For F—‘s Sake, Watch ‘The Thick Of It’

The fourteen episodes of Armando Iannucci’s brilliant BBC show The Thick Of It appeared on Hulu a couple of weeks ago, and the upcoming fourth season will stream there as well. I am having a bafflingly hard time convincing even my most devoted Anglophile friends to watch it. Maybe the pace and intensity are off-putting: it’s a show that demands your full, rapt attention to decipher its rapid-fire dialogue (and British accents, if that’s a difficulty for you). Maybe the unrelenting cynicism is discouraging for my starry-eyed friends (I know a LOT of Aaron Sorkin devotees). Maybe the Westminster setting is daunting to Americans who assume that familiarity with the ins and outs of UK politics is a prerequisite, when in reality all a non-Brit would miss are throwaway jokes about odds and ends of British culture (Mark Kermode’s flappy hands, anyone?). Whatever it is that’s giving people pause, I wish they’d overcome it, because this is a really, really good TV show.
As a cynical comedy about the relationship between a hapless government minister and a Machiavellian civil servant, The Thick Of It is naturally a spiritual successor to excellent 1980s sitcom Yes Minister– but it is a very 21st-century successor. The archly satirical wit of Yes Minister isn’t wholly absent from from The Thick Of It, but it is rather overshadowed by, well, the gloriously colorful and endlessly creative obscenity. A viewer conducting even the most casual compare-and-contrast of the two series will notice two interesting trends:
1. Twenty-first-century Westminster is no less white than 1980s Westminster. This, unfortunately, is a reflection of reality: people of color currently comprise 4% of MPs (a figure that was significantly lower when The Thick Of It began in 2005), and Parliament’s own website admits that even though “[t]he House of Commons is more reflective of the population it represents than ever before […] it remains the case that more than 400 MPs, 62% of the total, are white men aged over 40.”
2. There is a far wider variety of accents, and a hell of a lot more swearing, in the newer show. This is something that cannot be explained without a brief discussion of the deeply complex question of class in British politics, so please bear with me. UK politics has always been an old boys’ club. The traditional track to Westminster runs through a private school, ideally Eton, and a top-tier university, ideally Oxbridge. That same Parliament webpage notes that over a quarter of current MPs went to Oxbridge, and over a third went to private schools. This is vastly disproportionate to the general population – but it is an improvement over the past. In 1982 Yes Minister could include lengthy rants about Greek and Latin quotations and jokes mocking a minister who attended the LSE; one suspects that that simply wouldn’t fly today.
The delicate subtleties of regional accents in the UK are far beyond my capacity to explain; suffice it to say that, first, regional accents are historically the marker of a working-class background, and, second, they are much more acceptable in politics and media today than they were 30 years ago. There is, then, a more or less explicit class dynamic at play in The Thick Of It between the RP-accented ministers and the very Scottish Peter Capaldi, who stars as very terrifying government spin doctor Malcolm Tucker.
Good God this man is terrifying.
Malcolm is the core of the show, and he is a wonder to behold. In creating Malcolm Tucker, Iannucci seems to have drawn from both his own Scottish heritage and from the well of “terrifying Scot” archetypes that populate the British imagination: from Wallace bellowing “FREEDOM!” to Miss Jean Brodie to Professor McGonagall to the monstrous Manda in Alan Warner’s The Stars In The Bright Sky (get a copy; you’ll thank me later), echoed in US pop culture through figures like Groundskeeper Willie and Shrek. An explosive hurricane of Caledonian fury, Malcolm tears through Westminster, bullying, threatening, effing, blinding, and occasionally punching anyone unfortunate enough to oppose his will. He’s the kind of villain who’s an absolute joy to hate, reveling in his own evil machinations and spouting quotable profanity like it’s going out of style.
Not that the other characters lack for memorable quotes. The writing for this show reminds me of Oscar Wilde (in a potty-mouthed, 21st-century kind of way): all the characters essentially speak with exactly the same voice, but it’s such a very funny voice that nobody really minds. And, of course, a great strength of this style is that the women characters sound as though they were written to be characters first, women second. Our culture is swimming in female characters who sounds as if they were written by someone who, at best, has never actually interacted with a woman, and, at worst, genuinely believes women to be a completely different species than human beings. Armando Iannucci’s women are not like this at all, and it’s depressing how refreshing that is.
In my opinion, The Thick Of It only really hits its stride with the introduction of Rebecca Front as Nicola Murray, MP, in the third season. (The first two were only three episodes each, so she’s still in more than half the series.) This was a matter of necessity, owing to Chris Langham’s ignominious fall from public grace, but it gives the show a dynamic it really needs. When Langham’s Hugh Abbott was the hapless minister struggling to hang onto his job in the face of mockery from special advisers Glen and Ollie and relentless terrorism from Malcolm, the cast was just toohomogeneous. Nicola has to deal with not only the pressures Hugh faced as an overworked, underprepared, perpetually outgunned minister trying desperately to be relevant; but she also has to cope with the specific challenges of being a woman in a profession that is still 78% male-dominated. Dubbed a “glummy mummy” by the press, Nicola is caught in the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t position of the woman in the high-pressure job – expected to prioritize her work while simultaneously being the World’s Greatest Mother, in a way that men are simply never expected to do. Being at the nexus of such impossible expectations never overwhelms Nicola’s character or turns her into a straw person of any kind, but it is a constant presence in the dynamic of her interactions with others, to the point that even the ferocious Malcolm appears to have a little sympathy for her.

Poor Nicola.
Iannucci seems to have recognized how interesting this dynamic is, and attempted to replicate it this year in his HBO show Veep, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a (once again) hapless vice president. Veep is an intriguing attempt to transplant the magic of The Thick Of It to a US context (foreshadowed to some extent in the transatlantic hijinks of 2009 alternate-universe spin-off film In The Loop), but I’m not yet convinced that it’s a fully successful one. For one thing, the US televisual landscape is so prudish that, even on HBO, the swears don’t roll off tongues as organically as on British TV. For another, the lack of a truly nefarious Malcolm Tucker figure, while an understandable artistic choice to create distance from The Thick Of It, in my opinion undermines the show’s cohesiveness. And I question the wisdom of choosing to piss away a potentially really interesting pregnancy subplot offscreen.
My reservations notwithstanding, I will be watching Veep‘s second season, because it’s pretty funny, and because I trust Armando Iannucci. But I’m much more excited for The Thick Of It season four, and it would be nice if the rest of America cared too.
  
Max Thornton is a grad student who doesn’t really like pronouns but won’t object to either ey/em or he/him. Too British for the US and too American for the UK, Max currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area but dreams of London and New York. Max likes theology, intersectional feminism, and pop culture, and blogs about these things at Gay Christian Geek.

Weekly Feminist Film Question: Who Are Your Favorite Amazing Female Characters in Film and TV?

Hey film lovers! It’s time for this week’s feminist film question. Who are your favorite amazing women in film and television? Here’s what you said:
Sidney Prescott (Jennifer Garner) in Alias
Lt. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Alien: Resurrection
Margo Channing (Bette Davis) in All About Eve
Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) in The Amazing Spider-Man
Kara “Starbuck” Thrace (Katee Sackhoff) in Battlestar Galactica 

Violet (Jennifer Tilly) in Bound
Jane Craig (Holly Hunter) in Broadcast News
Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic), Dr. Lanie Parish (Tamala Jones), Alexis Castle (Molly Quinn), Martha Rodgers (Susan Sullivan) in Castle
Britta Perry (Gillian Jacobs) in Community
Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) in Easy A
Pa’u Zotoh Zhaan (Virginia Hey) in Farscape
Zoe Washburne (Gina Torres) in Firefly and Serenity
Annie MacDuggan Paradis (Diane Keaton), Brenda Morelli Cushman (Bette Midler) and Elise Elliot Atchison (Goldie Hawn) in The First Wives Club
Mia Williams (Katie Jarvis) in Fish Tank
Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace / Rooney Mara) in Girl with the Dragon Tattoo / The Millennium Trilogy
Dorothy Zbornak (Bea Arthur) in The Golden Girls
Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) in Gone with the Wind
Kalinda Sharma (Archie Panjabi) in The Good Wife
Dr. Christina Yang (Sandra Oh) and Dr. Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson) in Grey’s Anatomy
Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) in Harry Potter
Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) in Homeland
Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) and Joan Harris (Christina Hendricks) in Mad Men
Alike (Adepero Oduye) in Pariah
Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) in Parks and Recreation
Lizzie Bennett (Keira Knightley / Greer Garson) in Pride and Prejudice
San (Yuriko Ishida / Claire Danes) in Princess Mononoke
Alice (Milla Jovovich) in Resident Evil
Sailor Uranus (Megumi Ogata / Sarah Lafleur) in Sailor Moon
Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) in Scandal
Ruth Fisher (Frances Conroy) in Six Feet Under

Chihiro Ogino (Daveigh Chase) in Spirited Away
Uhura (Nichelle Nichols / Zoe Saldana) in Star Trek

Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton / Lena Headey) in The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles
Tara Thornton (Rutina Wesley) and Pam (Kristen Bauer van Straten) in True Blood
Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman) in V for Vendetta
Nancy Botwin (Mary Louise-Parker) in Weeds
C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney) in The West Wing
Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) in The Wizard of Oz

Xena (Lucy Lawless) in Xena: Warrior Princess
Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) in The X-Files
Who are your fave female film and TV characters? Tell us in the comments!
——
Each week we tweet a new question and then post your answers on our site each Friday! To participate, just follow us on Twitter at @BitchFlicks and use the Twitter hashtag #feministfilm.

Call for Writers: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Theme Week

That’s right. August is Buffy Theme Week OMFG!!!! This topic is so freakin’ wide open I don’t even know what to say. 

