and made costumes. I used to go to conventions, and I may go again in the future - and I went because I had an interest in the subject, and wanted to meet other people with the same interests, and talk to them, and have fun with them.
I don't want to hear any sexist idiots telling me I have no right to be there.
Women have been going to conventions for a very long time - but over the past year, I've been hearing reports, mostly from the US, that women are not as welcome at conventions as they might be. The complaint, mostly from young white males, is that girls are "fake geeks" who only go to conventions and dress in skimpy costumes in order to get a boyfriend, and they don't actually know about the characters or the TV series or the comics.
This is an old refrain.
Thirty years ago, David Gerrold had a regular column in Starlog magazine, and in one of his columns he tackled the complaint that women were ruining fandom. Again, this was mostly in the US, and at that time it was mostly directed against Star Trek fans, who were overwhelmingly women. They weren't "real fans", and they were spoiling things for the true fans - who were all male, of course.
"Look, I'll tell you how women are 'ruining fandom'," David Gerrold said, and he filled the rest of his column with all the ways that women in fandom had improved things. It's a long time since I read the column (I kept it in a scrapbook for years, but all the scrapbooks had to go some years ago), but the main points I remember were that, because of women who were Star Trek fans, it had become normal for conventions to raise money for named charities, something that the old SF Cons had never thought of doing. They had also arranged blood donations in the US.
In that one column, he demolished any argument against women in fandom that existed at the time - and maybe someone should dig it out and repeat it, loudly, to this new generation of young men who don't like to see girls being interested in the same things as they are.
The "skimpy costumes" thing seems to be another problem for the complainers. But there's a point to be made here - right back into the dawn of SF history, costumes for women characters in comics and TV and film have overwhelmingly been designed by men, for men to look at. So the costumes available for women to dress up in are overwhelmingly skimpy and sexy if they want to portray certain characters. That doesn't mean that the women are making themselves available - it means that they are portraying that character, and that is all it means.
I remember going to Star Trek Cons in the 1980s, and the good thing about those Cons was that everybody felt safe. It was a place where a woman could wear what she liked, whether it was the green Orion slave girl or Starfleet Admiral, and she wouldn't be hassled. One man who tried to hassle girls, and took some girls in skimpy costumes to his room to "photograph" them, was quickly complained about, thrown out of the convention, and banned from all subsequent conventions that those organisers would put on. And the girls went up to his room, initially, because they felt safe - because that sort of thing wouldn't happen at a convention.
This is as far from "dressing up in skimpy costumes in order to get a boyfriend" as you can get.
Besides, do these men who are complaining really consider themselves to be so irresistible to women that they think a woman would spend quite a substantial amount of money to go to the convention, and time making a costume, just to get themselves a boyfriend? Could it not possibly be because they have an interest in SF, and want to have a good time, and meet other people with the same interests as they have? I'd like to know if any of these men doing the complaining have ever been approached by a girl in a sexy costume who wants him to be her boyfriend. I would suspect that it hasn't happened.
I grew up watching Doctor Who, and Classic Star Trek and Gerry Anderson. I've read SF and fantasy by many different authors. I've watched SF films. I've written Star Trek fan fiction and made costumes. I used to go to conventions, and I may go again in the future - and I went because I had an interest in the subject, and wanted to meet other people with the same interests, and talk to them, and have fun with them.
I don't want to hear any sexist idiots telling me I have no right to be there.
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