GRRR FEMINISM and stuff - New Video Released. Fade mad.

melatonin wrote:

TheTurnipKing wrote:The problem is that a "feminst fantasy" makes for a really poor story.

Turnip, you get that this is a comic about feeling safe enough to walk outside by yourself at midnight without being attacked/raped, right? Because for a second it looked like you were using it as an example of how feminists (?) want to remove... storytelling (??) from stories (????????)

I need to know that you know this.

Of course I know this. To be honest, I was looking for an earlier strip which is a feminist parody of 50 Shades of Grey, but this one serves to demonstate the point too.

If you look at it as a story... well, it's a bit gooseberry fool. Stories need drama, conflict, heroes, villians. Good things must happen to bad people, and bad things must happen to good people. If people just go for a walk, it's not much of a story.

It is unfortunate that what occurs first to most writers with characters who happen to be female is rape, though. But I guess you appreciate that yourself, since it was apparently also the first possibility that occured to you, too.

Wedgie wrote:Lego recently launched Lego for girls.

And it's recieved negatively by critics and media for being too stereotyping girls.

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/lego-fr ... -50006457/

http://www.drrobynsilverman.com/parenting-tips/4135/

Of course it doesn't help that Lego is just following the market trend. My two young kids love anything that's pink, toy kitchen stuff or princesses/dolls. We certainly didnt force them on them, as they (well the eldest one did pick them out) picked those things out in the toy store.

They find the appeal in it. So why should we pamper to the critics who find it "sexist?"

So in a nutshell I'm guessing she's talking about the Friends Lego range.

She does complain about the Friends range, mostly because it shouldn't be at all necessary. She points out that historically, Lego was a gender neutral toy and marketed as such, all the promo art showed boys and girls playing together, whereas now it is 100% male focused. She also points out that pre-90s Lego was fairly non-violent, then after that there was a switch where almost every set is about fighting (even the City sets now focus on cops and robbers).

I'm a huge Lego fan, and as a kid I played with it as a creative toy, I built whatever the strawberry float I wanted, but I look at my son playing with it now and really, it's just a Batman/Star Wars playset to him. She touches on this, how the marketing and themes of Lego don't really focus on the creative (and educational) aspects of Lego any more.

I agree with all of that. I don't think there's even much of a feminist agenda there, it's just a shame that Lego has needed to go this way to stay relevant. Lego should be better than this dammit!

Not exactly a situation unique to women, is it? I wouldn't go out for walk on my own at midnight. That would be dumb, depending on the area. I hate it when it gets dark in winter I have to walk the dog when it's pitch black. The park is scary as hell in the dark. It feels like some psychopath could jump out and stab me to death at any moment.

TheTurnipKing wrote:Of course I know this. To be honest, I was looking for an earlier strip which is a feminist parody of 50 Shades of Grey, but this one serves to demonstate the point too.

If you look at it as a story... well, it's a bit gooseberry fool. Stories need drama, conflict, heroes, villians. Good things must happen to bad people, and bad things must happen to good people. If people just go for a walk, it's not much of a story.

I can't tell if you're being serious here, but it is possible to write a story that involves all those things and isn't misogynist.

Meep wrote:Not exactly a situation unique to women, is it? I wouldn't go out for walk on my own at midnight. That would be dumb, depending on the area. I hate it when it gets dark in winter I have to walk the dog when it's pitch black. The park is scary as hell in the dark. It feels like some psychopath could jump out and stab me to death at any moment.

I'm pretty certain I've read that women are half as likely as men to be a victim of crime, but twice as likely to fear that they'll be a victim of crime. Ergo, statistically baseless reason for the paranoia, men should be more worried by the midnight stroll than a woman.

Fm wrote:

TheTurnipKing wrote:Of course I know this. To be honest, I was looking for an earlier strip which is a feminist parody of 50 Shades of Grey, but this one serves to demonstate the point too.

If you look at it as a story... well, it's a bit gooseberry fool. Stories need drama, conflict, heroes, villians. Good things must happen to bad people, and bad things must happen to good people. If people just go for a walk, it's not much of a story.

I can't tell if you're being serious here, but it is possible to write a story that involves all those things and isn't misogynist.

Make every character in the story a woman?

Shadow wrote:

Her Lego video is spot on too, and actually a little sad.

Wrong.

So wrong.