Buffy (the TV show specifically) has given rise to such amazingness as Buffy Studies courses in college, academic and pop culture conferences, and the online academic journal: Slayage: The Journal of the Whedon Studies Association. And let’s not forget the ever-popular Joss Whedon weblog Whedonesque
So … is Buffy feminist? Anti-feminist? How are women of color treated? How are lesbian relationships treated? How is rape treated? How is violence against women treated? What about mothers and motherhood? Does Buffy hold up as a feminist hero in 2012 (if you ever believed she was one)? So much etcetera.
We want to know! TELL US.

As a reminder, these are a few basic guidelines for guest writers on our site:

–We like most of our pieces to be 1,000 – 2,000 words, preferably with some images and links.
–Please send your piece in the text of an email, including links to all images, no later than Friday, August 24th.
–Include a 2-3 sentence bio for placement at the end of your piece.
Email us at btchflcks(at)gmail(dot)com if you’d like to contribute a review. We accept original pieces or cross-posts.

Submit away!

Women in Science Fiction Week: Is ‘Terminator’s Sarah Connor an Allegory for Single Mothers?

Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in Terminator 2: Judgment Day

This post previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on May 25, 2012.

Mothers are supposed to be everything to everyone. Sadly, society often stigmatizes, vilifies and demonizes single mothers. Single moms are blamed for “breeding more criminals.” Single parenthood is criminalized and “declared child abuse.” On top of that, “almost 70% of people believe single women raising children on their own is bad for society.” WTF? Seriously?? Wow. Way to be misogynistic people.

So it’s no surprise to see broken and dysfunctional single moms reflected on-screen. And don’t get me wrong. I love watching flawed female characters. But what about single mom Sarah Connor, “the mother of destiny?” Often labeled a feminist hero, topping lists for greatest female characters, is she the “ultimate protective single mother?”
Along with Ellen Ripley, Sarah helped pave the way for strong female characters. In Terminator, Sarah (Linda Hamilton) is a friendly college student and food server, lacking confidence, who “can’t even balance [her] checkbook.” Targeted by cyborg assassins sent from the future to kill her son, the future resistance leader fighting against domineering machines, she is thrust into a hellish nightmare fighting for her life. The Sarah (Linda Hamilton) of Terminator 2: Judgment Daytransforms into a badass goddess. With her sculpted muscles doing pull-ups and firing guns, she’s a ferocious warrior filled with rage (something women are rarely allowed to exhibit) yet haunted and struggling with mental stability. In the cancelled-way-too-early fantastic TV series Sarah Connor Chronicles, we witness Sarah (Lena Headey) as a brave single mother, passionate, smart, angry and flawed, doing everything she can to not only survive but thrive.
As kickass as she is, Sarah possesses no other identity beyond motherhood. She exists solely to protect her John from assassination or humanity will be wiped out. Every decision, every choice she makes, is to protect her son. In Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cameron tells Sarah that “Without John, your life has no purpose.” Sarah tells her ex-fiancé that she’s not trying to change her fate but change John’s. Even before she becomes a mother in Terminator, her identity is tied to her uterus and her capacity for motherhood.

[…]

On the surface, it seems like the Terminator franchise revolves around a dude often searching for a father figure rather than appreciating his mother. And problematic depictions of motherhood do emerge. But who’s really the hero? Is it the smart hacker son destined to be a leader? Is it the cyborg that learns humanity? Or is it the brave and fierce single mother who sacrifices everything to protect humanity and doesn’t wait for destiny to unfold but takes matters into her own hands?

Continue reading –> 

 

Women in Science Fiction Week: In Defence of Jo Grant, Beyond Screams and Miniskirts: The Women of Classic ‘Doctor Who’

Guest post written by Barrett Vann.
Let’s talk about Doctor Who. Let’s talk, in fact, about the Doctor’s companions. Back in the day of 2005, when Doctor Who came back to the airwaves, there were a lot of inevitable comparisons between this New Who and the Classic Who that ran from ‘63 to ‘89. People talked about the Doctor himself, about the plots, the monsters– and they talked about his companions. Rose Tyler was lauded as a new kind of companion– not so much an assistant as a partner, wearing baggy jeans and using her wits and determination, not one of those screaming, knicker-flashing ninnies from the old series back in the sexist sixties and seventies.
Well, wait just a bloody minute. Certainly the stereotype exists that companions back in the day were nothing but a bit of eye candy to entice the dads into watching a family show, and no-one is going to argue that feminism and gender issues haven’t advanced in fifty years. But were the women of Classic Who really nothing but a load of scantily-dressed damsels who screamed at the first sign of danger or imminent alien invasion?
They certainly were not.
I’m going to start with the Third Doctor, because I love him, and because two of his companions make a wonderful illustration for the variety of why and how the women of Classic Who were awesome. The Third Doctor, played by Jon Pertwee from 1970-1974, had several companions, but it is the first two I want to compare here, Liz Shaw and Jo Grant.

Dr. Shaw, being serious
Jo Grant, being a nature child
Dr. Liz Shaw was a Cambridge-educated scientist, and expert on meteorites with at least two degrees, one in physics and one in medicine. Although young and fashionable (fashionable here meaning improbably short skirts and equally improbable heels), she has no romances whilst on the show, and grows impatient with being treated like the Doctor’s errand-girl. A career woman (and undeniably a woman not a girl), she’s part of UNIT before the Doctor showed up, and though they do develop a good relationship, he’s never the end-all be-all of what she’s doing with her life. Indeed, when she does eventually leave UNIT to return to her research, she cites as her reason that the Doctor did not need a capable assistant, what he really needed was “someone to pass him his test tubes and tell him how brilliant he was.” Amusingly, this rather meta observation does indeed reflect what was often the role of the Doctor’s companion, a role Liz often deviated from.
Her successor, Jo Grant, would seem initially to fit much more comfortably into that role. When she first hit the screen, Josephine Grant was young, 19 or 20, inexperienced, and only got the job at UNIT because she had an uncle in the ministry. She’s blonde, bubbly, and at first appears to be a bit of a ditz. She flirts with the UNIT men, she giggles, she admits (often) that she doesn’t understand things; when she’s frightened, she screams. In her first appearance, she accidentally wrecks an experiment the Doctor’s working on, and then is hypnotised into almost blowing up UNIT. In stark contrast to the very scientific Liz, and the Doctor himself, she’s a New Agey 70’s girl, open to the possibilities of magic and superstition, and occasionally the show mocks her for this. On one occasion, she actually ends up dressed in white and strapped to an altar as a virgin sacrifice. A more potent image of objectified, powerless femininity it would be hard to find. Unlike Liz, who leaves the show to further her career, Jo leaves because she’s fallen in love and wants to get married and study mushrooms in the Amazon.
So it might be easy to dismiss Jo as one of those useless female companions. A pretty bit of skirt to be an audience stand-in for the Doctor to explicate to. Except for the fact that Jo Grant is awesome. She’s a trained escapologist, she can fly a helicopter, she can abseil; in ‘The Mind of Evil’, she karates a prison riot leader out of his gun. On numerous occasions, when the Doctor’s got himself locked up somewhere, she comes to his rescue. Though in her first appearance, the Master hypnotises her, the Doctor teaches her how to resist it, so that in later confrontations, the Master is utterly frustrated by his inability to dominate her mind. In ‘The Time Monster’, when they run into the Master, again, and he finds himself unable to find anything to say, she mockingly suggests, ‘How about, “Curses, foiled again”?’ She’s also bold, capable of making hard decisions under pressure. Again in ‘Time Monster’, the Doctor threatens their mutual destruction by initiating a Time Ram, shoving his and the Master’s TARDISes into the same temporospatial coordinates; but when the Doctor hesitates, Jo’s the one who makes the final move to press the big red button.

Jo Grant is unimpressed by your gun, Master

Ultimately, though, even disregarding her badassery, Jo is a great character. It’s easy to dismiss her because she is, in many ways, very girly. And as anyone knows, girliness is too often considered one and the same as weakness; girly characters have to ‘make up’ for themselves by compensating with more masculine traits if they are to be considered strong. But are Jo’s girly qualities weak? Not at all. She’s good with people, certainly better than the Doctor; she’s emotional and empathetic– and if she screams when she’s frightened? I call that a perfectly reasonable response. She is sometimes gullible, ditzy, she did fail her science A-levels, but all that means is that she’s flawed, as all good characters should be.
One of the things about the women in Doctor Who that’s wonderful is that, like Liz and Jo, they’re strong in different ways. Another interesting dichotomy appears with the Second Doctor, when he travelled with Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot. Jamie– short for James Robert– is a Scottish Highlander from the mid 18th century, while Zoe is a scientist who lived on a space station in the 21st. Despite the fact that Jamie was snatched, literally, out of the middle of a battle, and is still quick with his knife, it is he, not Zoe, who spends the most time physically clinging to the Doctor in times of danger.

Jamie McCrimmon does not know the meaning of personal space
Here, while Zoe is the competent scientist, Jamie is the volatile, emotional party who depends on the Doctor. Being a Scot, there are, of course, also the obligatory jokes about which member of Team TARDIS is the one wearing the short skirt this time.
And the list continues. Travelling with the Doctor’ fourth incarnation, there’s Romana, a Time Lady. Cool, arrogant, sharp-tongued, the Doctor’s intellectual equal; as she’s quick to point out, she did graduate from the Academy with a triple first. Romana is also eager to see the universe, despite coming from a highly insular society. Later, Leela, a knife-wielding warrior, all instinct and impulse, who doesn’t care for being treated like the Doctor’s own personal Pygmalion project. With the Fifth Doctor, there’s Nyssa, an alien, a scientist and pacifist; with the Seventh Doctor, Ace McShane, an emotionally troubled teenager who puts on an unfailingly tough facade and likes blowing things up. Or beating up Daleks with baseball bats. Even Peri, the American who travelled with the Fifth and Sixth Doctor, and who fairly obviously was there to be little more than a lot of bouncing cleavage, is a botanist, clearly intelligent, and refuses to take down-talking from anyone, whether the rather bombastic and volatile Sixth Doctor, or the Master, whom she famously tells, ‘I’m Perpugilliam Brown, and I can shout just as loud as you can!’

