Since it wasn't apparently enough for Disney to face-plant several times with the "girl-boss" theme in both Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it appears that we are about to be offered subjected to yet another Mary Sue in a new Star Wars series called
And you hit the nail on the head on that it's not about actually having strong female characters - it's about being anti-strong-male characters under guise of that, about deliberately anti-ing everything traditional, etc.
Whenever we ask "why don't they just come up with a new idea" or "why do they need to sledgehammer" or "why gender/race-swap" and we hear anything except the actual reason (i.e. "because we are forcing behaviors/ moving goalposts/ deliberately anti-ing what was into "what is, unburdened" etc.) we are in the presence of spin and bullshit.
There are so many layers of spin and bullshit, it's dizzying.
But I say the same thing whenever someone tries to play the "oh it's just a superhero, don't get your panties twisted" bit. It's so much more than that. People with no imagination can't imagine (go figure) what has been arranged for them to consume; they just consume it.
This is really good. My heroes actually existed. Here is but one - he talks like me. He was nominated for the Medal of Honor three separate times in a 13-month period. His father and uncle were Paratroopers, and they were all killed during WW II.
The pendulum swings. From one extreme to the opposite. Never stopping, or even slowing, in the middle. Too bad for us. For how many years have women been "subjected" to being second-class underlings to their male counterparts? Relative to this current superhero issue you raise, you don't want to answer that question because the answer is overwhelmingly in favor of a reverse pendulum move. When we take on the subject of male versus female, one cannot ignore that women were once property of [owned by] men, were not allowed to vote, and not allowed to own property or have their own money. Yes, years ago. But the fact remains that women were, by all measures, less than men, for a long time. This history does not excuse the illogical swing of female heroes in current movie roles to be shown as "better than men" [we're not]. What it shows is our flawed thinking from the get-go.
It never has been, and never will be, an issue of one gender versus the other. As flawed humans, tho, that's what we have built into our thinking and processes as a society. But it ain't so. If only we had the clarity to see the yin and yang of it all. Differences between genders, yes. But not differences to be judged as better or worse. A judgment of better or worse is The Problem. The differences between genders should be heralded as providing a counterpart of equal measure and necessity. Equality of genders was there from the start. Human weakness put the kibosh on that.
Progress toward equality is a good thing. The libertarian (see: classical liberalism) ethos is the primacy of the individual, with neither subordination nor supersession based on identity markers. It took a couple centuries after the Enlightenment to get there, but that's actually a remarkably short span, given the span of human history.
This is why I've always been in favor of first and second wave feminism. This is why I've always embraced the "colorblindness" that Coleman Hughes currently talks about (we obviously see skin color, just as we see gender, but we don't alter our interactions based on it).
It is a fact that men and women are different. Alike in many ways, with a large overlap, but the hormonal differences alone motivate disparities in behavior. One is neither better nor worse than the other - just different. Unfortunately, too many people have been taught that there cannot simply be "different," that everything has to be "better or worse," and that's just wrong thinking. I think it's born out of a subordination of the individual and a taught externalization of self-worth. Also wrong. We do best when we judge ourselves against ourselves, not in comparing ourselves to others.
That is also a recent phenomenon. For most of human history and across all cultures, individuals didn't matter. Even apart from the ubiquitous and rampant enslavement of people, heredity (i.e. accident of birth) determined your lot in life, women were treated as either second-class citizens or property, and people were routinely viewed as "us" or "other."
That's born of human nature. Enlightenment values of equality and individual worth are born of human intellect. The latter is clearly better, but the former always lurks.
I grew up with comic books. I knew what days the new comics would arrive at the convenience store and I would be there to spend my hard-earned lawn mowing money on them. I actually still have them all but I didn't preserve them in sleeves or anything. I was pretty much a Marvel guy although I ventured into DC now and then. Marvel just seemed to delve deeper into the hero's psyche more.
I can't even watch Marvel movies any more. They're just awful and are just too woke for me. I love female superheroes but it's just too much Mary Sue now. Same for the latest and awful Star Wars movies. The flick that stands out to me, while not a superhero movie at all, was the Wick movie with Halle Berry where she bested so many Hulkish men in hand to hand combat with simple flicks of the wrist. Yeah, I know the whole series required suspension of disbelief but come on. Shooting is one thing but hand to hand combat is a different animal.
It all just seems so forced and unnatural as to make it unwatchable.
Which brings me to one of the greatest comic book hero mysteries of all time. If Wonder Woman's plane was invisible, how did she ever find it?
