Sexism

[Mark Albrighton]

As an aside, if there was a joke or a comment made in a show that was along the lines of “You like X as much as Liz Taylor likes wedding cake”, would that be considered a form of slut shaming or would that be considered “fair game” as being married eight times is kinda unusual and open to some humour (within reason)?

I’m feel like it’s the latter as long as the joke could be made at the expense of a male equivalent (to be fair, an example doesn’t immediately come to mind).

Edited March 2, 2021 by Mark Albrighton

[chrisp65]

2 minutes ago, lapal_fan said:

It's very hard to comment on anything if you're trying to shoe-horn in every individuals feelings.

Grouping things is a pretty good system as it stands. 

The job is to not say racist or sexist or hurtful - but when people joke there's always going to be a "butt".  Obviously we have laws which make certain things to say illegal, which is a good thing! 

I don't think it's sexist for the reasons I've previously pointed out (like 44% of her singles are about breakups ergo, people joke about her having a lot of relationships, or use her as a comparison, as the show did), but it's not a nice thing to say about her and I wouldn't say it myself (not that Taylor Swift is in my brain sphere anyway).

All good. I’m not massively invested in making this the hill I stake everything on.

It’s just that it was about her specifically, and she specifically has complained about it.

I’d agree more if the statement had been, you’ve had more rides than a rodeo guy, or more break ups than a country singer, or more boob jobs than a porn star.

 

It was personalised shaming, and that person took offence.

 

[Mic09]

I haven't read the whole discussion on this so I apologise if I mis-diagnose something, however I have been made aware of the 'Taylor Swift' reference via other media.

My question is, if a joke or a comment or any popular media reference is made with regards to a female, does that make that comment sexist from the get go? 

Or does that make Taylor Swift a stereotypical 'loose' celebrity so a good example to use when making a pop culture reference? If so, where is the sexism?

[lapal_fan]

3 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

All good. I’m not massively invested in making this the hill I stake everything on.

It’s just that it was about her specifically, and she specifically has complained about it.

I’d agree more if the statement had been, you’ve had more rides than a rodeo guy, or more break ups than a country singer, or more boob jobs than a porn star.

 

It was personalised shaming, and that person took offence.

 

That I agree with.  It's a personal attack on her individually - and that's cruel - your examples would have been MUCH better, particularly in the context of that 10 second clip I saw.

But I still don't think it's sexist!  

[sidcow]

4 minutes ago, lapal_fan said:

I make it my goal to disprove that  

I would think any episode of Friends involving Joey would have multiple jokes about his easy lifestyle, and not all of them in a "good on ya fella" kind of way, much of it berating him, although plenty of the other as well.  Probably praise from the boys and shaming from the girls.  Not that friends is any kind of moral compass to take bearings from.

[useless]

I think people are getting two seperate issues mixed up, saying that Taylor Swift gets through a lot of men is bad enough, and Taylor Swift is well within her rights to be upset by it, especially if it's not true and it's charge she's had to put up with over a span of time.

But the reason why the scene is sexist and negative towards women in general and not just Taylor Swift, is because the idea of a woman going through a lot of men is used as a negative, whereas the idea of men going through a lot of women would never be used as a negative in the same way.

Also as has already been stated the reference to Taylor Swift wasn't a "joke" not sure why people keep referring to it as one, it was said in what was meant to be a serious scene with vitriol by one female character to another.

[sidcow]

I did not see this becoming the hottest topic on VT when I put that up earlier. 

Do they have threads like this on other football forums? 

[bickster]

1 minute ago, sidcow said:

I did not see this becoming the hottest topic on VT when I put that up earlier. 

Do they have threads like this on other football forums? 

Is this a fooball forum? I'd almost forgotten 

[sidcow]

2 minutes ago, useless said:

Also as has already been stated the reference to Taylor Swift wasn't a "joke" not sure why people keep referring to it as one, it was said in what was meant to be a serious scene with vitriol by one female character to another.

The original story said it was a joke and she herself called it a joke in her tweet. I think that's why people are referring to it as a joke.

