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A question on sexism/misogyny
Posts
If he is indeed talking about the Superhero Squad, yeah. They're chibi adults with severe brain damage.
No, men were only shown head-on if they were in an altered state . . . for example, drunk (this was the most common) or occasionally playing music, asleep, or dead. Mostly drunk.
Yeah, that guy is plastered.
Women could also be shown head-on if they were drunk. But women were technically not allowed to drink wine in Greek society so that doesn't show up much.
Basically, if someone is facing you head on in ancient Greek pottery, you know something odd is going on. The whole myth of the gorgons is pretty much rooted in the idea that the "proper" woman's gaze was slightly downward in a mixture of modesty, submission, and shame. (There's a specific Greek word referring to this which unfortunately slips my mind at the moment.) Gorgons were . . . well, you can think of them as strawmen for this ideal. "Women who look straight at men are scary and inappropriate. LIKE THIS HIDEOUS MONSTER WHO TURNS MEN TO STONE WITH HER GAAAAZE!"
Gorgons were also often drawn with "male eyes" (the large eye with the tearduct instead of the almond-shaped eyes that women were drawn with) and sometimes even beards. "Don't try to be like a man, you women" was the underlying message, with a coda of "Or else Perseus will cut your head off!!". Not that the Greeks thought this out or anything, I'm sure it was just a myth to them and they took for granted that women shouldn't have a direct gaze, like duh. But that's definitely how it played out in their societal narrative. Most monsters, for example Polyphemus the cyclops or Cerberus the three-headed guard dog, were also shown in profile.
The Greek artists were pretty good at making their other monsters scary too, though!
(Note the skin difference between the woman, who I think is Athena, and the guy (Herakles).)
Images in spoiler.
Definitely looks more like cartoon caricatures of adults and not child versions of the super heroes though.
Which doesn't really jibe with the text.
Spider-Girl looks pretty much like an 'overdeveloped' late teenager. Maybe 15-16. I mean, there is absolutely no part of her body which looks childlike. Even her face shape is wrong.
It's more part of the standards of beauty where pretty women didn't really do much and stayed inside and didn't do manual labor and so porcelain was the desired skin tone. It's like that a lot of places.
Because 9% think it's too high, and shouldn't be cut! 9% of respondents could not fully
get their arms around the question. There should be another box you can check for, "I
have utterly no idea what you're talking about. Please, God, don't ask for my input."
That is so odd. So very odd.
That's rather horrifying.
But Marvel pretty much defines women as tits and lipstick so... at least she's not in a broke back pose?
Anyway, they are supposed to be kids, and in particular the Hulk is drawn with a boyish face. Storm isn't in this book, but you can see her on the back, and it appears that she is normalishly child-like. Spider-girl is just off.
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
But yeah, they're literally school children. There are pictures of them behind their desks and such.
http://spiderfan.org/audio/images/spiderman_and_friends_music/spiderman_2003.jpg
http://i.pgcdn.com/pi/0/56/61/5661209_260.jpg
--
Look what happens when they get a different artist:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61vIHUAKnnL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
So much less creepy.
Then there's the CD cover art, which seems to have made her a little bit more realistically androgynous... but gave her a flower to sniff instead. Is that better? Also, it seems to have decided to give all the male characters big breasts. You know, for good measure.
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
Yeah. If you have $X to spend, and this time around you're demanding that the artwork not get farmed out to a third-world shop that doesn't grasp the cultural milieu of the book, then you're probably going to get less impressive art. It's kind of like when you insist that that oil pipeline be constructed using only unionized American-citizen labor, but also insist on the lowest bidder...
on an unrelated note, I just realized that What Women Want fails the Bechdel test
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/branded/2012/03/huggies_diapers_first_its_ad_used_a_doltish_dad_then_came_the_outcry_.single.html
Which I got to from this Wired review for Brave, which felt the movie essentially destroyed all the men.
Imagine if that was the norm for you. You'd be pissed too.
I write news there. It is fun.
http://blog.chron.com/houstonpolitics/2012/06/council-approves-5-per-head-strip-club-fee/
Houston's Council of Wise Elders has decided that lonely men will pay an extra $5 on top of the admittance fee to strip clubs. My opinion is all dens of vice should pay the $5 fine - bars, strip clubs, escort services, and slot halls. While the money raised will do some good for the city, targeting Gentlemen's Clubs only, however, is sexism.
Do male strip clubs also have to charge the $5 to lonely men who walk in?
Are they unfairly targeting strip clubs because it's easy? Yup.
Is this a form of sexism against men? I don't think so. On the contrary, I think the strippers become more of a victim from this law than the lonely men. $5 extra at the door means $5 less per person in tips. And since one of the best ways to guarantee gender equality is to lift women up financially, I see this move as dis-empowering women because it takes away the strippers' income.
Like the article said, if the council really cared about taxing "the cause" or whatever nonsense Texas is claiming now, the council would have taxed apartment dwellers. But you know, strippers evil.
another edit:
I also like how, apparently, Houston can't ask its citizens to raise money for rape kits and instead has to single out strip clubs to finance helping victims of rape. That is pretty fucked up.
I'd actually say that it's not sexist, I'm sure any strip club would tell you "Hey, we're for men and women!" and if they want to avoid being called sexist due to that then levying a tax on them is fine. The problem is the fact that its a special 'rape kit levy', which associates going to a strip club with raping someone. That is highly unfair.
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
Little off? Any fool can see the goal is to raise money for the city and strip clubs are easy to shake down since few people are eager to defend them. It's kind of brilliant - it could hurt a person's reputation or offend their conscience to be on the side of strip clubs; the local government is adding this 'tax' because they have calculated no one prominent is Houston is going to speak up against it. That men are the ones primarily patronizing these places is icing on the cake.
Do you take issue with the tax? From your first post it seemed like you did not. I agree with you that a tax on dens of iniquity generally isn't a bad idea, but even a tax that is just on strip clubs doesn't seem like a bad idea.
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
Apply this kind of sin tax evenly to all places that offer late night entertainment for adults, so everyone feels it. This kind of fairness and equality would meet with too much resistance, I'd imagine, since it would affect normal people and not just perverted men with too many loose $20 bills in their pockets.
And why the hell does Houston have a backlog of 6,000 rape kits? What the hell is this? Who is running this circus?
The strip club levy really shouldn't be an issue if everyone that enters is paying it. I could see how people would get riled up with that money going to purchasing rape kits; however, that's not saying all people who go to a strip club are rapists. I wouldn't be surprised if there were cases where a rapist, who targeted strippers, never entered the club his victims worked in. Sickos tend to go to places where they have easy access to potential victims, something that is proven quite clear with pedophiles.
I know this one. I think it's "personal responsibility" and "communist invasion". Am I close?
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
Nah, they passed a drainage tax here with almost no problems. I pay the city $200 more this year than I did last year to make sure my house doesn't float away during the next hurricane.
That and you effective make it less profitable for organized crime to do because most people would rather pay the tax and do it legally with zero worry of being charged with a crime instead of getting it cheaper by being screwed over by the criminal justice system. So right there the government saves money, on top of the revenue generate by the vice tax.
On the other hand, you end up setting your taxes at rates designed to maximize sales revenue because your state leans on the money, rather than at rates designed to lower consumption.
I'm not talking the morals or anything of it, but my understanding of the 14th amendment makes that seem not kosher legally
Riiight. And if Houston decided to tax birth control pills to help fund an anti-cyber bullying campaign ... I mean, men could take birth control pills to help treat their acne so both genders would be taxed, not just women, right?