Feminism ruins everything.

[Miffer]

My alternative title was going to be - Awful stuff you never noticed until you learned more about feminism... this was snappier though.

So I went to uni as a mature student, I studied social science and politics and covered feminism usually as a tacked on bit at the end of each topic. A further tacked on bit would cover "women of colour" and "working class women" and "radical feminists". I was vaguely 3rd wave feminist as a result of this. Very post modern.

As time as gone on I have sought out and read more, become involved in activism and basically grown into a radical feminist with a bit of Marxist stirred in.

As I get older I revisit books, shows and movies I used to love and find more and more of them to be fucking awful and offensive. Has anybody else experienced this? Recent offenders have been-

Scrubs - So wonderful on the outside, such a diverse cast! So many problems though, from storylines about women heroically putting their career on hold for the sake of their relationship to women being bullied by other women for being too "pretty".

Handle With Care- A paint by numbers book by Jodi Piccoult which has a graphic depiction of rape which is never named as such. The husband rapes the wife to teach her a lesson. The husband is a good guy, although they split HE leaves and at the end they reconcile. The rape is never called rape or mentioned after it occurs. This was truly awful and I would be interested to know if anybody else has read this?

What Alice Forgot - Another book that is just horrid in how it handles relationships. I don't know why revisiting this surprised me as I have noticed this in later books I read by this author.

Has this happened to anybody else? Or has anybody else read/watched these and disagrees with me?

Always hated James Bond, not convinced by Daniel Craig's JB either. . Feminism has just helped me makesense of my lifelong hatred for JB.

I just read Bramberly Hedge and realised that the women cook, the men build and make decisions, the boys misbehave and hurt their sisters.

Oh no! I just bought that for my niece
I used to like the pictures when I was little

Wow Miffer

I'm another one who read Handle with Care years ago (think I was about 18?) and I can't believe that I didn't register that scene at all when I read it. How come nobody else seems to have noticed it? I wonder if anyone has asked Jodi Picoult about it?

AVirgin

I tried Googling it to see if anybody picked up on it but couldn't find anything. I will never buy another Jodi Picoult book as long as I live. On one hand I am staggered she has never been challenged, on the other I never noticed it so why would anybody else?

^I can't watch James Bond films anymore.

In fact, most 'action' films wind me up. The sexism is incredible.^

I've never been able to watch and enjoy them though, even as a little kid in the 80s I noticed how the women were treated.

Feminism doesn't ruin anything for me.

Feminism doesn't ruin anything for me.

Nor me, it was already ruined, feminism just made me realise.

Jilly Cooper. Especially "Riders" .

I love a lot of the old Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers, and Gene Kelly type old dance movies. The dancing and songs are still incredible but the 'romances' are often really creepy and consist of the male character pestering the female and ignoring her saying 'leave me alone'. But of course, he wins her over with his persistence in the end.
And as for Gigi....
I know they were made in a very different time but it does spoil the fun for me.

Years ago I wrote a long, passionate diatribe against bodice ripper romances, Kelpeed.

To my mind they are very much on the same level for women as porn is for men. Like porn the romances give the consumer a wholly inaccurate picture of sexual relationships and, also like porn, they accentuate sexist stereotypes. I firmly believe that bodice ripper romances are harmful to women, encouraging them to interpret abuse as manly and their own subservience as erotic. I could go on...

Has anyone mention The Women?

An all-female cast, celebrated for the same.....but ALL ABOUT MEN. One man in particular.

Beggars belief.

"Wicked!", the Jilly Cooper book set in two schools, is utterly revolting. I read it and simply couldn't believe her editors had passed it. The ages were all wrong. She had kids doing their GCSEs having sex with people in their 40s. 16 year old girls were going weak at the knees about middle aged men. Don't know about you but when I was in my teens anyone over 30 was a dinosaur. It was grossly offensive book.

On a more cheerful note, I picked up an old Jilly Cooper book while staying with my DPs and was horrified. Not only did the hero hit the heroine, but she realised that he'd only done it because she wasn't meeting his needs and they made up, living happily ever after.

What's cheering about this is that the book was written back in the 1970s but very few people these days would find these attitudes to DV acceptable. We have moved on, and hopefully we will continue to do so.

Prawn - I think I read that one back when it came out, and I remember getting to the DV scene and thinking "WTF? You, the author, think this is OK and there can be a happily ever after following on from this?"

Sorry, I didn't mean to include all romance novels in my attack, Kelpeed. It was only the semi S&M bodice rippers, in which the heroine is aggressively "seduced", often by multiple hyper masculine men, and the happy ending marries her to some wealthy aristocrat. The underlying beliefs of these books are seriously unhealthy.

The diatribe I wrote all those years ago wasn't on Mumsnet, but on a different forum, one that no longer exists.

Definitely!!! I really miss being able to enjoy tv shows like I used to, but can't stand the sexism in them :(
Friends - Ross is a 'nice guy', Rachel deserves better!
Malcolm in the Middle - the mum is a horrible sterotype of a fiery/fiesty mom; maybe if her husbamd wasn't a big man-child she wouldn't always have to be a bad guy.
Frasier - Niles is vile to Roz, slut-shaming etc.
Mad Men - Full of toxic masculinity, Don's a pig, DV etc.
Big Bang Theory - the characters are v misoginystic, esp to Penny
Game of Thrones - 'nuff said....

Don't go to cinema very often but I clearly remember not being able to enjoy 'We're the Millers'? Because the multiple layers of oppression faced by Jennifer Aniston's character were not addressed, she was just a 'rough stripper' / 'tart with a heart' stereotype and the male lead was really mean to her.

Etc etc. It sucks!! Wish I could forget sometimes!

Forgot to say, I totally agree with thyme that Big Bang is also v racist!!

I watched "500 Days of Summer" last night, thinking it was going to be light hearted, frothy etc.....Bah. The eponymous Summer gets totally objectified, and you never get to see her POV. And the talk between the "hero" and his mates is highly unpleasant re: women. I suppose you could say that the film is sending this kind of view of women up, but it also has the effect of normalising it.

This is quite a random one, but I was rewatching Toy Story 2 the other day. I like the film and had thought at least they'd added a main female character, Jessie the cowgirl. But there's a scene where the group who have gone to rescue Woody pass Barbies having a party in the toy shop and they kind of gawp at them. I suddenly realised that five male characters had gone to the rescue and been waved off by the female ones, Bo Peep and Mrs Potato Head.
Obviously it's not on the same level as normalising rape but it did irritate me a lot when I'd noticed it!