Most of the Doctor’s companions, Old and New (if you don’t include non-televised media)
All these characters have strengths and weaknesses, but one thing they certainly are not is a homogeneous mass of legs, high heels, and helplessness. Another wonderful thing about Doctor Who is that the universe is a living one. In non-televised media (the Big Finish audioplays, and Doctor Who novels, which, incidentally, I wholeheartedly recommend), characters who were short-changed in canon, like Peri, are expanded, and others who were a little one-note, like Tegan and Ace, are allowed to develop. But even without that, there’s far more to the women of Doctor Who than might at first meet the eye, and there are no few who’d give you a proper talking to for saying otherwise.

Barrett Vann is an English and Linguistics student at the University of Minnesota. An unabashed geek, she’s into cosplay, literary analysis, high fantasy, and queer theory. After she graduates in December, she hopes to tackle grad school for playwrighting or screenwriting, and become one of those starving artist types. 

Women in Science Fiction Week: The Strong, Intelligent and Diverse Women of ‘Firefly’ and ‘Serenity’

Cast of Firefly and Serenity

Guest post written by Janyce Denise Glasper.

“Why do you keep writing strong female characters?”
“Because you’re still asking that question,”
Joss Whedon quips.

Mastermind behind phenomenal, groundbreaking television hits, Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel and recently helming a little box office smash called The Avengers, Whedon has always crafted the powerful, intelligent female hero. He illustrates that aesthetic further in the short lived FOX series Firefly turned feature motion picture, Serenity showcasing not just one, but four intriguing women characters- Zoe, Kaylee, Inara, and River.
In a science fiction space western combining a thrilling taste of adventure, mayhem, and Whedon’s trademark humor, flying aboard with the wisecracking Captain Malcolm Reynolds, softhearted Wash, short-tempered Jayne, and the good doctor, Simon, these spirited and diverse women bring more than male gazing eye candy ornamentation.

The women of Firefly and Serenity — L-R: Jewel Staite (Kaylee), Summer Glau (River), Morena Baccarin (Inara), Gina Torres (Zoe)
Wife of Wash, Zoe Washburne is a resilient, tough, hold the guns chick with a fiery attitude that is as wild as the curls of her hair. In the face of tragedy, she sheds not a tear, going head first into battle with weapons blazing in each hand while not wearing emotions on sleeve. This firecracker’s mind is sharply focused on the end game and to the Serenity crew, staying alive is the best option.
Gina Torres is made for Zoe. In every moving inch of her body and facial expression, she flaunts a calm, collected exterior that shields a force to be reckoned with. She is neither weak nor insecure in her prowess, taking fearless approach in the scariest of situations.

Zoe (Gina Torres)

 

Often, I have disagreed with angry sentiments of viewers voicing displeasure at Zoe calling Malcolm “Sir” and denoting that there is a master/slave relationship at work. He isn’t a whip slashing, verbally abusive tyrant lying on his back getting fanned upon while being hand fed grapes.
No. No. No.
He is a commander of a vessel, treating the crew like his family. Out of all of them, there is a special sibling type bond between him and Zoe. She, not Jayne, is his right hand man, or in this case woman. She has been at his side as a comrade in a lost war against the Alliance and that experience hasn’t wrought animosity, but pain and regret. Malcolm sees Zoe as his equal and that speaks volumes.
Yes. He tells her what to do, but she does in a way that she sees fit.
“Love. You can learn all the math in the ‘verse… but you take a boat in the air that you don’t love… she’ll shake you off just as sure as the turn of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down… tells you she’s hurting before she keels. Makes her a home.”

Malcolm’s quote is about Serenity, their beloved ship who is another unspoken feminine hero that is an integral part of the film.

Kaylee (Jewel Staite)
In comes Kaylee Frye, the adorable, sweet-natured Texan engineer who gets down and dirty repairing anything that needs fixing above the space vessel. Utterly devoted to the job, even without formal training, Kaylee speaks of things, especially emotions in mechanical terms and is often seen in oily, dirty jumpsuit. She may be seem to the anti-feminine, doing the “man’s” job, but that is not what’s so compelling about her. Often the voice of reasoning and moral compassion without being sanctimonious or preachy, Kaylee is the very heart of Serenity.
Actress Jewel Staite breathes a genuine special charm into Kaylee that is quite refreshing to watch. At times it seems that she doesn’t have a place amongst her sharply trained warrior peers, but Staite gives her a reason for being an imperative member. For in the toughest, most grueling predicament, when having to use a gun, Kaylee’s stern determination and iron will has her bravely wielding the weapon without tears and “womanly” fussiness. That’s something to be valued and commended.

Inara (Morena Baccarin)

 
Serenity means the state of being calm and untroubled — Inara Serra embodies the definition. The poised, tranquil companion, or in other words a courtesan, has illustrious skills beyond sensual grace. Softly spoken and wisely engaged, she battles with tongue more so than weapon. An expert with combat and a bow and arrow and often a vital aide in fighting the good fight, she gets knocked around a bit, but that doesn’t stop her from continuing to join in the battle of Malcolm verses The Operative, licking her wounds and going back for more to protect nearly brutally defeated captain.

Morena Baccarin personifies her character flawlessly. Possessing such phenomenal skill using widened eyes and speaking dialogue with sharp, clever articulation, a viewer cannot help but be arrested by her representation of peaceful tranquility, the way she floats effervescently into a scene, and the unmentionable smoldering toe-to-toe chemistry with Nathan Fillion who plays the sardonic Malcolm.

River (Summer Glau)
Last but certainly not least, River Tam, a former Alliance test subject, is the secret weapon. A broken mentally destroyed psychic, she is precocious, observant, and vulnerable, but her brother, Simon is overprotective in babying her at times. When she is purposely triggered by a creepy Alliance induced subliminal message, she unleashes a wild can of whoop ass crazy in a bar, maliciously hurting not only innocent bystanders, but also a Serenity crewmember which ultimately terrifies everyone. Yet seeing her brother down on the ground towards the climatic end pushes a different button and causes her to give the most poignant of sacrifices. While soft orchestra music plays, she fights passionately, kicking and punching the monstrous, once human Reavers with the strength of a thousand warriors.
She has then rightfully earned passage on the crew, albeit at the captain’s side commanding ship.
Summer Glau brings versatility to the complexity of River, showcasing the depths of a damaged psyche, ranging from cryptic, shattered girlish innocence, to altogether frightening, emotionless devoid. It would take only a solid actress to take on a role so challenging and Glau renders River meticulously.

The women of Firefly and Serenity — L-R: Gina Torres, Summer Glau, Morena Baccarin, Jewel Staite
Though under the command of a man, that doesn’t stop Zoe, Kaylee, Inara, and River from brutally speaking their razor tongued minds to the captain. River is an extraordinary circumstance; her words are enigmatic as opposed to outright as with the other three. 
Certainly not breaking down into sobs or running away in fright, these four animated, beautiful, and talented women band together in the face of battle. Along with the rest of the Serenity crew, an excellent villain played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, and a brilliantly penned script, there’s a reason fans remain attached to Whedon’s charismatic “browncoat” vision, especially the female rebel.


Janyce Denise Glasper is a writer/artist running two silly blogs of creative adventures called Sugarygingersnap and AfroVeganChick. She enjoys good female centric film, cute rubber duckies, chocolate covered everything (except bugs!), Days of Our Lives, and slaying nightly demons Buffy style in Dayton, Ohio.

Women in Science Fiction Week: Procreation at the End of Civilization: Reproductive Rights on ‘Battlestar Galactica’

The cast of Battlestar Galactica
This guest post written by Leigh Kolb originally appeared at Bitch Flicks on April 23, 2012. 
“All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.”
The opening credits of each episode of Battlestar Galactica, which aired from 2004 – 2009, set the premise for the plot: “The Cylons were created by man. They evolved. They rebelled. There are many copies. And they have a plan.” During a few episodes later in the series, the plight for humans’ survival is highlighted with the announcement: “The human race. Far from home. Fighting for survival.” Most of the beginning credits also show the population tally, which dwindles after each battle. President Laura Roslin says at the beginning of their journey, “The human race is about to be wiped out. We have 50,000 people left and that’s it. Now, if we are even going to survive as a species, then we need to get the hell out of here and we need to start having babies.”
When a society is thrust into time of struggle and chaos and its existence is threatened, reproductive rights and bodily autonomy are among the first rights to be taken away by those in power. Battlestar Galactica shows us, as good science fiction does, the moral struggles we face now, and what they might look like in the future.
There are moral issues at stake throughout the entire series, including the erosion of prisoners’ and laborers’ rights so that others may live more comfortably. The same critical lens is cast on forced birth, forced abortion, eugenics and abortion restrictions.
Early in the second season, Kara “Starbuck” Thrace has returned to Cylon-occupied Caprica (home planet for the crew of Battlestar Galactica) to find her destiny and aid the resistance, a group of humans who have stayed behind to fight the Cylons. She is kidnapped and knocked out, and wakes up in a hospital bed. Her “doctor” (who later is revealed as a Cylon) tells her she was shot in the abdomen and they have removed the bullet. As she drifts in and out of consciousness, she becomes suspicious. The doctor has excuses for every inconsistency. He tells her they’d operated because they suspected she had a cyst on her ovary. He says, “You gotta keep that reproductive system in great shape… it’s your most valuable asset these days. Finding healthy childbearing women your age is a top priority for the resistance. You are a very precious commodity to us.”
Starbuck replies, “I am not a commodity. I’m a viper pilot.”

Leigh Kolb is an English and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri, and has an MFA in creative nonfiction writing. She lives on a small farm with her husband, dogs, chickens, and garden, and makes a terrible dinner party guest because all she wants to talk about is feminism and reproductive rights.