Firstly, she says legos, people who say legos should be shot.

Secondly the themes shift in lego comes from all children not just boys. This has been discussed at great length, Lego was a dying brand at the turn of the century, kids don't play with toys anymore, its as simple as that. I was playing with toys until I was about 11, children these days play with toys until they're about 7 or 8, then its video games, Ipads and gooseberry fool like that. Lego shifted from have they're own dedicated themes to having franchises mostly based on TV and movies to keep sales up. Star wars for example is barely aimed at kids, its aimed at men and it's been argued without Lego star wars the company would likely not even be here today.

The shift in aiming the themes mainly at boys came in the mid 80's when girls were dropped from lego marketing, do you know why? Because girls don't pay with lego! shocking I know, there is a percentage that did, or do, but Lego knew that most of their products were bought by boys and focused on this to sell more stuff, easy route maybe, but what companies aren't known for this? Of seeing a market and hammering it to get more sales?

She says the themes have become violent. All lego did was start producing themes based on what boys did with their lego, building fight ships, robots and all that. City theme is based on cops and robbers, because thats what everyone did as kids, you had a police station, you'd take a pirate from the pirate themes, he became your criminal, you'd build him a baddy car and play cops and robbers. If kids are doing this already, play up to it to sell more gooseberry fool.

She shows Lego technic which further strawberry floats her arguement, Lego knew girls were not playing with lego past the age for 9 or 10, as were boys, but the ratio showed that at the age of 9 or 10 it was still more boys regardless of their marketing, maybe they could have done more to try and get more girls playing, but they didn't, they focused on the gender who were a larger part of the buying market and introduced a theme to keep them into their teens, introduced in 1984, long before they marketing changed to boys only, Lego already knew.

Lego Ninjago isn't violent, its about as violent as Pokemon, infact its a Lego version of Pokemon. The point of it is to collect all the minifigures and battle them against each other, thats the underlying needs for it, it hammers into that need in children to collect stuff, or more so boys to collect stuff, sadly its something in the boys genetic makeup, we like to collect gooseberry fool, from Pogs to Pokemon cards, its what we do. If girls were the same I'm sure lego would be doing the same thing to them.

Any theme aimed at girls is sexist in her mind. surely the same could and can be said of males. males like space ships, cars, guns, castles and violence. Thats what Lego are saying, and the boys are lapping it up. Because we do. guess what? Girls love that Friends lego because it apeals to what they like too, the sales of it shows, if they didn't like it they wouldn't buy it. The amount of running around I had to do at xmas to get that Olivia's house was mad because it was sold out strawberry floating everywhere, it was in the top ten selling toys of Xmas past.

She wants Lego of the 60's and 70's where it was all equal gendered, but it wasn't, Lego had girls in the marketing to try and get girls to play with lego, but it never worked as well as it did with boys. The sets from the back them were still cars, trackors, planes garages and stuff. Don't believe me, have a look...



All stuff aimed at girls

Genderless lego exsists, the big boxes of random lego. Lego have always had these, will always have these, but to say that basically until Christiansen retired in 87 or 88 that all lego was equal and aimed at both sexes and was this perfect genderless toy is batshit insane and a LIE.

The new ads for lego. Sons and fathers playing with lego with each other, because that father grew up in the 70's playing with lego, probably has some bad ass Technic on a shelf in his study, the Mum, probably remembers having some lego, all kids have lego, but it never had the impact it had on her husband, why would that be? Well its far more than just marketing, boys and girls are not the same, and its far more than I can even begin to discuss, but its clearly something to do with our heads, something exsists in boys that makes them want to build gooseberry fool and destroy gooseberry fool, that doesn't seems to exsist, in such a large fashion in girls, its the sad truth of her shitty arguement.

She's so wrong it hurts.

TL:DR - Boys like Lego more than girls, always have, Lego have no shame in aiming their products at them because it equals more dollar.

Lego

Nail on the head really. Anything that generalises women is sexist, anything that generalises men isn't.

Fade wrote:

rudderless wrote:

Fade wrote:This is what bugs me about feminism. Women have far more freedom to do what they like than men do. If anything it's men that are constrained by stereotypes these days.

