[ SECRET POST #2959 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2959 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Better early than late!

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 044 secrets from Secret Submission Post #423.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

10. http://i.imgur.com/VkCXYEh.png

[(Anonymous)]

"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today."
- Thomas Sowell

Just change the last bit to 'misogynist' and there you go.

[(Anonymous)]

i disagree with that viewpoint, whether or not it's a quote from someone

[sarillia]

But the argument that OP is trying to refute is that men and women aren't being judged by the same standards. Even if the people who believe that are wrong, they're still upholding the same ideal that all people should be judged by the same standards. The disagreement here is over whether the standards are different or not, not whether they should be.

[(Anonymous)]

Expecting people to play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards only works when those rules and standards are not intrinsically biased. Against people of darker skin, women, Jews, Roma, the disabled, the non-neuronormative, those with mental illnesses, transgender and non-binary gender people, non-heterosexual people, poor people, and diaspora peoples who do not assimilate into the dominant culture where they reside.

I would like everyone to be able to play by a (very small) set of same rules, and be judged by the same standards. But too much of the system already in place is oppressive and inherently discriminatory to be those rules and standards. Nor do I know of any set of rules and standards that wouldn't be. So, fuck that noise.

[philippos42]

I'm going to have disagree with that viewpoint, because it relies on stereotyping time periods, rather than recognizing that we deal with different people with different opinions different levels of understanding in different time periods.

It's a giant logical fallacy throughout.

And if it hadn't been a Thomas Sowell quote, I might not have felt compelled to unpack it and find what's wrong with it. But the fact it was from him was a clue there was some kind of giant factual error there.

So thanks, anon! I'll try not to fall into that era-stereotyping trap from now on!

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with what you are trying to say with this. Only, the wording in this quote is ...imprecise at best. Of course, everyone *should* be judged by the same rules. It's just that when applied to reality, the idea of radically treating and evaluating every action equally withut considering the circumstances leads to more inequality. So I'd say it makes you an optimist.

Now you do hear that "same rights for everyone" and "if 'they' deal with drugs 'they' deserve what they get" stuff a lot from racists, that's true.
But these phrases do *not* stem from their "always believing everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards", but from the paranoia that comes with having to let go of privileges in favor of real equality, and a warped conception that has them see themselves as a victim of inequality.

So yeah, basically valid idea, but the quote is poop.

[erinptah]

Eh, woman-vs-woman comparisons tend to come with sexist elements that man-vs.-man ones don't. Like, a Sansa vs. Arya fight will turn into "Sansa/Arya is better because femme girls/tomboys are the overall superior way to be female."

Or people will go "why make a Black Widow movie, Carol Danvers is clearly more deserving" -- as if Marvel's female heroes are in direct competition with each other for movie slots, and not in competition with Captain America/Iron Man/Thor/the Hulk/etc, all of whom you should just accept are going to get ten more movies apiece. No matter which one of the guys the fan community thinks would win in a fight.

[masu_trout]

Yeah, I agree with this; I love the sort of friendly-ish 'Character vs. Character' fan showdowns that similar characters seem to get, whether the character being compared are male or female.

It's when it becomes 'I like Character X better than Character Y, and therefore Character Y is worthless/Character Y doesn't deserve screentime/you're wrong for being interested in Character Y that I get frustrated, and that does seem to happen more with female character than male.

(Not that it never happens with male characters, of course, but there seems this perception that female characters are automatically in competition with each other just by existing, even if they're from entirely different genres/networks/mediums/time periods. I think sometimes there's this weird underlying assumption that you can only be invested in so many women at a time, and those comparisons are based on getting you invested in their favorite by tearing down the perceived 'worse options' rather than talking positively about the female characters they like.)

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly, there's always this edge of "if I put down this female character enough, my fave will get a movie instead of her." People don't compare May to Natasha because they want to talk about how interesting it would be to see them meet, or because they want to talk about the parallels in their careers, or because they want to talk about how different their personalities are even though they fill the same niche of terrifyingly competent female SHIELD agent. Nah, they compare them because they want to say that May is a cheap imitation of Natasha, or one of them is far better written, one of them is more impressive because of reasons A B and C, or one of them is more deserving of a solo film/series, etc.