Women in Science Fiction Week: Deciphering Island Patriarchy: Finding Feminism in ‘Lost’

This guest post written by Natalie Wilson previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on April, 14 2010 and originally appeared at Girl with Pen!
With the 6th and final season upon us, will Lost finally zoom towards a feminist future? With the number of female characters dwindling and the simultaneous deification of hetero white males, can feminist Lost fans hope for a satisfying island conclusion?
Previous seasons have been a mixed bag on this count.
Lost has many strong female characters, many of whom I could easily see wearing a “This is what a feminist look like” t-shirt. As noted by Melissa McEwan of Shakesville, an admitted Lost junkie, “Generally, the female characters are more well-rounded than just about any other female characters on television, especially in ensemble casts.”
Lost has often presented ‘gender outside the box’ characters, suggesting being human is more important than being a masculine man or a feminine woman. After all, when you are fighting for your life, ‘doing gender right’ is hardly at the top of your priority list.
While Jack and Sawyer try to out-macho each other in their love triangle with Kate, neither hold entirely to the Rambo-man-in-jungle motif. As for the women, they just might be the strongest, bravest, wisest female characters to grace a major network screen since Cagney and Lacey.
Though the island is certainly patriarchal, one could make a strong case that male-rule is not such a good thing for (island) society. Kate or Juliet would be far better leaders than any of the island patriarchs (and as some episodes suggest, would make great co-leaders – what a feminist concept!)

Continue reading –>

Women in Science Fiction Week: ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Willow Rosenberg: Geek, Interrupted

Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hanigan) on Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Written by Lady T. 
Joss Whedon is known for creating and writing about strong female characters in his science fiction shows. One of the most popular and complex of these characters is Willow Rosenberg from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Willow speaks to many people and quite a few have named her their favorite character on the show, from Mark at Mark Watches to Joss Whedon himself, who put the most Willow-centric episode of the series (“Doppelgangland”) on his list of favorite episodes.
Another thing that makes Willow so appealing is the fact that her character arc over seven seasons can’t be described in only one way. Some see Willow’s story as a shy, brainy computer geek embracing her supernatural power in becoming a witch.Others relate to her arc as one of a repressed wallflower who explores her sexuality and finds more confidence in coming out as a lesbian. Still others are fascinated with the different ways she handles magic, and her recovery after drifting too far to the dark side.
What story is told when those three arcs are put together? For me, the story of Willow Rosenberg is the story of a woman who spends years defining and re-defining herself, rejecting roles that other people have chosen for her – for better and for worse.
From the very first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow has been presented as a shy, sweet, helpful friend to the titular heroine– and from the very second episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow has shown herself not to be as sweet or innocent as everyone thinks she is. When she meets Buffy for the first time, she’s eager and friendly, bubbling over with information, in awe that this mysterious, cool new girl is talking to her, but also wanting to help in any way she can.
 Willow (Alyson Hannigan) talks to Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar)
This eager beaver persona is the one that Willow adopts for most of seasons one and two.She becomes the Hermione to Buffy’s Harry, using her computer hacking skills to assist whenever Buffy needs more research for demon-fighting and she can’t find the answers in one of Giles’s books. And for these two years, Willow is notonly content in this role, but she thrives in it. Like her best friend Xander (my favorite character on Buffy), she’s found a place where she belongs. She’s found a purpose in fighting the good fight against the forces of evil, and she doesn’t seem to mind that she’s a second banana to Buffy. As long as she can put her skills to use and she’s fighting the bad guys, she’s happy.
This changes when Willow discovers magic.
Near the end of season two, Willow begins exploring supernatural arts. She doesn’t do much beyond research and reading, but despite her lack of practice, she thinks that she has what it takes to perform a spell that will restore Angel’s soul.
Watching the season two finale with the perspective of hindsight is more than a little uncomfortable, because we know how much Giles turns out to be right when he tells Willow, “Challenging such potent magics through yourself…it could open a door that you might not be able to close.” It’s also uncomfortable because we can see that Willow is more interested in proving her skills in magic than doing the right thing. She wants to help Buffy, obviously, but she also wants to prove to everyone – and to herself – that she can do the spell.
And she does.
Willow possessed as she performs the spell
Angel’s spell is restored several minutes too late, and Buffy has to kill him anyway. But Willow doesn’t think about this potential consequence. She excitedly tells her friends, “I think the spell worked. I felt something go through me.”
After that,Willow becomes less meek, less shy, and more risky with her use of magic. She tries to use magic to make her and Xander fall out of lust with each other (in a plotline that I hate and always will hate, by the way), and is angry with him when he confronts her for resorting to spells. She becomes even angrier in season four when she, Oz,Buffy, and Xander are trapped in a haunted house and Buffy criticizes her aptitude in magic, saying that Willow’s spells have a 50% success rate. Willow responds with a flustered, “Oh yeah? Well – so’s your face!” but then follows up with a bitter, “I’m not your sidekick!”
Shortly afterwards, Willow tries to perform a spell that winds up failing. This is in an episode entitled “Fear, Itself,” where each major character confronts his/her major fear. Oz is afraid of the werewolf inside him, Xander is afraid of being invisible to his friends, Buffy is afraid of abandonment, and Willow…seems to be afraid of her spell going wrong?
Willow’s spell goes wrong
Compared to her friends’ worries, Willow’s fear seems a little superficial. At the end of the season, though, we learn that Willow’s fears are about much more than simple experiments going wrong.
By the end of season four, Willow has gone through a few pretty significant changes. She’s become more focused on magic and less focused on her scientific, “nerdy”pursuits. She’s farther apart from Buffy and Xander than ever, despite loving both of them. She’s entered a romantic relationship with a woman. Most significantly of all, Willow is confident. She has a life that is fully her own, where she has two things (Tara and magic) that are hers. She’s entered a new phase in her life.
Or has she? After watching Willow’s dream in “Restless,” we can’t say that this new Willow is any more confident or self-assured than the old one who couldn’t stand up for herself when Cordelia Chase insulted her by the water fountain.
Joss Whedon’s writing for Willow’s dream is clever and filled with misdirection. Characters talk about Willow and her “secret,” a secret that she only seems comfortable discussing with Tara. Dream-Buffy constantly comments on Willow’s “costume,”telling her to change out of it because “everyone already knows.” We’re led to believe that Willow is afraid that her friends will judge her for being gay and being a relationship with another woman…but this isn’t the case at all.
Instead, when Dream-Buffy rips off Willow’s costume, we see a version of Willow that is eerily reminiscent of season one Willow: a geek with pretensions of being cool.
Dream-Willow delivering a book report
In her dream,Willow is dressed in schoolgirl clothes, delivering a book report on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.Anya and Harmony are snarking at her from the audience, Buffy is bored, Xander is shouting, “Who cares?!” and Tara and Oz are mocking her and flirting wit heach other.
This sequence is haunting, heartbreaking, and foreboding. Those of us who watched Buffy for the first four years know that Willow’s perceptions are far from accurate. Buffy was supportive of Willow far more often than not and Xander defended Willow against anyone who threatened her. As for her love interests, well, Tara practically worshiped the ground Willow walked on, and Oz admitted that Willow was the only thing in his life that he ever loved.
But none of that changes the way Willow feels. Despite the friends she’s made, despite thechanges she’s had, she still thinks that everyone will eventually discover her secret: that she’s an uncool, childish, awkward geek.
I think that this fear, more than anything else, is what motivates Willow’s actions over the second half of the series. The show talks about magic addiction and getting high off of power, but ultimately, Willow wants to change who she is. She doesn’t want to be the nerdy, lonely bookworm that defined so much of her childhood and adolescence. She jokes to Tara, “Hard to believe such a hot mama-yama came from humble, geek-infested roots?” and she might as well be pleading, “I’m not that geek anymore, am I? Tell me I’m not.” She says to Buffy, “If you could be, you know, plain old Willow or super Willow, who would you be?…Buffy, who was I? Just some girl. Tara didn’t even know that girl.”
Willow talks to Buffy after coming down from a high
Eventually, Willow confronts her addiction and power issues with magic. Her arc in the last season of the show is largely about the way she learns to be more careful with magic, her steps forward and her steps back, until she handles her power more responsibly. But one thing she never does is confront her deepest issue: her fear of being an unlovable geek.
I could write for another two thousand words about how Willow’s insecurities made her dangerous to people around her, and how her arc paralleled the arc of the three misogynistic sci-fi geeks who provoked terror all throughout season six, and how her fear of abandonment turned her into the abuser in a controlling relationship, but that’s an essay for another day. I will probably write that essay in the future, but for now, I want to talk about how Willow’s insecurities affected Willow.
A part of me feels truly sad that Willow could never find it in her to reclaim the geek label. I look back at the cute, eager computer nerd from the first two seasons and feel nostalgic for her Hermione Granger-like enthusiasm. I wish she had felt comfortable enough in her own skin to realize that being smart and knowing a lot about computers is a good thing, dammit!
At the same time, I wonder if there’s another lesson in Willow’s story. Audience members like me might yearn for the days when Willow was more interested in computers than she was in magic, but who’s to say that hacking and breaking into government files was the best way for Willow to spend her life? Sure, she was good with computers, but did she had to let that skill define the rest of her life? Isn’t it positive for her to branch out and explore that she has talent in other things in more than one area? After all, even if we’re nostalgic for Willow’s nerdier days, doesn’t she have the right to explore other sides of herself, even if she makes mistakes along the way?
To this day, I still don’t know how I feel about Willow’s arc. I’m glad she discovered another side to her personality, but I’m disappointed that she couldn’t reclaim her geeky days and make it a source of power instead of embarrassment and loneliness. Ultimately, I would have liked to see the show address Willow’s “geek-infested roots” in the last season of Buffy,so we could have seen her make a choice about that part of her life and her identity, instead of seeing that part of her character fall to the wayside. 