Dude. My girlfriends friend had her scholarship paid for her (she wants to be an engineer) because she's female.
I want to be an infant school teacher. Until a few years ago the only man working there was a caretaker.
There are now two more. But every other member of staff is a woman that's 2 male (formerly zero) teaching staff, to about 20 odd women.
I'm pretty sure I wouldn't get my education paid for me. And why does a Engineer (who is going to earn bucketloads) need their student loans paid for them?

I'm not saying women aren't oppressed at all. Don't be silly. And men are fine as long as they stick within their expected parameters. To be fair, it's close minded men that are the problem really, for men and women.

There has been a campaign to get men into child care especially for pre schoolers also the hospital I work in has tried to recruit more men because the staff is predominantly female.

Bit old but

http://m.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/ma ... ces.uknews

Grumpy David wrote:

Meep wrote:Not exactly a situation unique to women, is it? I wouldn't go out for walk on my own at midnight. That would be dumb, depending on the area. I hate it when it gets dark in winter I have to walk the dog when it's pitch black. The park is scary as hell in the dark. It feels like some psychopath could jump out and stab me to death at any moment.

I'm pretty certain I've read that women are half as likely as men to be a victim of crime, but twice as likely to fear that they'll be a victim of crime. Ergo, statistically baseless reason for the paranoia, men should be more worried by the midnight stroll than a woman.

Fm wrote:

TheTurnipKing wrote:Of course I know this. To be honest, I was looking for an earlier strip which is a feminist parody of 50 Shades of Grey, but this one serves to demonstate the point too.

If you look at it as a story... well, it's a bit gooseberry fool. Stories need drama, conflict, heroes, villians. Good things must happen to bad people, and bad things must happen to good people. If people just go for a walk, it's not much of a story.

I can't tell if you're being serious here, but it is possible to write a story that involves all those things and isn't misogynist.

Make every character in the story a woman?

Buffy The Vampire Slayer is a non sexist show with a lot of conflict. It's actually pro feminist.

Can anyone think of a film or video game where a female protagonist saves her male lover? Thinking about it is actually bothering me.

Shadow wrote:

Her Lego video is spot on too, and actually a little sad.

Is this woman your wife or something? I honestly can't believe you're saying any of the gooseberry fool she's spouting is right. I can't believe people paid her to do this.

I echo boris on what he said on Lego too.

StayDead wrote:Is this woman your wife or something?

And they say feminism is irrelevant.

The LEGO Friends line is rubbish though, she got that right.

lex-man wrote:

Fade wrote:

rudderless wrote:

Fade wrote:This is what bugs me about feminism. Women have far more freedom to do what they like than men do. If anything it's men that are constrained by stereotypes these days.

Dude. My girlfriends friend had her scholarship paid for her (she wants to be an engineer) because she's female.
I want to be an infant school teacher. Until a few years ago the only man working there was a caretaker.
There are now two more. But every other member of staff is a woman that's 2 male (formerly zero) teaching staff, to about 20 odd women.
I'm pretty sure I wouldn't get my education paid for me. And why does a Engineer (who is going to earn bucketloads) need their student loans paid for them?

I'm not saying women aren't oppressed at all. Don't be silly. And men are fine as long as they stick within their expected parameters. To be fair, it's close minded men that are the problem really, for men and women.

There has been a campaign to get men into child care especially for pre schoolers also the hospital I work in has tried to recruit more men because the staff is predominantly female.

Bit old but

http://m.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/ma ... ces.uknews

That's all well and good but my Uni fees wouldn't get waved would they?

I believe the phrase is "what about the menz?"

Dalagonash wrote:The LEGO Friends line is rubbish though, she got that right.

Its not any worse than the ninjago stuff imo, its all aimed at very young children, with very little building in it.

As I said, I had to get that Olivia's house for someone for xmas, its an okay build, all modular once its done. Has a few nice features which could be used if you're a city builder.

Ain't no Pirate ships though

Boris laying the smackdown! Well done.

It's notable that Cracked managed to do pretty much this exact same thing with Disney films in their excellent After Hours series (http://www.cracked.com/video_18506_the- ... -kids.html) without the response descending into the vein of vile misogyny that Sarkeesian has somehow tapped into. Admittedly the tone is more comedic than essay-like, but still. That's gamers on the Internet for you I guess.

The toys you play with don't determine your career.

Isn't that image assuming that you're forcing girls to have those toys.

When In reality they probably asked for them.

When I was a kid we had plenty of Kinex and Lego in the house and my sister never wanted to play with it.