Getting rid of women is NOT a way to get rid of misogyny

[cimorene]

So, I've been reading Iron Man fiction through the delicious tags. And I stumbled on the existence of some fiction described as "Tony/Pepper slash" (what?)... where Pepper is played by Shia LaBeouf. The problem with that is that she's already played by Gwyneth Paltrow. The basic concept was discomfiting and somewhat annoying - faint whiffs of misogyny in the air, or am I just imagining that? As someone used to living in fandom, and reading lots of slash fiction, I have become familiar with the get-rid-of-the-icky-girls attitude towards canon women who are thought to get in the way of the slash (although it sometimes applies, with even more virulent hatred, even when in canon they were simply potentially in the way - when their offence, in essence, was in existing at all). But hey, I said to myself. Maybe it's just someone with a jones for weird AUs. Maybe accidentally getting rid of the only female character was a side-effect. I scrolled on.

But then today I accidentally clicked on one of them. this begins with the cheery injunction, "See this post for reasons why Shia LaBeouf is 893523524968x better as Pepper Potts than that Paltrow woman. With pictures!" Okay, is anyone else getting pissed off? I ordered a cup of tea to go with my misogyny and clicked. After all, there's no chance that it's not misogynistic, but there is the chance that they at least have some reasons, right?

Silly me. Wrong! All the reasons why LaBeouf is "better" in the part of Iron Man's PA than Paltrow... are pictures. Except the first one, which gobsmacked me into incoherent rage with the apparently wholly unself-aware declaration, "You know what gets rid of misogyny? Getting rid of women."

I'm sorry... WHAT?

Try making Iron Man played by Michelle Rodriguez. That would get rid of misogyny (or at least some of it), provided it wasn't done the same way DC and Marvel historically handle female heroes. Getting rid of the sole female character, even if she weren't in the least intelligent or interesting, would not do anything like getting rid of misogyny. You know who else has had ideas about getting rid of women?

• the military!


• the Shakers!


• various sports organisations!


• those little boys who throw things at you and call you names from their clubhouse which is adorned with the sign reading "NO GIRLS ALOUD"!


• the governments of various countries!


• the Catholic church, and following their sterling example, a lot of other churches as well!


• the business world! They made the model efficient by installing a contraption known as "The Glass Ceiling"!


• the Good Ol' Boys Leagues that work by secret handshakes and nepotism to give men jobs!


• Gentlemen's Clubs, some of which offer cigars and some of which offer the sexual favours of prostitutes who may or may not have been the victims of human traffic!

Need I go on? Getting rid of women doesn't get rid of misogyny - it allows it to flourish; it allows women to be more expediently devalued and dehumanised. All getting rid of women does is postpone the heterosexual sexual encounters until such time as the misogynists who are not gay leave the No Girls Aloud zone.

Comments

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Urg, yeah, I saw that third post you linked a while back. It's really disgusting. Did you see this caption for a picture of Shia with a girl?

"Pepper and some trash help out Iron Man
At Iron Man's insistance, Pepper helps some vag, but really he's doing it for Tony."

OH YES, NOT MISOGYNISTIC AT ALL! Vag! Trash! For no other reason than that she's female. And, I guess, touching her precious Shia. Ew, girl cooties!

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Yes! I saw that. Clearly her plot to remove misogyny by removing all female characters won't work unless there are also no women IN THE WORLD for Pepper to accidentally demean... IN HIS MIND.

[buddleia.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course, it's an ironic statement (http://subterrain.livejournal.com/21747.html?thread=296435#t296435), and why anyone should find it offensive, when "The cognitive dissonance a feminist slash writer has to deal with is fairly killer, as I'm sure you know."

Um, WHUT?

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Uhhhhh... is she trying to say that every instance of anyone choosing a sexual or romantic relationship with a man over one with a woman constitutes discrimination, and therefore is the same as a universe with no women in it?

...Not that it needs saying, but... WRONG.

[buddleia.livejournal.com]

I think it's that old chestnut of correlating women viewing gay male sexuality with 'lesbian' porn for straight guys. THEREFORE, as a feminist, she can't engage with slash except ironically and everything she says is ironic and so if anyone's offended it is their own fault and they are interrogating the text from the wrong perspective OMG.

Takes away all the sting, doesn't it? No?

[cimness.livejournal.com]

That is a plausible interpretation of her intent, but it still doesn't actually have any more logic.

A third possibility would be that she's advocating a slash world without any women (or rather ironically advocating it, which would presumably translate in the Feminist Srs Bizness That Expresses Itself By Writing Pr0n as ... denouncing and deprecating it while wanking to it?) precisely because she perceives the strong tendency towards "Get Rid of the Women, Then The Fun Starts" in much slash and is trying to make A Statement about that. On the other hand, that also doesn't make sense given that she's done so by surgically replacing a female character with a male one, but maybe she feels that that adds a delicious helping of irony sauce on top of the irony brownie?

[buddleia.livejournal.com]

And doesn't that irony sauce on irony brownie taste exactly like the same old shit, hmm?

[cimness.livejournal.com]

We were misled by the Cherry of Paradox.

[dreamnnightmare.livejournal.com]

it seems 2 me when u remove all female characters u betr b ready 2 PROVE th story's not misogynistic, cos few egalitarian folks want unisex worlds. ugly veins of bigotry in fandom (as in th world) reach th surface where writers use demeaning words against any groups they irrationally don't like. I guess macho movies attract that sort.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Iron Man was one of the best and funniest movies of the year. And not very macho. Robert Downey Jr's character is a robot-tinkering computer genius, even if he does have biceps, and strangely enough the message is kind of anti-arms industry. It's a superhero movie, of course, which is an inherently macho genre and subject to many of its themes. But the bizarre part of this is that this woman is a slash fan and a slash writer, who insists that ALL slash (because it is male/male erotica written by women) is inherently sexist - and that is part of an illogical rationale for making it even more sexist. She claims this is "ironic".

[norah.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear Lord. I just, I can't even. WHAT THE FUCK.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

The snide tone of her responses to jmtorres' comments calling her on it is still more boggling.

[hollsh.livejournal.com]

....how stupid can people get? Really??

Maybe it was written by a Shaker.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Apparently it was written by someone who thinks that slash is inherently sexist, and therefore the only way to live with it is to write the most sexist slash possible and claim that it's ironic. OR SOMETHING.

[elfiepike.livejournal.com]

You know, I enjoyed that fic when I totally ignored the intro stuff, but now I really wish they had written Tony Stark (Michelle Rodriguez)/Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). That. That would have been amazing.

Secondly, word. :(

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Maybe they could just make Michelle an original character. Cause you know, I kind of liked Tony too. And hey, they already had chemistry... isn't Michelle dating Kristanna Loken? Maybe Gwyneth is her type.

[brownbetty]

Irony: the world where you don't have to take responsibility for anything you do.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Succinctly put yet thoroughly explains the whole mess.

[eleveninches.livejournal.com]

*covers face with hands*

[esorlehcar.livejournal.com]

oselle (remember her?), during the whole SPN misogyny thing, after a long essay explaining how SPN has never and could do anything even vaguely misogynistic, suggested a letter-writing campaign telling the SPN writers not to include any more women on the show. Gotta love fandom.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA! Really? Wow. ...Oh, fandom!

[esorlehcar.livejournal.com]

On the plus side, if she's written any dissertations on how Dean Winchester is her personal lord and savior, she had the good sense to keep them locked this time...