Lady T is an aspiring writer and comedian with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at The Funny Feminist, where she picks apart entertainment and reviews movies she hasn’t seen.

Women in Science Fiction Week: Why Olivia Dunham on ‘Fringe’ Is My Favorite Female Character on TV

Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) on Fringe

 
Guest post written by Clint Waters.

“Sometimes answers lead to more questions.”
If you haven’t been watching Fringe…for the love of science fiction, please start. Full of twists and turns, along with a healthy blend of drama, action and just the right amount of comedy, the plot never fails to deliver an engaging episode.  Perhaps the best part of the series is the well-crafted and well-acted characters.  As this is Women in Science Fiction Week, allow me to explain why Fringe‘s lead, Olivia Dunham, is everything one can hope for.
And, for that matter, if you haven’t been watching Fringe I urge you once more to go watch it. Go! For I see SPOILER ALERT on the horizon! Ruuuuun. But, no, seriously, from here on out I’m going to be discussing important plot points and reveals so continue at your own risk.
With the disclaimers out of the way, I’d like to say that Olivia is easily my favorite female character in a television series.  To put it simply, she is a kickass lady. As an FBI agent turned Fringe Division investigator, Olivia is never afraid to pull her gun out and start kicking down doors (or look fabulous while doing so).

Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) on Fringe

She often puts herself in harm’s way to protect those around her and is willing to do anything necessary in the name of justice and fringe science (including having electrical equipment embedded in her skull and then being submerged in an isolation tank.

Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) on Fringe in isolation tank

What I love most is her seemingly inability to be made vulnerable by villains. In several episodes she is rendered unconscious and kidnapped, however, she is hardly ever saved by other people. Although the other members of Fringe are looking for her, she’s the one to smash something against someone’s head or brandish a scalpel as a deadly weapon in order to escape. And it’s not that she busts down doors, guns blazing, but that she knows the appropriate time to do so, or when a lock pick and stealth will suffice.

Olivia (Anna Torv) and her niece on Fringe
That’s not to say she is an emotionless, crime-solving machine. Throughout the series we learn that she has had her fair share of troubles: being experimented on as a child, abused by a stepfather (that she later shoots, still in her childhood), losing her mother and betrayed by anyone she actually lets herself fall in love with. Especially tender are the scenes between Olivia and her niece, as well as those that happen throughout her and Peter’s relationship. However, these emotional problems of the past and current relationships do nothing to weaken her as a character, nor do they manifest themselves in trite explorations of self. In a writing perspective, they are very concrete and rational vehicles of characterization.

Olivia (Anna Torv) and Peter (Joshua Jackson) on Fringe

Many of these plot points and even Olivia’s life in general are confused and muddled by the version of her that lives in the alternate universe: Fauxlivia (as Walter dubs her and later becomes canon). The great thing about Fauxlivia is that she’s not just Olivia in a red wig (although, of course, they are played by the same actress). Lending itself to the suspension of disbelief surrounding the whole alternate universe, Fauxlivia has had a completely different life than the Olivia from our universe. She is more brazen and foolhardy, whereas Olivia is calculated and precise. Essentially, the creators’ of Fringe did something wonderful and gave us two Olivias, one to love and root for, and another to realize how she could be a completely different person/character. What truly amazes me about this is Anna Torv’s ability to play both characters so well. I found myself forgetting that they were the same person in real life, I was so busy glaring every time Fauxlivia appeared on the screen.

Olivia and Fauxlivia (both played by Anna Torv) on Fringe
The show explores this notion as Fauxlivia and Olivia swap places for a few months, Fauxlivia posing and trying to gather intelligence on our universe while real Olivia is trying to escape the alternate one.  Perhaps one of the most intriguing parts presented in the show is an Invasion of the Bodysnatchers or The Thing-esque game of not knowing who is who. Once Olivia returns we are presented with a very troublesome thought: how do you go on living your life, living in your house, loving your boyfriend when someone else has been living your life.  How hurt would you feel knowing that no one could tell a difference, that you could literally be replaced?  Pretty scary stuff.  But she makes it through as she always does (with a few enjoyable catty interactions with her alternate self).
Overall, Olivia Dunham is a prime example of what it is to be a heroine in a science fiction world. She can break bones, witness the aftermath of a gruesome fringe event without batting an eye, and go toe-to-toe with mastermind villains, and yet she is not invincible or impervious to emotional situations. Although she is constantly surrounded by extraordinary events and weird circumstances, she is a truly believable character, imbued in verisimilitude. With a fifth season on the horizon (slated for September), I cannot wait to see what is in store for Olivia and her team.

Clint Waters is a creative writing major, German minor at Western Kentucky University. He is in his final year and hopes to pursue any career that remotely deals with writing in a creative fashion. Visit his blog at redintooth.tumblr.com.

Women in Science Fiction Week: The Problem with Female Representation in Science Fiction on Television

Falling Skies‘ Margaret

Guest post written by Paul and Renee.

The wonderful thing about science fiction is that the writers have the opportunity to create a world, which while based on ours, can be markedly different. This means that there should be a place for strong female characters who are not restricted by sexism or forced into a situation in which they must perform femininity on a daily basis to be accepted as ‘woman.’ Despite the freedom of this genre; however, nothing is born outside of discourse, which means of course that we end up with the same sexist tropes repeatedly.

Even in shows which readily lend themselves to recurring scenes of violence, because women have historically been framed as delicate and passive, men end up in the leadership roles. This also means that when the action does finally happen, women are placed into nurturing roles like doctors and nurses to aid the wounded men. While some may see this exchange as complementary, it in fact sets up a serious gender divide that is reductive.
We actually see this most strongly and most blatantly in dystopias. In Falling Skies, humanity is locked into a battle for survival against an alien threat. Humanity is nearly extinct, the group is excited at the prospect of a capital that has managed to scrape together 2,000 survivors. The 2nd Massachusetts itself is reduced to a mere 150 people, meaning it has lost nearly half of its already low numbers since the series began. Clearly, this is a series about desperation – every man must be ready to fight, desperately, to survive.
And I said “man” purposefully there. Because, while there are plenty of women in the crowd scenes and even in most of the fight scenes we will find one token, nameless female fighter in a large number of men, the vast majority of the fighters are male. In fact, there’s only ever one named female fighter at a time (Karen, who gets replaced by Maggie after she is captured. She also inherited Karen’s love interest – which did rather make the two women seem interchangeable).
Remember how desperate humanity is here. For most of the show, Jimmy, a 13 year old boy was drafted to fight. As they get more desperate, Matt, a 6 year old boy, starts carrying a gun around and taking part in military action. Where are the women? It’s clearly not a matter of military background with both children and school teachers on the battlefield, why do we only see one or two women standing side by side with their men to hold the line against the alien threat?
By contrast, the most prominent female characters we do see except for the interchangeable-Hal-Love-Interest are, of course, caregivers. Dr. Ann Glass and Lourdes, the medical team for the 2nd Massachusetts. It’s the 21st century, humanity is nearly destroyed, every day is a struggle to survive – I think we can move past men holding guns while women roll bandages.
We can see a similar pervasive female passivity in Alphas, reinforced and ingrained by the special abilities the characters have. Two of the characters, Cameron and Bill, have abilities that make them dangerous in a fight. Their physical capabilities make them the team muscle – contrast that with the two women. Well, they have super senses and limited mind control respectively. The women are inherently placed in support roles and set up as support from the very beginning. And I know that someone will say “well, they don’t have combat powers!” true – but why was it written that way? Why couldn’t Nina have the super-strength? Why did the writers choose the women and the disabled character to have the less active, support powers? And that’s not to say their powers aren’t powerful or useful – far from it – but then, so is rolling bandages.
Sanctuary‘s Helen Magnus
Even in shows like Sanctuary where we have female leadership, not all women are created equal. Helen Magnus is the only female of the original scientists to survive. The two most prominent recurring female characters outside of the protagonist are Kate Freelander and Abbey Corrigan. Kate essentially is the replacement for Ashley, Magnus’ daughter who died at the end of season one. She is a woman of colour who seems to exist only for Magnus to reform her evil ways. She disappears for large swaths of time and is barely missed by the team. In this way, they make her quite disposable. There were other options to send to work in hollow earth, but it was Kate that was chosen. Biggie would have made a much more natural choice but because he was a fan favourite, there was no way he would have been sent.
In the case of Abbey, she exists it seems solely to be the Mary Sue of the show. She is just shy of vapid and has no real storyline other than being Will’s girlfriend. Everything that the Sanctuary deals with is far above her pay grade. Kate was also featured in the highly regrettable musical episode which was her only form of communication for a time. So it would seem that to elevate one woman, all of the other female characters must pay a price and it is particularly troubling when it comes to Kate because of the racial dynamic at play. Once again, we have White woman acting as earth mother to a person of colour.

Even when we have strong female characters, they are still not free of damaging tropes. In Continuum, Kiera is strong and is proactive; each week she and her partner Carlos, take turns hunting down the bad guys. Keira is not afraid to get physical if she has to. That sounds great doesn’t it? It would be if that was all I had to say about her, but it seems that once again, a strong female character cannot just be strong. She has to have a vulnerable side and for Keira it’s motherhood. It makes sense that a mother living so far away from her child, would miss her son desperately, but it does not make sense that this sense of loss would turn into her deciding to lecture her grandmother into giving birth and rejecting every legitimate reason she had to have an abortion.