[Mic09]

14 minutes ago, sidcow said:

I would think any episode of Friends involving Joey would have multiple jokes about his easy lifestyle, and not all of them in a "good on ya fella" kind of way, much of it berating him, although plenty of the other as well.  Probably praise from the boys and shaming from the girls.  Not that friends is any kind of moral compass to take bearings from.

If you look at ''How I met your Mother Barney'' is branded as disgusting for getting it on with various women.

Then again, sometimes he is supported in doing so.

Media plays to stereotypes, that's how comedy works - creating a caricature of reality. 

[chrisp65]

8 minutes ago, lapal_fan said:

That I agree with.  It's a personal attack on her individually - and that's cruel - your examples would have been MUCH better, particularly in the context of that 10 second clip I saw.

But I still don't think it's sexist!  

I’m on a week of being kinder. So I’m being kind to Taylor Swift.

It’s day two. The amount of stuff I’ve written and then deleted!

It’s very difficult to see it from the perspective of someone that faces something every day. Different people are sensitive about different things rightly or wrongly. I’ve got the things that I’m sensitive too, others have other things. I’m bald, I couldn’t give a shit. So I have a much higher tolerance of baldy jokes than someone currently saving a few thousand to go to Turkey for surgery. I’m overweight and couldn’t care less what you think of that. For others, it would be a really big deal. You upscale that to racism or sexism or some other currently popular ism and it’s not my place to tell someone else they are wrong to feel wronged.

Anyone can deal with a grain of sand, when they come at you all day every day, it must be a bit more difficult to shrug them off. People on the side lines commenting that its just one tiny grain of sand and might not even be sand, it might be general household dirt, that can’t help.

 

 

[LondonLax]

It’s rough making a personal joke at TS’s expense.

Ricky Gervase made a similar joke at DiCaprio’s expense at the Golden Globes. The old dynamic of ‘women should be ashamed of having lots of partners while men should be celebrated’ is not as strong as it used to be. 

[sharkyvilla]

I watched the trailer for the programme on Netflix a couple of days ago and it's solely about that character's first day at school where she questions why the reading list in English class only has a few women on it, and only one black one.  I'm not sure where this joke fits in the context of all the rest of the series, it seemed as though it was pretty 'woke' for wont of a better word so I'm a bit surprised at this.

[Shomin Geki]

Ummm, this is a fictional show right, and the offending line is spoken by a fictional character?  I find the implication that a character created in a fictionalised environment should be judged as somehow an objective commentary that can be held up as representative of some actual attitudes or problems to be incredibly short-sighted and foolhardy.

James Bond in, I think, Goldfinger, states his dislike of The Beatles.  He isn't particularly specific.  It's just a quip.  Now, if he had said, unlikely I know, that they were four scruffy Scousers who should be working the docks instead, one could presume, certainly if espoused by the current something-of-a-dinosaur historicised Bond, that it should be perceived as the character making the statement.  A reflection perhaps of his privilege and of the anachronism of his position as a powerful agent of the British Establishment.  Arguably the original line suggests this already.  Yes it would lean on classism, but such ostensible flaws or complications makes for a richer, more layered, and dare I say conflicted, character.

There's certainly an argument, in general, to be made for popular culture perpetuating stereotypes and all manner of regressive or wrongheaded ideas.  As Swift says, this is indeed a very lazy reference.  I stopped watching Seth Meyers a while ago because there was an obvious, condescending slant to the subject of his writer's jokes that so often used 'lowlife' kind of individuals as a punchline.  Coupled with the cowardly fealty to the Liberal/Democratic Party line, often to the very letter, it felt unpleasantly elitist, judgemental and cruel, particularly when bearing in mind the actual suffering of the poor and working class in the U.S. and the stark reality of massive inequality.  That's a direct to camera monologue.  And the jibes had very little to do with anything political or topical.  Another reason, among others, to dislike the Marvel or DC films is their worship of elites, whether symbolically in the very positing of innately superior beings as our saviours and betters, or more directly in the uncomplicated portrayal of say, military industrial superbusinessmen or crime-fighting heirs to fortunes.  One can certainly argue that the works themselves DO offer discursive commentary on those concerns, but a critique is fair and healthy.

