So if Netflix and HBO also removed anything sexist or misogynist, what would that look like?

[FiveFootTwoEyesOfBlue]

What would the streaming services need to remove? There would be nothing left!

I'll start: all of James Bond up till about 10 years ago.

Pretty Woman (obviously)

All the older Disney princess movies

Most of the teen comedies and dramas. For lots of reasons, but my pet hate at the moment is when a male protagonist has the objective of 'getting a girl' (woman as trophy trope, check!) and his thoughts or the advice he's given is all centred around 'girls think X' or 'girls like Y' as if they're a Borg hive-mind. Especially if it's about some stupid stereotype like loving shoes. I don't like being reminded that some men don't think of women as individuals when I'm watching TV.

Spartan.

Rupauls DragRace aka Womanface

Suits
Mad Men

So much stuff.

YY to Game of Thrones, all the sexposition etc. Urgh.

A film (or book or painting etc) that shows sexism isn't the same as a film that is sexist, though. And the former does not require that it be all didactic and tell the viewer explicitly that it's supposed to be bad and what to think.

God I hate the fucking censors.

Person of Interest was on Netflix, I was surprised how many times the hero made derogatory comments about old women, it was at least once per series.
On a plane he complained when he got stuck sitting next to an 'old lady' that didn't actually look any older than he did.

@Siablue I think that too. I'm glad that rape is featured in media but it's used so commonly that I think it is sometimes written to titalate sick viewers.

I've had a couple of notifications from Netflix lately about films/TV shows that seem to centre on women or girls being kidnapped/stalked.

It's so depressing that this is a common theme. I thought about it this week and then saw this thread.

Yes, I don’t watch most crime series and lots of other things due to violence / sexual violence.

In my teens got v upset by a few shows / films and had a good, long conversation with my DM about portrayal of women on TV/in film, and violence / predatory “genius” serial killers etc (she dislikes violence but can watch the stuff with less of a reaction and “detach”). I decided to stop watching stuff with violence in it, which my friends respected, just didn’t join them if going to see or watching at home an 18 film

many years on it was a great decision, but removes a lot of viewing options!

I tried to explain away the sexism in Game of Thrones to a friend but had steam comin gout my ears when I watched Mad Men - a mixture of very casual sexism and 24/7 smoking!

@ifonlyus

Suits Mad Men

I'm curious whether Mad Men would survive because it's supposed to be horribly racist and sexist, especially in the early seasons where even hiring a woman as a copywriter was a bold move. Are we allowed to keep historical stuff for educational purposes? They're going to bring Gone with the Wind back on streaming with a talk at the beginning about racism, so maybe we could get a famous feminist to do the same for these shows.

I don't get the arguments about 'Mad Men'. It was a pretty accurate representation of an era where women's lives changed greatly, but attitudes were still appalling compared to what we'd expect nowadays. Many of the script writers were women, and it shows, in a good way. There was a lot of attention given to the female characters' development, and Peggy was the top billed character after Don, appearing in almost every episode and not as an accessory to the male characters.

If anything, I'd say Mad Men is quite feminist in its approach.

I said exactly this to my partner last night - there would be almost nothing left to watch. But hey, it’s only women, who cares?

Yeah, I think it' really important to differentiate between things that are actually anti-woman, and things where stuff happens, to put it simply.

One of the things I really hate is films and television shows set in the past but where everyone, or at least the sympathetic people, think and act like it is 2020. They are often bad shows in other ways as well, they are dishonest in order to avoid making people uncomfortable.

@MoltenLasagne I was going to say Brooklyn 99 would pass the test

As far as sexual assaults of various kinds, I think they've partly become more common due to changes in porn, which is bad for many reasons.

But there is also significant use of them to identify bad guys, and that's based on the viewer not being accepting of it. At some point it became common to have protagonists who were anti-heroes, who did a lot of bad things, including murder, etc, but who the viewer is meant to sympathise with. Someone like the Cillian Murphy character on Peaky Blinders.

What you will notice is that on film and tv, they may be bad, thieves and murderers, but they don't sexually assault anyone and they usually treat women well overall.

The guys we are supposed to hate though, they commit rapes or touch people up or are nasty to their wives. Like the Sam Neill role in the same show, being really quite creepy and condescending to women despite being on the right side of the law.

@Melia100

God I hate the fucking censors.

I'm not proposing that such films and TV are censored (well, except maybe the very worst), it's just to make a point about how racism is far more frowned on these days than sexism.

I agree, shows like Mad Men would be nonsensical if they eliminated the casual sexism (and the smoking!). If they shock modern viewers then perhaps that's a good thing, as they impress on especially younger people how much progress feminism has made.

Any crime series that featured the sadistic deaths of women week after week after week.

I have always had huge respect for Mandy Patinkin who signed up for Criminal Minds and resigned as soon as he could. Later he said:

The biggest public mistake I ever made was that I chose to do Criminal Minds in the first place. I thought it was something very different. I never thought they were going to kill and rape all these women every night, every day, week after week, year after year. It was very destructive to my soul and my personality.” Patinkin also addressed the whole crime drama genre. “I’m not making a judgment on the taste [of people who watch crime procedurals],” he said. “But I’m concerned about the effect it has. Audiences all over the world use this programming as their bedtime story. This isn’t what you need to be dreaming about.

I'm 'conflicted' about all the crime shows that feature murdered young girls and women. On the one hand I find it distasteful that this is part of 'entertainment'; on the other hand, it's true that girls and women are murdered far too often, so perhaps we should reflect that. I suppose the difference is in how it's handled. Any light entertainment that features rape is highly questionable in my opinion. That netflix series 'Unbelievable' about the rape victim in the US who changed her story to say she'd made it up and was prosecuted for wasting police time, and then subsequent events showed what the truth was (trying not to give spoilers) was excellent, as it showed it very much from the point of view of the victim and really emphasised the effect on the victim - as well as centring around the two female detectives.

Very little.

OTOH we've been watching the original Addams family series as a family thing and it is awesome the kids (8&10) love it and surprisingly little to get twitchy about in the portrayal of women

Most stuff I just can't watch now especially out of USA

CSI lost me when it showed a shower rinsing down a woman lingering lovingly over her breasts etc then the camera pulled back and she was on the slab.

No, fuck that, I thought.

I have to say that I don't think most crime procedurals make light of things like rape. Some over-rely on them, it's disproportionate, but OTOH, how many people are interested in watching a police procedural about tax crime? The majority are about murders one kind or another.

Criminal Minds was pretty sensationalistic and repetitive when it came down to it, and absolutely relied to much on gory murders of young women.

There has been some significant changes to how they show the female victims as well,

oops, posted somehow to soon - I was going to say, compared to how they used to show them.

Thinking of it though, The Sopranos always used to bother me. I know it was supposed to be gritty, but I think often it was just being sensationalistic and pornographic.