Hear, hear.
And you hit the nail on the head on that it's not about actually having strong female characters - it's about being anti-strong-male characters under guise of that, about deliberately anti-ing everything traditional, etc.
Whenever we ask "why don't they just come up with a new idea" or "why do they need to sledgehammer" or "why gender/race-swap" and we hear anything except the actual reason (i.e. "because we are forcing behaviors/ moving goalposts/ deliberately anti-ing what was into "what is, unburdened" etc.) we are in the presence of spin and bullshit.
There are so many layers of spin and bullshit, it's dizzying.
But I say the same thing whenever someone tries to play the "oh it's just a superhero, don't get your panties twisted" bit. It's so much more than that. People with no imagination can't imagine (go figure) what has been arranged for them to consume; they just consume it.
This is really good. My heroes actually existed. Here is but one - he talks like me. He was nominated for the Medal of Honor three separate times in a 13-month period. His father and uncle were Paratroopers, and they were all killed during WW II.
https://youtu.be/aM_WR7E1M_A?si=h5AVpYK3oOHdRY0_
The pendulum swings. From one extreme to the opposite. Never stopping, or even slowing, in the middle. Too bad for us. For how many years have women been "subjected" to being second-class underlings to their male counterparts? Relative to this current superhero issue you raise, you don't want to answer that question because the answer is overwhelmingly in favor of a reverse pendulum move. When we take on the subject of male versus female, one cannot ignore that women were once property of [owned by] men, were not allowed to vote, and not allowed to own property or have their own money. Yes, years ago. But the fact remains that women were, by all measures, less than men, for a long time. This history does not excuse the illogical swing of female heroes in current movie roles to be shown as "better than men" [we're not]. What it shows is our flawed thinking from the get-go.
It never has been, and never will be, an issue of one gender versus the other. As flawed humans, tho, that's what we have built into our thinking and processes as a society. But it ain't so. If only we had the clarity to see the yin and yang of it all. Differences between genders, yes. But not differences to be judged as better or worse. A judgment of better or worse is The Problem. The differences between genders should be heralded as providing a counterpart of equal measure and necessity. Equality of genders was there from the start. Human weakness put the kibosh on that.
Progress toward equality is a good thing. The libertarian (see: classical liberalism) ethos is the primacy of the individual, with neither subordination nor supersession based on identity markers. It took a couple centuries after the Enlightenment to get there, but that's actually a remarkably short span, given the span of human history.
This is why I've always been in favor of first and second wave feminism. This is why I've always embraced the "colorblindness" that Coleman Hughes currently talks about (we obviously see skin color, just as we see gender, but we don't alter our interactions based on it).
It is a fact that men and women are different. Alike in many ways, with a large overlap, but the hormonal differences alone motivate disparities in behavior. One is neither better nor worse than the other - just different. Unfortunately, too many people have been taught that there cannot simply be "different," that everything has to be "better or worse," and that's just wrong thinking. I think it's born out of a subordination of the individual and a taught externalization of self-worth. Also wrong. We do best when we judge ourselves against ourselves, not in comparing ourselves to others.
That is also a recent phenomenon. For most of human history and across all cultures, individuals didn't matter. Even apart from the ubiquitous and rampant enslavement of people, heredity (i.e. accident of birth) determined your lot in life, women were treated as either second-class citizens or property, and people were routinely viewed as "us" or "other."
That's born of human nature. Enlightenment values of equality and individual worth are born of human intellect. The latter is clearly better, but the former always lurks.
I grew up with comic books. I knew what days the new comics would arrive at the convenience store and I would be there to spend my hard-earned lawn mowing money on them. I actually still have them all but I didn't preserve them in sleeves or anything. I was pretty much a Marvel guy although I ventured into DC now and then. Marvel just seemed to delve deeper into the hero's psyche more.
I can't even watch Marvel movies any more. They're just awful and are just too woke for me. I love female superheroes but it's just too much Mary Sue now. Same for the latest and awful Star Wars movies. The flick that stands out to me, while not a superhero movie at all, was the Wick movie with Halle Berry where she bested so many Hulkish men in hand to hand combat with simple flicks of the wrist. Yeah, I know the whole series required suspension of disbelief but come on. Shooting is one thing but hand to hand combat is a different animal.
It all just seems so forced and unnatural as to make it unwatchable.
Which brings me to one of the greatest comic book hero mysteries of all time. If Wonder Woman's plane was invisible, how did she ever find it?