Digging deeper
Jun. 29th, 2013 01:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerWeell, I seem to have said something so vile and vomitous in my previous post that nobody wanted to touch it with a bargepole, or maybe it's just too hot. So let's clarify.
I am violently opposed to sexual harassment in all its forms, because it is by definition non-consensual. I am very much in favour of equality for everyone, even myself, and against the oppression of women by men, gays by straights, non-whites by whites, and fat people by thin people; in fact oppression in itself strikes me as an all-round bad idea, in this real world in which we live. Everything should be consensual, or it shouldn't happen.
I think my point about the power balance in Sinfest is still valid, though, and I think my last question in that post was the kicker.
Sitcoms are fiction, not real. I think everyone's fairly clear on that. And Sinfest started out, basically, as a sitcom. Now, in relationship-based sitcoms, from The Flintstones to My Family and beyond, it's generally a given that the woman--the wife, the mother, the girlfriend, whatever--is really the one in charge. She is intelligent, wise, competent and long-suffering. The man (vain, stupid, weak, childish) is a useless appendage, there to be laughed at, not with. This is certainly not generally regarded as true in the real world, though it's arguable that it should be. And thus in Sinfest when it began, 'Nique was the one in charge of her life, and also largely of Slick's. She got ogled by dudebros, certainly, but if you get up on a stage and ask men in so many words if they think you're sexy, an affirmative response (if you're 'Nique) can hardly come as an unwelcome surprise.
So...when she renounces her power over men (and theirs over her) and becomes effectively a non-sexual being, neither taking nor giving, it strikes oddly to someone like me who believes that the struggle for equality should be about women becoming as powerful as men, not as powerless. Which is why I think the author started from the wrong place, fictionally speaking; from a place in which the power balance, as it affects the principal characters, was all the other way to start with, so that the effect of the Sisterhood seems to be a retrograde step, leading to a state in which no-one has enough agency to initiate any kind of sexual encounter, even consensually. And maybe this is the point which Ishida, rightly or wrongly, is trying to make.
If so, I wish he'd get on and make it.
I am violently opposed to sexual harassment in all its forms, because it is by definition non-consensual. I am very much in favour of equality for everyone, even myself, and against the oppression of women by men, gays by straights, non-whites by whites, and fat people by thin people; in fact oppression in itself strikes me as an all-round bad idea, in this real world in which we live. Everything should be consensual, or it shouldn't happen.
I think my point about the power balance in Sinfest is still valid, though, and I think my last question in that post was the kicker.
Sitcoms are fiction, not real. I think everyone's fairly clear on that. And Sinfest started out, basically, as a sitcom. Now, in relationship-based sitcoms, from The Flintstones to My Family and beyond, it's generally a given that the woman--the wife, the mother, the girlfriend, whatever--is really the one in charge. She is intelligent, wise, competent and long-suffering. The man (vain, stupid, weak, childish) is a useless appendage, there to be laughed at, not with. This is certainly not generally regarded as true in the real world, though it's arguable that it should be. And thus in Sinfest when it began, 'Nique was the one in charge of her life, and also largely of Slick's. She got ogled by dudebros, certainly, but if you get up on a stage and ask men in so many words if they think you're sexy, an affirmative response (if you're 'Nique) can hardly come as an unwelcome surprise.
So...when she renounces her power over men (and theirs over her) and becomes effectively a non-sexual being, neither taking nor giving, it strikes oddly to someone like me who believes that the struggle for equality should be about women becoming as powerful as men, not as powerless. Which is why I think the author started from the wrong place, fictionally speaking; from a place in which the power balance, as it affects the principal characters, was all the other way to start with, so that the effect of the Sisterhood seems to be a retrograde step, leading to a state in which no-one has enough agency to initiate any kind of sexual encounter, even consensually. And maybe this is the point which Ishida, rightly or wrongly, is trying to make.
If so, I wish he'd get on and make it.
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no subject
Date: 2013-06-29 01:02 pm (UTC)I did skim you previous post today, but I don't follow sinfest so didn't comment.
Two more shots of caffeine to counter the pills, and then I'll re-read it properly.