Ppl be like “ I want an actual male gem, not just Steven.”
Jeez, it’s like having only one character
to represent your whole gender
in a group composed all of another gender
is a bit upsetting huh?
I wonder
what
that’s like
no really
can you
even imagine
what this lack of representation
MUST
FEEL
LIKE
This
post
isn’t
long
enough
none of the listed shows are named after the one female character, either
it’s actually physically impossible for me to not reblog this post.
I want to say I’ve reblogged this before, but I’m reblogging again for the brilliant addition of, “None of the listed shows are named after the one female character, either” because FUCKING THANK YOU.
mmmmmhm.
Every time I reblog this, there are new shows on the list.
Wow
it’s almost
as though
this happens
almost constantly
But normally you don’t notice, because it’s not about you.
If I stop rebloging this, assume that I am dead
Okaaaay but, with all due respect. I get the point of the post, but there are couple poor examples and I feel like the point is a bit “tilted” from where it should aim at.
First off, what is Gurren Lagann doing in this list of shows with “one woman”?
THIS is how the Gurren Brigade looks like. As one can see, despite it being a military-oriented group, it has many female characters not just one.
Also, since we are at it, GL had been often described often as the male-oriented version of the future Kill la Kill.
Yoko, the red-headed one also above, is often misunderstood as fan service provider ( like Rei Ayanami before her ) is far from being solely that. She is first and foremost the representation of surviving the death of a loved one, which is the column of the whole series, which fundamental topic is taking the “never give up” to a whole new level of breaking every single limit and survive and keep fighting no matter what you lost and how hopeless the situation is. And her and Simon ( the little guy in the center, the main character ) are ones to survive loss after loss and they go through a healthy grieving process
without losing hope and go through TWO MIRRORING ARCS.
Then we have the blond/blue haired girl, which is, to keep it as spoiler free as possible both a survivor and her own doom. We have 3 sisters with very different personalities, one of which is a very smart scientist who thinks often in very not-traditional feminine ways (sacrificing people for a greater good has often been seen as a manly perspective in many societies, while women as usually seen as softer) but she STILL has a love- story arch. We have a woman mechanic who is also not obedient to political orders and whose skills are essential in the final battle. We have a female pilot often said to be way more skilled than her male peer partner.
It is a shounen/male-targeted anime with many interesting, rounded female characters. Sure they have at times stereotypical traits and not all in the show is good (eg there is a male gay character who is a VERY positive and VERY smart character, but people is seen sometimes scared of his advances towads them) and far from perfect, but to think there is ONE female character you must have watched like less than half of the show or focus yourself only on the extras …
Also while I agree this is a problem when the media is a media for a general audience (eg Star Wars, fricking Disney productions), taking some shows target especially for boys (Voltron, shounen-anime in general) seem to me as a bit of a twisted way to present things.
If the show is targeted towards boys it will most def have mostly male characters, because it is made for males to identify with, exactly like in female-targeted shows there is the opposite situation (mostly girl characters and boys are love interests or can be fantasized about). And this is because the industry is very based on gender roles when selling a product.
Another imho poor example made on the road is Ratatouille, since Colette literally CALLS OUT how certain work environments (and animated productions) tend to be dominated by males:
Colette is criticizing exactly what you are criticizing and her being the only woman in the movie is functional to point out what you are pointing out… so… why inserting this in the list?
And while Jurassic Park DID have for real the flaw of having only one female character in the squad, we have to admit her character was fucking shrieking about the view of women action movies used to have:
She is a specialist and considered the best in her field
She shows WAY less fear than the two male main characters
About that, it’s a male character in the movie to be the wounded one with the shirt open half the time
She WALKS and puts her hands in a pile of POOP to try to help a dinosaur while people stare at her disgusted like spoiled babies
So while this movie was far from good in amount of representation, we have to acknowledge the female character does bring up the value of other women or women in general despite the action-movie media often being at the time heavily dismissive of women. She never defines herself DIFFERENT, she is never shown showing disgust, boredom or mocking attitude towards feminine things (eg, she’d like kids) but her speeches are about women, all women and how sexism is negative, not about how SHE can do it because idk she has 4 older brothers or some bullshit like that.
Like, I agree this dynamic of heavy divided productions is bad and gender roles are stupid and people should be able to watch the shows they want depending on their tastes and not depending on their sex/gender, but you can’t ignore the industry works this way while making a critique post and point only at how it affects your own “category”.
We have to criticize the industry gender roles and sex-target stupid division but if you don’t acknowledge it while bringing up merely its tendency to under-represent women in male-targeted media, you then again ignore the fact males suffers the same under-representation in female-target media and deviate the attention from the base of the problem to its phenomenon.
Also, at that point, you suggest the solution would simply be to ADD more women, but at the same time this wouldn’t solve the fact the industry produces basing itself on antiquate perceptions of what boys or girls like to read/watch.
It doesn’t solve much, not to add it leaves into shit all men enjoying female-targeted shows, a big part of which get mocked a called gay slurs exactly due to this supposed division (and in general homophobia towards gay boys/young enjoying female-targeted shows is a reality and often forces those boys to have as first things connected to their (later discovered) sexuality an insult, a being called “not men” for enjoying “girly” things and the concept of weakness connected to enjoying what they enjoy which generates internalized homophobia) . And maybe you don’t care as much about men being able to enjoy feminine things as much as you care about women being able to enjoy masculine things, but this way your battle focuses only on your profit instead of being oriented towards a real new view for everyone.
I really agree, I DO, that shows having only *one* character for a whole gender/ethnicity/sexuality/minority are often poorly done as representation goes and that force all of a group of the population into a very restrictive mold often impossible to identify with, but are we sure the problem is only the representation of (cis, because we are speaking cis women here, trans/lgbt rep has not even been brought up and it’s FAR WORSE in both male and female targeted media) women in certain shows and not a general tendency of our society to still constrict us into forceful gender roles since childhood through our whole life up to the point products are created and sold based on the supposed genitalia of the audience?
Like is getting angry about the amount of women really getting angry at the real problem? Or rather focusing on one of the ways the problem manifests itself?
Wouldn’t it be more constructive to take away from the industry the notion that girls and boys enjoy by default different things and consume differently?
Mooncustafer 