And it isn't simply big dumb entertainment.  I remember rolling my eyes at characters in a Hirokazu Koreeda film ridiculing 'rap music' with a Boomerish outdatedness.  Or a snobby exchange in a Mia-Hanson Love film sneering at Slavoj Zizek as being 'fishy' philosophy.  But both of these seemed to come from a position of elitist middle-class disdain.  You could even call it bourgeois entitlement.  Yet that would require a wider and more detailed critique of the milieu of both the film's representation of its characters and that of its production.  A very worthwhile critique!  Just look at the over-representation of the privately educated in the arts, including cinema.  But I see no such critique offered here.

Culture, and perhaps more significantly, popular culture, has something of a responsibility to the world it both exists within and portrays.  That relationship is a complex one and one that should be pursued with both skill and good faith.  For example if a character in a film made a comment about for example Woody Allen, let's say a critical one reflective of the current feelings about Allen, it could (and should!) absolutely reflect any particular biases or strength of feeling that character may have about this contentious issue.  Therein lies a greater complexity.  Now Woody Allen or Taylor Swift are part of popular culture, and in their popularity and impact they themselves are representative of many things.  They become a stand in for a whole multitude of issues.  Are we seriously suggesting that there should be a restriction on how culture reflects upon culture?  Doesn't this severely restrict matters, and consequently weaken culture and the conversations around them?  As a final example, look at The Sopranos, one of the greatest TV shows of all time.  Tony Soprano has a number of opinions many would consider retrogressive or offensive.  But they make the character more complex.  More real.  Perhaps they aren't even representative of his own beliefs, that we're back to a critique of milieu.  Of course, one can suggest he's a gangster and he's meant to be awful or whatever, but then we're reducing art, and issues of necessary complexity, to a simple moral examination.  And that's very silly.  And unhelpful.  And dysfunctional.

But the suggestion that there's something inherently abhorrent, and even inethical, about a character, who may be young or may be flawed or may be complicated or who may be a commentary or exploration of real world attitudes, seems incredibly limiting.  Philistine even.  Depiction, of course, and we can also look at debates regarding Scorsese and The Sopranos, is not endorsement.  If we want the cultural space to be so eagerly policed and so reductively evaluated we seriously restrict what the narrative arts can accomplish.  It's a loss for everyone.

This is obvious, no?

[sidcow]

4 minutes ago, Shomin Geki said:

Ummm, this is a fictional show right, and the offending line is spoken by a fictional character?  I find the implication that a character created in a fictionalised environment should be judged as somehow an objective commentary that can be held up as representative of some actual attitudes or problems to be incredibly short-sighted and foolhardy.

James Bond in, I think, Goldfinger, states his dislike of The Beatles.  He isn't particularly specific.  It's just a quip.  Now, if he had said, unlikely I know, that they were four scruffy Scousers who should be working the docks instead, one could presume, certainly if espoused by the current something-of-a-dinosaur historicised Bond, that it should be perceived as the character making the statement.  A reflection perhaps of his privilege and of the anachronism of his position as a powerful agent of the British Establishment.  Arguably the original line suggests this already.  Yes it would lean on classism, but such ostensible flaws or complications makes for a richer, more layered, and dare I say conflicted, character.

There's certainly an argument, in general, to be made for popular culture perpetuating stereotypes and all manner of regressive or wrongheaded ideas.  As Swift says, this is indeed a very lazy reference.  I stopped watching Seth Meyers a while ago because there was an obvious, condescending slant to the subject of his writer's jokes that so often used 'lowlife' kind of individuals as a punchline.  Coupled with the cowardly fealty to the Liberal/Democratic Party line, often to the very letter, it felt unpleasantly elitist, judgemental and cruel, particularly when bearing in mind the actual suffering of the poor and working class in the U.S. and the stark reality of massive inequality.  That's a direct to camera monologue.  And the jibes had very little to do with anything political or topical.  Another reason, among others, to dislike the Marvel or DC films is their worship of elites, whether symbolically in the very positing of innately superior beings as our saviours and betters, or more directly in the uncomplicated portrayal of say, military industrial superbusinessmen or crime-fighting heirs to fortunes.  One can certainly argue that the works themselves DO offer discursive commentary on those concerns, but a critique is fair and healthy.