You can compare female characters without subtly pitting them against each other, which is what people mean when they ask others to stop comparing them against each other.

[rhadamantys]

Agree, comparing character between each other is extreme juvenile no mather the gender but comparision between females always are about the things you said. Is funny that the most used arguments to compare female characters is their relationship with the male protagonist or how masculine they are.

[a_potato]

This is pretty much spot-on. When people talk about stopping comparisons between female characters, they're talking about both the tendency to reduce them to/compare them based on feminine stereotypes and the tendency to act as if there can Only Be One. It's as if people think of there only being a certain number of available slots for female characters, and so can't accept when there's more than one female character with a particular characteristic. And, well, that's a problem.

[lady_songsmith]

A lot of the comparisons aren't really comparing, though. There's a lot of "Character Y is just Character X with a different name!" going on, like there's only enough room in the fandom for 1 woman with any given trait.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

Yes this. Compare and contrast is good. Saying that two characters are identical when they have significant differences is not so good.

[(Anonymous)]

This is so true. And usually, the female characters aren't even that similar beyond "female superhero" or "female urban fantasy character" generic levels. I never see that level of vitriol directed at male characters. Hell, I'm pretty sure that even the other characters have pointed out that Green Arrow based a lot of his schtick on Batman, but for all that people have 99 reasons to hate Ollie Queen, the Arrowcave ain't one.

[(Anonymous)]

not really related to the secret itself, but that superman and batman pic is adorable.

[(Anonymous)]

I know!! <3

[nightscale]

See I don't think comparing characters to see their similarities or differences is a bad thing, its when they're pitted against each other that I don't like and sadly I see that more often. It's bad enough that the media perpetuates the idea that women are in constant competition with each other and can't be friends, we don't need that shit in fandom too.

[(Anonymous)]

That picture of Bats and Supes is freakin' creepy.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know; it made me laugh! One person's creepy is another person's amusing, I guess.

[(Anonymous)]

It's just annoying when people think that women having conflicts in a story with other women is instantly "pitting women against each other".

Protagonist/antagonist dynamics can be some of the most interesting relationships, it's a shame when people want to throw that out right off the bat.

Transcript

[(Anonymous)]

Five sets of iamges: Arya and Sansa
Melinda May, Natasha Romanov, and Peggy Carter
Superman and Batman
Sam and Dean
Tony Soprano and Walter White

Text: I can’t stand when people whine when similar female characters are compared to each other. The same people usually say it some kind of misogyny to always make women compet.

It makes me wonder if those people don’t realize that any two people OR shows that even remotely related and that this has gone on since the beginning of time.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree. It's one thing to pit women against each other, and quite another thing to compare fictional characters. I've always found it a little disturbing when people apply some sort of human rights to fictional characters. It's one thing to criticise certain tropes (like fridging), but hell, If I were to say I wish Arya would just fall down a cravice and be dead, fucking psycho-brat, that's really nothing I'd ever even remotely think or say about a real person. Geez. We construct them in our own head. Sure we can compare them.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't have a problem with women being compared because they're similar characters, but I do have an issue with comparing women because they're women, which happens a whole fucking lot. :/

[(Anonymous)]

I see where you're coming from, but lets not forget the epic amounts of wank on how Elsa and Anna singlehandedly dragged out Lilo and Nani and utterly shat all over their sisterly relationship. Because Disney is allowed one and only one movie about bonds between sisters. Just a quick google search of Lilo and Stitch vs. Frozen pulls up
"Disney's 2013 feature Frozen has done a magnificent job of stirring the pot. But Disney has already produced its progressive masterpiece - Lilo and Stitch"
"Deja Vu: The Recycled Feminism of Disney's Frozen"

And a dozen other links basically asking "Why did they make Frozen? We already have Lilo and Stitch."

And yet everything I've seen about how Guardians of the Galaxy is Avengers In Space has generally been funny and positive, same as the joking that Tony Stark is basically a day themed version of Batman. I don't think I've seen any sort of serious long essays dedicated to why we've already got one dude who fights crime, can't we just shut up and be happy about it?