Continuum‘s Kiera
In “The Test of Time,” Lily Jones, is a homeless high school dropout with no parental support, who finds herself pregnant. Obviously, becoming a parent at this point would be absolutely daunting, but Kiera does not even pause for one moment to legitimise a single thing that Lily says. Instead, the entire message of the episode is that marriage is the answer to teenage pregnancy. Marry the father and everything will magically become fixed and you won’t regret the sacrifices you have to make to parent effectively. The writers prove this to us by showing us that when Kiera had her own unplanned pregnancy, she of course married the father and was happy. Ta-da instant fairytale. 
If you are going to go to the trouble of having a strong female character, you would think that the writers would then attempt to exclude messages that are obviously anti-woman. The entire episode implied that abortion in and of itself is the wrong choice to make no matter the circumstances and they used the strong female character to send this message. This isn’t empowerment, this is sending us back to the days of the back alley, coat hangers and death.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about this female passivity and women taking an incomprehensible step back in combat is that we should be past this. We have so many shows that have female characters who will stand forward and kick arse – Mutant X had Shalimar, Heroes was willing to have women who were as dangerous as any of the men.
And we have several female protagonists now, taking charge, fighting the good fight with everything from swords to lasers (though often, as we said above, even these characters have to be made vulnerable); so why oh why do we keep doing this? Why do we keep making the female fighters the exceptions? Why is it so hard to have female warriors standing side by side, in like numbers, like skill and like strength to their male counterparts?

Paul and Renee blog and review at Fangs for the Fantasy. We’re great lovers of the genre and consume it in all its forms – but as marginalised people we also analyse critically through a social justice lens.

Daniel Tosh and Rape Culture: The Roundup

Daniel Tosh

Serious Trigger Warning for discussions of rape, rape culture, and sexual assault. 

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Last Thursday, Megan wrote a piece about the recent Daniel Tosh clusterfuck–“Dear Daniel Tosh: You Know What’s Even Less Funny Than Rape Jokes? Rape Threats“–in which she discusses “his misogynistic douchebaggery as he verbally attacked a female audience member.”

She writes:

But just in case you haven’t [heard] or if you need a refresher, the woman called Tosh out amidst his performance at The Laugh Factory. Here’s what the woman told her friend who posted it on her blog which has now gone viral:
“So Tosh then starts making some very generalizing, declarative statements about rape jokes always being funny, how can a rape joke not be funny, rape is hilarious, etc. I don’t know why he was so repetitive about it but I felt provoked because I, for one, DON’T find them funny and never have. So I didnt appreciate Daniel Tosh (or anyone!) telling me I should find them funny. So I yelled out, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!”
“I did it because, even though being “disruptive” is against my nature, I felt that sitting there and saying nothing, or leaving quietly, would have been against my values as a person and as a woman. I don’t sit there while someone tells me how I should feel about something as profound and damaging as rape.
“After I called out to him, Tosh paused for a moment. Then, he says, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…”
Wow. What. The. Fuck. Rape jokes are never funny. Ever. Making a rape joke is bad enough. But attacking an audience member who calls bullshit on said rape joke?? Calling for her to be gang raped?? Horrifying and disgusting.
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Pretty much! We’ve written about the perpetuation of rape culture in the past, specifically after the New York Times essentially blamed an eleven-year-old girl for her own gang rape:
And we’ve noticed a few things here and there: rape being played for laughs in Observe and Report; the sexual trafficking of women used as a plot device in Taken; the constant dismemberment of women in movie posters; the damaging caricatures of women as sex objects in Black Snake Moan and The Social Network; and we’ve often pointed to discussions of sexism and misogyny around the net, like the sexual violence in Antichrist and, most recently, the sexualized corpses of women in Kanye West’s Monster video. It barely grazes the surface. I mean, it barely grazes the fucking surface of what a viewer sees during the commercial breaks of a 30-minute sitcom.

Yet, this constant, unchecked barrage of endless and obvious woman-hating undoubtedly contributes to the rape of women and girls.

The sudden idealization of Charlie Sheen as some bad boy to be envied, even though he has a violent history of beating up women, contributes to the rape of women and girls. Bills like H. R. 3 that seek to redefine rape and further the attack on women’s reproductive rights contributes to the rape of women and girls. Supposed liberal media personalities like Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann showing their support for Julian Assange by denigrating Assange’s alleged rape victims contributes to the rape of women and girls. The sexist commercials that advertisers pay millions of dollars to air on Super Bowl Sunday contribute to the rape of women and girls. And blaming Lara Logan for her gang rape by suggesting her attractiveness caused it, or the job was too dangerous for her, or she shouldn’t have been there in the first place, contributes to the rape of women and girls.  

It contributes to rape because it normalizes violence against women. Men rape to control, to overpower, to humiliate, to reinforce the patriarchal structure. And the media, which is vastly controlled by men, participates in reproducing already existing prejudices and inequalities, rather than seeking to transform them.
And it pisses me off.

Allow me to add the Daniel Tosh Rape Threat Controversy to the list. 

Below you’ll find a slew of excerpted articles written by feminists who oppose Tosh’s “joke” … and the controversy doesn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon. Stay tuned for updates, and please leave any links I’ve missed — or links to any pieces you’ve written — in the comments.

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Daniel Tosh Is a Rape Culture Enforcer by Melissa McEwan via Shakesville

There isn’t much I can say about this, at least nothing I haven’t already said literally hundreds of times before in every conceivable way I can imagine: Rape jokes are not funny. They potentially trigger survivors, and they uphold the rape culture. They tacitly convey approval of rape to rapists, who do not appreciate “rape irony.” There is no neutral in rape culture, and jokes that diminish or normalize rape empower rapists. Rape jokes are pro-rape.
Shakesville has written extensively about this. You can find more of McEwan’s commentary under the tag Toshgate.

 
Male Comics: Stop Enabling Rape Culture by Molly Jane Knefel via Salon

Indeed, like one of those terrifying millipedes, this controversy gave birth to a thousand little baby controversies once it was opened up. It has led to conversations about if and how rape jokes can ever be funny; it has illuminated Tosh’s history of laughing at violence against women; it has called attention to the horrifying statistic that one in four women has experienced sexual assault, and that those women are in the audiences of comedy shows. It’s made some question whether it is ever right — or only right — for women like Sarah Silverman to make these jokes. It has also prompted comics to defend satire, to defend setups, to explain why interrupting a comic mid-joke is disrespectful and to remember all the terrible things they have said to hecklers to shut them down. But there is one really important controversy that we cannot let get away from the comedians: Why are there so many rape jokes in the first place?
This is about whether comedy, and the world at large really, will allow women to push back against rape culture. This woman felt uncomfortable with Tosh’s rape comments because we live in a world where rape is expected, and she doesn’t find that funny. Tosh’s response, and the responses of his colleagues, aren’t about defending rape jokes—we live in a society where, unfortunately, they don’t need defending—they’re about shutting this woman up. They’re about maintaining the status quo—the one where men are allowed to rape women who talk back, who dress like sluts, who “ask for it”—at all costs, even if it means threatening someone with gang rape. If she tries to fight back then she just doesn’t get it. And if others call out this behavior, then they don’t get it either.
When Rape Jokes Are Never Funny by Meghan O’Keefe via Huffington Post
If this is what Tosh wanted to do artistically, then, well, he has every right as a comedian to do so. The fact that he backpedaled on the joke on twitter however suggests that he doesn’t want to be seen as that kind of comic. Again, Tosh wants to be liked. He wants to be popular, and so we circle back to the fact that the problem isn’t Daniel Tosh. The problem is that our society is still a rape culture where a large percentage of people think that rape’s OK and that a girl in a short skirt is asking for it and that it’s funny to assault someone. Not for the sake of satire, but for one person’s amusement over another person’s real life victimization.
Do You Laugh at Rape Jokes? by Soraya Chemaly via Fem2.0
Culture is why Tosh is just a symptom. He’s simply doing what works to generate a small fortune, capture six million Twitter followers and be a number one rated comedian. That’s why this isn’t a First Amendment problem but one of market demand. The First Amendment gives people the right to make rape jokes and this right is critical and non-negotiable. But, it doesn’t obligate comedians to tell these jokes, nor does it obligate others to pay to hear them because they find them entertaining. That’s a matter of our culture and what is considered the current norm for human decency and empathy. Tosh in this way is no different from Facebook – which chose to keep rape joke pages up (in violation of its own guidelines prohibiting hate speech, if they apply to women) but removed a picture of an asexualized woman walking down the street topless in NY for being obscene. I’m not letting him off the hook, though. He has no (meaningless) corporate guidelines to follow, but he has an ethical choice about the jokes he makes and how he makes them.  Rape jokes aren’t simply R-rated antics.

Yes, many comedians take life’s tragedies and make fun of them; they use humor as a way of coping with the awful things that happen to people. It’s actually similar to my own defense that bringing the funny into feminism and social justice makes it all the more accessible and fun, and can be a way for us to collectively laugh at the injustice that we have to deal with on a daily basis.
What Tosh did was not that.

But would it be funny if this girl got gang raped right this moment, like right now right now? That’s not a joke. It’s an invitation. It’s a celebration of a violent crime, which is itself another violation. It’s not a way to cope. It’s a “this is something we can do and then laugh about it, no big deal.” When you reiterate these half-truths (there are girls in the world getting raped by like five guys right now), they authenticate themselves, as if by magic. To promote the insidious—“rape is hilarious”—is to join the crime at its own filthy level.
Anatomy of a Successful Rape Joke by Jessica Valenti via The Nation
Those supporting Tosh are outraged that anyone would dare tell a comedian how to be funny. (There’s also been a lot of “if you can’t take the heat” sentiment aimed at this woman, given that she heckled Tosh.) Many of his defenders insist that his joke—and other jokes about rape—are simply edgy and controversial, which is what a comedian is supposed to be.
But here’s the thing: threatening women with rape, making light of rape, and suggesting that women who speak up be raped is not edgy or controversial. It’s the norm. This is what women deal with every day. Maintaining the status quo around violence against women isn’t exactly revolutionary.
How to Make a Rape Joke by Lindy West via Jezebel
That said, a comedy club is not some sacred space. It’s a guy with a microphone standing on a stage that’s only one foot above the ground. And the flip-side of that awesome microphone power you have—wow, you can seriously say whatever you want!—is that audiences get to react to your words however we want. The defensive refrains currently echoing around the internet are, “You just don’t get it—comedians need freedom. That’s how comedy gets made. If you don’t want to be offended, then stay out of comedy clubs.” (Search for “comedians,” “freedom,” “offended,” and “comedy clubs” on Twitter if you don’t believe me.) You’re exactly right. That is how comedy gets made. So CONSIDER THIS YOUR FUCKING FEEDBACK. Ninety percent of your rape material is not working, and you can tell it’s not working because your audience is telling you that they hate those jokes. This is the feedback you asked for.