And it isn't simply big dumb entertainment.  I remember rolling my eyes at characters in a Hirokazu Koreeda film ridiculing 'rap music' with a Boomerish outdatedness.  Or a snobby exchange in a Mia-Hanson Love film sneering at Slavoj Zizek as being 'fishy' philosophy.  But both of these seemed to come from a position of elitist middle-class disdain.  You could even call it bourgeois entitlement.  Yet that would require a wider and more detailed critique of the milieu of both the film's representation of its characters and that of its production.  A very worthwhile critique!  Just look at the over-representation of the privately educated in the arts, including cinema.  But I see no such critique offered here.

Culture, and perhaps more significantly, popular culture, has something of a responsibility to the world it both exists within and portrays.  That relationship is a complex one and one that should be pursued with both skill and good faith.  For example if a character in a film made a comment about for example Woody Allen, let's say a critical one reflective of the current feelings about Allen, it could (and should!) absolutely reflect any particular biases or strength of feeling that character may have about this contentious issue.  Therein lies a greater complexity.  Now Woody Allen or Taylor Swift are part of popular culture, and in their popularity and impact they themselves are representative of many things.  They become a stand in for a whole multitude of issues.  Are we seriously suggesting that there should be a restriction on how culture reflects upon culture?  Doesn't this severely restrict matters, and consequently weaken culture and the conversations around them?  As a final example, look at The Sopranos, one of the greatest TV shows of all time.  Tony Soprano has a number of opinions many would consider retrogressive or offensive.  But they make the character more complex.  More real.  Perhaps they aren't even representative of his own beliefs, that we're back to a critique of milieu.  Of course, one can suggest he's a gangster and he's meant to be awful or whatever, but then we're reducing art, and issues of necessary complexity, to a simple moral examination.  And that's very silly.  And unhelpful.  And dysfunctional.

But the suggestion that there's something inherently abhorrent, and even inethical, about a character, who may be young or may be flawed or may be complicated or who may be a commentary or exploration of real world attitudes, seems incredibly limiting.  Philistine even.  Depiction, of course, and we can also look at debates regarding Scorsese and The Sopranos, is not endorsement.  If we want the cultural space to be so eagerly policed and so reductively evaluated we seriously restrict what the narrative arts can accomplish.  It's a loss for everyone.

This is obvious, no?

No. 

[Shomin Geki]

3 minutes ago, sidcow said:

No. 

Please expand!

 

[chrisp65]

7 minutes ago, Shomin Geki said:

Ummm, this is a fictional show right, and the offending line is spoken by a fictional character?  I find the implication that a character created in a fictionalised environment should be judged as somehow an objective commentary that can be held up as representative of some actual attitudes or problems to be incredibly short-sighted and foolhardy.

James Bond in, I think, Goldfinger, states his dislike of The Beatles.  He isn't particularly specific.  It's just a quip.  Now, if he had said, unlikely I know, that they were four scruffy Scousers who should be working the docks instead, one could presume, certainly if espoused by the current something-of-a-dinosaur historicised Bond, that it should be perceived as the character making the statement.  A reflection perhaps of his privilege and of the anachronism of his position as a powerful agent of the British Establishment.  Arguably the original line suggests this already.  Yes it would lean on classism, but such ostensible flaws or complications makes for a richer, more layered, and dare I say conflicted, character.

