You see something absurd. You hear something absurd. You read something absurd = Yeah,TNTG. Posts tagged representations.
Reporter: So, why do you write these strong female characters?
Joss Whedon: Because you’re still asking me that question.The question should be “Why do you write seemingly strong women and then punish them for that strength?” I see a lot of characters in this set who got shit on by Joss not to mention at least one actress he fired for the crime of getting pregnant.
A friend of mine likes to challenge “Joss Whedon, Feminist” acolytes to name a female character on Buffy who doesn’t die or go crazy.
I feel like this game could be expanded to find lead female characters who don’t die, go crazy, or lose a loved one in a gruesome way as part of their suffering. Bonus points if they get to the end without anyone threatening to rape them or trying to rape them. There has to be at least one right?
If we include those, we may as well be playing bingo. Joss Whedon’s female characters’ punishments: collect them all!
Who gets mind wiped? Who gets beaten? Who watches everything she ever loved burn? It’s a game for all ages! Bonus points for the ones who die without ever having gotten to live!
I might have feelings about Kendra. A lot of them.
“ In reality, the numbers of same-sex families of color are increasing, especially in traditionally conservative Bible Belt regions in the South. African American strongholds like Atlanta have seen a new black “re-migration” driven by the ripple effect of high unemployment, foreclosures, and gentrification in northern urban black communities. According to Family Equality, LGBT families are “more racially and ethnically diverse than families headed by married heterosexual couples. Of same-sex couples with children, 41% are people of color, compared to 34% of married different-sex couples with children.” Impacted by racism, sexism, heterosexism, and segregation, same-sex families of color are also more likely to be near the poverty line and hence more reliant on public social welfare and health care assistance. Nonetheless, when textbooks, TV shows, and Hollywood films envision culturally “diverse” LGBT families it is through the lens of privileged white middle class folk who have “benevolently” decided to adopt a child of color (ala the white gay couple on the sitcom “Modern Family”) or used expensive reproductive technology to have children. In this context, marriage equality merely secures white wealth and white patriarchy, as white gay families also benefit from segregated neighborhoods, schools, tax credits for middle class homeowners, and higher-paying jobs. Complex families of color that are either headed by single gay or straight parents are marginalized as inherently dysfunctional, welfare-dependent and socially borderline. Loving gay partners of color with children are nonexistent.
— Sikivu Hutchinson, Defense of Marriage: Racism, Family Values and the 99% (via theraceproblem)
“ At the end of the day, I’d rather be a faux-crazy lady who makes a world a better place than a crazy man who just wants to force the greater Albuquerque area to acknowledge his genius by cooking a whole bunch of meth.*
“ You don’t even see how racist that question is.
— Toni Morrison in response, when asked by a white female reporter if she never felt compelled to write white characters. (via blackwomensaid)
evolutia:Mad TV - Friends “OMG a BLACK PERSON”
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If a young woman in middle school or high school hangs up a poster of Barack Obama in her room, this is seen as acceptable. It’s fine for women to admire men and want to be like them.
If a young man (the same age) hangs up a poster of Hillary Clinton in his room, this is seen as odd (maybe even troubling, is he gay? Oh no!).
Society tells us young men can’t think of women as role models, unless they’re a family member, whereas young women can admire and seek to emulate anyone, regardless of gender.
If you’re a young man, and if you have a poster on your wall with a woman, she had better be half-naked in a bikini, even if the Ronald Reagan or Gen. Patton poster next to it obviously features the man fully-clothed.
Young men are not to taught to think of women as role models. They are taught to think of them as either family members or sexual objects. There is no other category presented.
—
http://charlesclymer.blogspot.com/2013/02/why-are-we-so-ashamed-of-our-women.html (via there-was-a-girl)
THIS IS SO TRUE!
(via jahalath)
George R.R. Martin on writing women
George Stroumboulopoulos: There's one thing that's interesting about your books. I noticed that you write women really well and really different. Where does that come from?
George R.R. Martin: You know, I've always considered women to be people.
“ When you are the only Indian-American female lead in a television show, you seem to be making sweeping statements about that person simply because you are that person and the only one, whereas, for instance, Steve Carell — he’s not making sweeping generalizations about white American men on his show because there’s so many different white American men on different shows. So I get worried by doing this character that people think that I’m saying that about all those people. And I just have the weight of that on my shoulders, which is something that I do envy other performers for not having.
— Mindy Kaling (x)
“ The thing that sucks about Girls and Seinfeld and Sex and the City and every other TV show like them isn’t that they don’t include strong characters focusing on the problems facing blacks and Latinos in America today. The thing that sucks about those shows is that millions of black people look at them and can relate on so many levels to Hannah Horvath and Charlotte York and George Costanza, and yet those characters never look like us. The guys begging for money look like us. The mad black chicks telling white ladies to stay away from their families look like us. Always a gangster, never a rich kid whose parents are both college professors. After a while, the disparity between our affinity for these shows and their lack of affinity towards us puts reality into stark relief: When we look at Lena Dunham and Jerry Seinfeld, we see people with whom we have a lot in common. When they look at us, they see strangers.
—
Hipster Racism Runoff And The Search for The Black Costanza by Cord Jefferson @ Gawker
When they look at us, they see strangers.
(via darkdarkgirlvashti)
I was trying to find this quote recently. I don’t think most white people understand how it feels to be thought of as only as a dehumanized stereotype or a token. Never as someone like you who can be relatable and have things in common with you. It’s always a surprise to people online and offline when people find out that I like things that they do, too ; that I’m not just some angry activism-obsessed woman. When people like Lena Dunham say they don’t know how to write Black people, it’s pretty much saying that she doesn’t think that Black people are also fully complex human beings like her. Sure, there are cultural considerations to be made, but it’s ignoring the fact that people of color are diverse and not a monolith, so it’s not like the only girls who are like her are white.
(via wretchedoftheearth)