And I know that when it comes to subjects as complex as rape, using exceptions can seem like slippery logic. That if we let one slip, then another, we might end up right back where we started. That “good” jokes and “bad” jokes seem too subjective, too flimsy a compass in which to measure.
But we also forget that anger is not the only response to social injustice. That we are also allowed to–and desperately need–a space of our own to talk back to it, make fun of it, not let it get to us.
I think the point of Lindy West’s article, in the end, is that when it comes to comedy, context is everything. With it, we have the most dangerous and clever kind of power. And without it, we have, well–Tosh.
Many online observers were quick to criticize Tosh’s comments but comedians were just as quick to back him up.
Alex Edelman, a professional stand-up comedian based in New York, told the Guardian: “I find rape to be a really serious topic, but on the other hand I think a comedian should be allowed to say almost whatever he wants and that the audience should be able to manifest their dislike in the form of not laughing at something if they find it offensive.”

Daniel Tosh Jokes About Seeing a Heckler Get Gang Raped by Alyssa Rosenberg via Think Progress
A good comedian is an alchemist who can turn heckling into a transformative extended riff. Here it sounds like Tosh just doubled down on the same points he was making rather than actually responding, or providing an example of a rape joke that his heckler might find funny, undermining her objection. As I’ve written before, I think there is a case to be made that rape jokes that make fun of perpetrators can be very funny. Tosh didn’t go there, though. He just took the quickest route to run his heckler out of the club, and in using an image of her getting raped to mock and intimidate her, kind of made her point instead of his own. If rape was just hilarious and uproarious and trivial, it wouldn’t be a very effective rhetorical or literal weapon. Tosh isn’t just failing at civility here. He’s being a bad comedian.

We’ve had a lot of conversation on this blog about the way Daniel Tosh handled a woman who told him rape jokes weren’t funny at a recent show. There are a lot of threads to parse here—how people handle heckling (and how clubs should handle them)*, whether rape jokes can be funny under any circumstances, why comedians close ranks around their own. But I want to separate those issues out and talk very specifically about another strain of argument. One thread of conversation here has suggested that the woman who related her story was wrong, or oversensitive to feel threatened when Tosh suggested it would be funny if she were gang raped. The idea behind those objections is that no one would ever act based on Tosh’s words, and that because there isn’t a real prospect of her being actually assaulted, there is no impact to his words. This is wrong on two levels.

Comedian Daniel Tosh and the Culture of Rape in America by Beth via Veracity Stew

So, while comedians like Tosh shrug this off and say, It was just a joke, I will say, this isn’t a laughing matter anymore — not that it ever was — especially in a climate where women are being vilified and degraded for standing up for their most basic of rights, and to defend Daniel Tosh and his comments based solely on the fact that he’s a comedian, is unacceptable and inexcusable.
  • 44% of rape victims are under the age of 18
  • 80% are under the age of 30
  • Every two minutes, a person is raped in the U.S.
  • Each year, 207,754 victims are raped
  • 54% of sexual assaults are not reported to police
  • 97% of rapists will never spend a day in jail
These victims are mothers and daughters, sisters and wives, best friends and colleagues…in short, someone you may know and love. And you can rest assured that they probably will not see the “humor” in their plight.
When that woman stood up and said, “No, rape is not funny,” she did not consent to participating in a culture that encourages lax attitudes toward sexual violence and the concerns of women. Rape humor is what encourages a man to feel comfortable tweeting to Daniel Tosh, “the only ppl who are mad at you are the feminist bitches who never get laid and hope they get raped so they can get laid,” which is one of the idiotic, Pavlovian responses a certain kind of person has when women have the nerve to suggest that they don’t find sexual violence amusing. In that man’s universe, women who get properly laid are totally fine with rape humor. A satisfied vagina is a balm in Gilead.
Three Points About Rape Jokes and Rape Culture by Kyle “Guante” Tran Myhre via Feministing
These “little” things add up—maybe it’s a rape joke at the comedy club, plus a newspaper op-ed blaming the victim, plus a music video turning women into objects, plus a fellow student saying “that test raped me,” plus movies or TV shows that glamorize the “tough anti-hero taking what he wants without apology,” plus a family culture of silence and shame around sex, plus a police force who just goes through the motions when it comes to investigating or working to prevent sexual assault, plus a million other things—it’s a tsunami of shit. And you can add to it, or you can fight against it.
The “Context” of Daniel Tosh’s Rape Joke by Imran Siddiquee via MissRepresentation
Imagine you’re in a country where people are still consistently assaulted for having dark skin. In this context you suggest that the lighter skinned people in the room whip a brown man into submission after he complains that jokes about darker people being persecuted aren’t funny. Might this make us uncomfortable? Probably, because when the brown man steps out into the real night outside the comedy club, there is a good chance he could actually get beaten and murdered. There’s also a history of this kind of violence actually happening around the world.
Does the “right” to joke about anything trump the realities of the place in which those jokes are being made?
Or imagine you are a heterosexual comedian in present-day Senegal (where being homosexual is illegal and gay men are often killed for being gay), speaking in front of an audience that includes people of various sexual preferences, and you make a joke about how killing gay people is always funny. And then a person in the audience shouts back “I’m gay and I don’t think it’s always funny.” And you proceed to say, hey, what if we beat up that gay guy right now? Wouldn’t that be hilarious?

I Know Funny and Rape Jokes Are NOT. by Cristy Cardinal via UpRoot
As we would expect, his defensiveness is couched in “It’s just a joke” and the “I make fun of everyone” and “You’re too sensitive” rhetoric that is the stock in trade of hurtful comedians who want license to tell tired jokes that weren’t funny the first time they were told 100 years ago, but make people slightly uncomfortable so they must be saying something important.  Comedians like Tosh compare themselves to guys like Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, who said “offensive” things all the time.  The difference, however, is that Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor were exposing the truth of our culture as wrong and in need of redirection, and comedians like Tosh merely reflect back the worst of us in a bald-faced and uncritical way.  The way Tosh tells a racist joke venerates the racism, the way Pryor talked about racism made us aware that racism hurt people (while making us laugh).  There’s an ocean of difference in that.
Still Here by Cristy Cardinal via UpRoot
Daniel Tosh tried to make joke out of rape, and when someone protested, he shut her down with a threat of rape, which was not a joke but actual violence.  When I, as well as other feminist bloggers, spoke up in support of this woman, we were threatened with rape to shut us down.  It is ironic (and not in the cute hipster irony, but in the real deal kind), that the complaint many of Tosh’s supporters are making is that we are trampling on his creative process or freedom of expression by expecting him to be a decent human being.  And they are using violent and cruel rape rhetoric to try to get us to shut up.  We can’t use our freedom of speech to say, “What Daniel Tosh said crossed the line, and here’s why” but he, and his supporters, can use their freedom of speech to annihilate our humanity.  IRONY!
For Daniel Tosh, Actually Assaulting Women Is Comedy by Angus Johnston via Student Activism
What this confirms is that the whole Tosh thing isn’t about jokes. Tosh isn’t just a guy who tells stories on stage. He’s a guy whose comedy includes actually physically assaulting women, and directing his fans to do the same. And this is the guy who, after a woman challenged his rape jokes, mused aloud about how funny it would be if she “got raped by like, five” of those same fans, right then and there.
“Right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her?”
Damn.
Tosh uses some classic tricks to apologize, without really apologizing.

Trick One: I was misquoted. Tosh seeks to relieve himself of any responsibility, since, hey, he didn’t even say it.

Trick Two: I was the victim. Tosh seeks to undermins his apology by defending the point that started the entire interaction. He did nothing wrong but defend himself of a heinous violation–heckling! This is a weak apology at best and a passive aggressive dig at worst.

Does he really think people will not see the trickery he is employing to NOT apologize but say he is? Well, if he does, he’s right, because the media has reported his non-apology as the real thing.

Dear Comedians, and People Like Me Who Think They’re Comedians: Please Stop by Jonnie Marbles via Anarch*ish*

What made me stop telling rape jokes? I wish it had been what my sister told me, I wish I’d stopped that day instead of spending around a year loftily telling women why words couldn’t hurt them, that they should lighten up and that they didn’t get it. At first I felt I had to keep telling the jokes – had to! – simply because someone didn’t want me to. Otherwise I wasn’t being true to my art. It would be self-censorship. Comedians had to be free to say anything. Most importantly, how could I stay friends with the godawful, cowardly dickheads who told these jokes on a nightly basis if I turned around and said I wouldn’t? Sooner or later, though, I just couldn’t. Perhaps it was the jaw locking, knuckle clenching effect these jokes were having on the friends I brought along to shows. I’d sit next to them in the audience, see their discomfort, their disgust and realise I was doing the exact same thing up there, whether I knew it or not. Perhaps it was realising just how rarely rape is reported, and how making fun of it makes that less likely still.
Calculating by scatx [Note: this post contains discussions of rape culture via Twitter]
What it’s like to be a woman living in rape culture. OR why I tweeted about the Tosh situation for 24 hours.
You can’t watch TV without being subjected to a rape joke. You can’t listen to the radio. You can’t browse Twitter trending topics. You can’t walk down the street without some jackass asking you, “Do I look like a rapist?” through his t-shirt. (And the answer is yes, yes you do.)
People use “rape” to describe how they were ripped off, or talk about “raping” the replay button on YouTube.
And you can’t discuss any of these cultural artifacts without people painting the purveyors of this brand of comedy in a golden, harmless light, while erasing the experiences of millions upon millions of sexual assault survivors—most of whom never report their assaults for fear of not being taken seriously. Hmm, now how can that be?