There's certainly an argument, in general, to be made for popular culture perpetuating stereotypes and all manner of regressive or wrongheaded ideas.  As Swift says, this is indeed a very lazy reference.  I stopped watching Seth Meyers a while ago because there was an obvious, condescending slant to the subject of his writer's jokes that so often used 'lowlife' kind of individuals as a punchline.  Coupled with the cowardly fealty to the Liberal/Democratic Party line, often to the very letter, it felt unpleasantly elitist, judgemental and cruel, particularly when bearing in mind the actual suffering of the poor and working class in the U.S. and the stark reality of massive inequality.  That's a direct to camera monologue.  And the jibes had very little to do with anything political or topical.  Another reason, among others, to dislike the Marvel or DC films is their worship of elites, whether symbolically in the very positing of innately superior beings as our saviours and betters, or more directly in the uncomplicated portrayal of say, military industrial superbusinessmen or crime-fighting heirs to fortunes.  One can certainly argue that the works themselves DO offer discursive commentary on those concerns, but a critique is fair and healthy.

And it isn't simply big dumb entertainment.  I remember rolling my eyes at characters in a Hirokazu Koreeda film ridiculing 'rap music' with a Boomerish outdatedness.  Or a snobby exchange in a Mia-Hanson Love film sneering at Slavoj Zizek as being 'fishy' philosophy.  But both of these seemed to come from a position of elitist middle-class disdain.  You could even call it bourgeois entitlement.  Yet that would require a wider and more detailed critique of the milieu of both the film's representation of its characters and that of its production.  A very worthwhile critique!  Just look at the over-representation of the privately educated in the arts, including cinema.  But I see no such critique offered here.

Culture, and perhaps more significantly, popular culture, has something of a responsibility to the world it both exists within and portrays.  That relationship is a complex one and one that should be pursued with both skill and good faith.  For example if a character in a film made a comment about for example Woody Allen, let's say a critical one reflective of the current feelings about Allen, it could (and should!) absolutely reflect any particular biases or strength of feeling that character may have about this contentious issue.  Therein lies a greater complexity.  Now Woody Allen or Taylor Swift are part of popular culture, and in their popularity and impact they themselves are representative of many things.  They become a stand in for a whole multitude of issues.  Are we seriously suggesting that there should be a restriction on how culture reflects upon culture?  Doesn't this severely restrict matters, and consequently weaken culture and the conversations around them?  As a final example, look at The Sopranos, one of the greatest TV shows of all time.  Tony Soprano has a number of opinions many would consider retrogressive or offensive.  But they make the character more complex.  More real.  Perhaps they aren't even representative of his own beliefs, that we're back to a critique of milieu.  Of course, one can suggest he's a gangster and he's meant to be awful or whatever, but then we're reducing art, and issues of necessary complexity, to a simple moral examination.  And that's very silly.  And unhelpful.  And dysfunctional.

But the suggestion that there's something inherently abhorrent, and even inethical, about a character, who may be young or may be flawed or may be complicated or who may be a commentary or exploration of real world attitudes, seems incredibly limiting.  Philistine even.  Depiction, of course, and we can also look at debates regarding Scorsese and The Sopranos, is not endorsement.  If we want the cultural space to be so eagerly policed and so reductively evaluated we seriously restrict what the narrative arts can accomplish.  It's a loss for everyone.

This is obvious, no?

So as long as I create a fictional character, I can get away with saying personal stuff about living named individuals and I can be racist, sexist or homophobic ?

No.

 

[Shomin Geki]

2 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

So as long as I create a fictional character, I can get away with saying personal stuff about living named individuals and I can be racist, sexist or homophobic ?

No.

 

The parts of my argument where I mention context and reflexivity would seem not to be reflected in this response.

[Shomin Geki]

13 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

So as long as I create a fictional character, I can get away with saying personal stuff about living named individuals and I can be racist, sexist or homophobic ?

No.

 

And how about the other examples offered?

[bickster]

25 minutes ago, Shomin Geki said:

James Bond in, I think, Goldfinger, states his dislike of The Beatles.  He isn't particularly specific.  It's just a quip.  Now, if he had said, unlikely I know, that they were four scruffy Scousers who should be working the docks instead,

Seems perfectly reasonable to me