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Bizarro week
Jun. 28th, 2013 01:00 amSo much topsy-turvy this week.
If you regularly portray men as powerful, resourceful, determined, and independent in movies and whatnot, you run into a problem when it comes time to introduce a female character. On the one hand, if you present her as emotional or empathetic or cooperative, you imply that women are inferior to men. On the other hand, if you portray her as equivalently powerful, resourceful, determined, and independent to your male characters, you imply that women need to be like men to be valuable. Ironically, the way out of this dilemma is to diversify the ways in which you portray positive male characters.
Anders Zanichkowsky is a self-professed radical liberal who staunchly opposes same-sex marriage rights on the grounds that marriage equality A) does not address any of the most serious issues affecting any of the most marginalized members of society, and furthermore B) fighting for marriage equality actively deprives those latter causes of time, money, and effort. Two middle-class white gay guys visiting each other in the hospital or shaving a couple hundred bucks off a joint tax return is nice and all, but allowing more marriages won't stop poor people from starving, black people from getting thrown in jail over and over for no reason, or trans people from getting shot by drunk police who want sex.
Actually, add C) that with respect to people who don't understand how bad things really are, small positive developments like the fall of DOMA give the false impression that significant forward progress is being made toward universal justice and civil rights. When it comes to solving problems so big that all of society needs to pull together, the only thing worse than no progress is some progress.
And don't forget D) that if your overarching goal is liberty and respect for all lifestyles, about the most bass-ackward thing you can do is desire to be more like the mainstream majority and just get married and raise children. Becoming more like the people who hate "weirdos" lessens the pressure on those haters to stop hating all those other groups who remained true to themselves.