What Tosh and people supporting him don’t seem to get is that it’s not about freedom of speech or censorship or what’s funny and what’s not. Although I still contend rape jokes aren’t funny. But what’s really at the core of this situation is how we trivialize and disregard people’s pain, trauma and wounds. 1 in 4 women are raped. As I said before, Tosh crossed the line the moment he disregarded that woman’s concerns, asserted his male privilege and tried to humiliate her with a rape threat.
So why am I posting all these negative tweets? Is it just to call people out? Yes. But what’s more important is when we look at them as a collective. Then you begin to see just how prevalent and insidious rape culture truly is.
Tosh, you are currently at an amazing and terrible moment in your career. It’s terrible for (hopefully by now) obvious reasons. It could be amazing because at this moment, you have the opportunity to apologize (in a version that’s longer than 140 characters) and also to make an example of your situation and stop being offensive in your humor. You can show the world and comedians that there are more complex, interesting, and (ultimately) better ways to make someone laugh than by being offensive. And you can do it while people are watching and waiting to hear from you in the fallout of this event.

Good Comedy and Bad Comedy by Lauren Kay Gilmore via The Eternal Sunshine of the Scholastic Mind
Molly Ivins once said “Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful… when satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel — it’s vulgar.”

I stand behind that 100%. Humor in the hands of a bully is just much less appealing than humor used to point out how ridiculous the bully is being. It may technically still be humor, and it may still be the Constitutional right of that bully to make those jokes, but thinking that a bully’s jokes aren’t funny doesn’t make me a stick in the mud, it makes me a decent person.

Rape culture is when self-appointed guardians of “traditional values” like Rick Santorum tell rape victims that, yes, rape is horrible, but if your rapist impregnates you, it’s “nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you.” Aw, rape victims no doubt think to themselves, an unwanted pregnancy conceived in rape? For me? From God? Awesome! After all, despite the ugliness of rape, says Rick, “We have to make the best out of a bad situation.” As even the most causal readers of this series know, according to Mr. High and Mighty, making the best out of bad situation means passing laws to force women who’ve been raped to carry their rape-babies to term. And a “Gee, thanks, God!” wouldn’t hurt, you ungrateful, selfish bitches. Just because you’ve been raped is no excuse to be thinking about yourself. There are more important considerations than the trauma of your violent assault—like how male politicians feel about your violent assault and how they feel that you should feel about it. That’s rape culture.
15 Rape Jokes That Work by Kate Harding
Not everyone’s going to agree, and some people are going to think I’m a bad feminist, which, what else is new. But I want to be able to link to this post in the future, when this happens again–because it always does–and hordes of young men start screaming–because they always do–that feminists are trying to take all the funny out of comedy AGAIN.

I am a feminist. I have been raped. And I think the following 15 rape jokes are hilarious. So please fuck all the way the fuck off with your “You just don’t understand comedy” bullshit. (Here’s an alternative proposal: Maybe you just don’t understand being a decent human being.)

Here’s what YOU need to understand:

1) Rape is way, WAY more prevalent than you seem to think it is. Are there more than five women in your audience? You do the math, and then you run the little fantasy scenario that I just put together in your head, and you tell me how it feels.

2) I ain’t buying any of that “If I can make jokes about genocide, why can’t I make jokes about rape?” Horseshit, unless you made those genocide jokes during a gig at the Srebrenica Funny Bone. You got away with making a joke about genocide because your odds of having a holocaust survivor’s kid in the audience were pretty fucking low.

And if you did happen to have one in the audience, and he heckled you, walked out, and wrote something nasty on the internet… would you be more likely to be a human being and say “Wow. I can understand why that person’s authentic response to what I was doing was so emotional and negative. Maybe my genocide material just isn’t good enough to justify the pain that it inflicts. Maybe I need more skill in order to pull this off.” Or are you gonna be a lousy piece of shit and say, “Yeah, I apologize, I guess, IF YOU WERE OFFENDED.”

Offended hasn’t got anything to do with it, moron.

I’m not a comedian, and am only occasionally (mostly not on purpose) funny. I’m not here to comment on humor or what passes as a joke these days. However, an unintended conversation on Twitter yesterday, coupled with a story from a friend got me thinking.
Last night I found myself engaged with a comedian who didn’t quite understand why everyone was so up in arms over Tosh’s “joke.” Relax. Take a chill pill. You’re overreacting. You have no sense of humor, etc… I did my best to not engage, but when he verbally attacked a friend of mine, I stepped in. I was rational. I was calm. I made some logical points. And yet…
(I’ve chosen not to share screen caps of our conversation because I don’t need to give this guy any more attention. The bolding/color highlighting are my doing).

Can Rape Jokes Ever Be Funny? by Sarah Seltzer via AlterNet [includes video]
The answer to this bogus claim, of course, is that humor is at its best when it subverts the norm. In a rape culture such as ours, the norm is to pile scorn and disbelief upon victims and excuse perpetrators. So rape jokes that further humiliate victims aren’t edgy, they’re just bullying. But jokes that call attention to rape culture can be funny and even receive the feminist seal of approval.
A number of awesome feminist friends of AlterNet from the Women’s Media Center, PopCulturePirateWomen In Media & News, and Fem2pt0 teamed up this week to create a “supercut” of a variety of rape jokes, including several from Daniel Tosh which in my mind show exactly on which side of the line his particularsense of humor lies. The video, however, makes no overt judgments, but asks audience members to decide for themselves where that line is, what makes them laugh, and what makes them uncomfortable.

It seems that the heart of this incident is the question of whether or not it is appropriate for comedians to joke about rape. It could be argued that in this case, people defending Tosh are arguing it is appropriate to threaten someone with rape in a comedy club (since, if we use their logic, supposedly in the context of a comedy club, this is not meant to be taken seriously since it is just “a joke” that you might not “get”).
But the real heart of this, and the reason it has struck a chord with so many people, is that it is a simple sad illustration of rape culture at work.

Daniel has made jokes about black men, Latino men, and other non-white men raping women because they’re all animals who can’t control their dicks.

When his rape jokes were rooted in racism, no one gave a fuck.

I wonder if this spurt of rape jokes/threats/insults is not as out of the blue as we would all like to think. I see it as starting with prison-rape jokes. No one seemed to bat an eyelash when we used jokes like “don’t drop the soap” or “you’ll end up with a cellmate named Bubba” or even “they have a way of taking care of people who fight dogs/pedophiles/wife-abusers in jail.”
Then along came movies and television shows in which male rape was funny. I was appalled by a scene in Get Him To The Greek in which a male star is anally raped by a woman wielding a large dildo. Then came True Blood in which Jason Stackhouse was gang raped by women. His trauma was minimized and the rape(s) were written as a humorous comeuppance for a serial womanizer.
Daniel Tosh, Rape Jokes and Hecklers by Margaret Lyons via Vulture
First, let’s get a few quick things out of the way: (1) This is totally in keeping with Daniel Tosh’s humor and style. He’s a lousy Reddit thread come to life, which is why he is so popular! (Just ask Jeff Dunham.) (2) Don’t heckle comedians, no matter how offensive and crappy you think their material is. (3) There’s no such thing as off-limits in comedy, and comedians are always — always — entitled to make jokes about whatever they want. But “entitled to” and “obligated to” are not the same thing, and comedy is not immune to criticism.
That’s 30 rape jokes in one segment. One segment in a half-hour show on Comedy Central. That averages one rape joke per minute. I’d love to know the demographics of his viewing audience, but I don’t even have to look to feel confident they skew heavily in the 18-34 range. Which is terrifying to me.
Sure, one can find humor in anything, but I’d like to think that humor is most often found by those who have experienced something. Humor in healing, humor in dealing. Not aggressive, unnecessary and belittling humor that essentially robs the victims (in general as well as those specified) of the fact that they. were. victimized.
When Rape Jokes Aren’t Funny by Julie Burton and Michelle Kinsey Bruns via CNN
Nonetheless, the significant overlap between the gender divide and the rape-joke empathy gap is real, and it seems inevitable when media coverage of rape so often focuses on what a victim should have done differently to try harder not to get raped. Such shoddy framing creates a fictional image that there’s a certain type of woman who gets raped. Women know that’s a lie, because they live the truth, but men may never have occasion to question that image, and so when they laugh at rape jokes, they’re laughing at an abstraction that’s all too real for many women.
Tosh and all those with the privilege to hold a microphone have a responsibility to shine a light on the reality behind the abstraction — not to perpetuate it, and certainly not to silence those who bear its burden.

Nope by Melissa McEwan via Shakesville
UPDATE: I also want to quickly address the argument I’m seeing a lot that Louis CK should be given “credit,” or some variation thereof, for either “evolving” on rape culture and/or speaking about rape culture on a national platform, despite the rest of his objectionable shtick.

First of all, contemplating rape culture for the first time as a 44-year-old man with two daughters, and patting oneself on the back for it instead of framing it as the profoundly regrettable evidence of privilege that is is, isn’t something that ought to be praised—and praising it breathes life into the terrible idea that rape culture is difficult for “men” to understand. That is not accurate. It’s not difficult for lots of male survivors; it’s not difficult for lots of trans* men; it’s not difficult for lots of gay men; it’s not difficult for lots of men who have been incarcerated; it’s not difficult for lots of men who are vulnerable by virtue of physical disability; it’s not difficult for lots of highly privileged men who simply have the willingness to listen to women.

Let us not confuse “difficult to understand” for “easy to ignore by virtue of privilege.”