The media, feminism, and me. A post for International Womenâs Day 2017
While I consider myself a supporter of feminism and an ally to its cause, I find that virtually none of my favorite creators, authors, artists, scientists, etc. are female or, more importantly, identify as women. I believe that I can be an ally despite that fact but I have to ask myself if I am truly a supporter for the cause of gender equality.
If I donât support a woman singer her songs and her albums am I a feminist? If I donât watch women led films or television can I be a feminist? If the anime I like has weak female leads used primarily for fan service or has an overwhelmingly male cast am I supporting the feminist cause?
I find that few of the games I play have female playable characters. Even fewer with female leads. I watch several hours of wrestling a week and rarely, if ever, pay attention to women wrestlers. I watch several all male promotions: ROH, NJPW, and NOAH and I could not care less that there are no women on the roster. I used to be a sports guy but have since fallen out of watching SportsCenter every morning years ago. Still none of the athletes that I care about are women. I donât watch any sports for them. As if womenâs sports are for women.
In every genre of entertainment and in any expressive medium, I seem to avoid anything that has women in a central role. So, perhaps, my claim that I am a feminist is just that, a claim.
The question I must ask myself is âDo I avoid female-centric art?â If I think that I donât and that I only am predisposed to liking male-centric things or that male focused art is better, does it matter?
I find that rappers like Killer Mike, Jay Z, Slug, etc. are better than Trina, Remy Ma, and Nicki. I prefer singers like Julian Casablancas, Chris Cornell, R. Kelly to Beyonce, Alicia Keys, and Lily Allen (who is my fav woman singer), There is no female directer that I follow or whose style I recognize like Snyder, Tarantino, Abrams, Nolan. The Ava DuVernayâs and Katheryn Bigelowâs of the world are award winning visionaries but I couldnât describe their style or bodies of work. I had to Google other women directors because Iâm simply not familair with any who wasnât an actor first. Thereâs no actress that I prefer to my favorite actors. Amy Adams is in a few of my favorite recent films but she wouldnât crack my top 20 for on screen performers. Iâve seen the majority of several actressesâ entire bodies of work and it doesnât seem to matter to me. I find it hard to fathom that I would see a movie because an actress was in it. For some actors, I would.
In this scenario Iâd have to ask myself why is this? Is it because of the subject matter or their work? Or is it something like the quality or my perception of it? Do I believe that their works are inferior to their male colleagues? Perhaps, the roles women are given in Hollywood and the music industry are typecast. Or I just avoid these womenâs work because I am sexist? Idk.
In games I think my issue with supporting women and female leads has definite room for improvement. I never create a woman as my avatar. Iâm male, identify as a man, so Iâve never, when given an option, chose to play as a woman over in a man when you could create a character. In Dishonored 2 I did choose to play as Emily instead of Corvo but you donât create either character. I donât think I know any game creators, directors, art leads, writers, etc. other than Amy Hennig (the writer and director of the first few Uncharted games) and Jade Raymond (of Assassinâs Creed). I will play a game with a female protagonist but Iâm not sure if I avoided a game because it had a woman.
Thinking critically of myself I donât think I would play Final Fantasy XV, my favorite game of last year, if it had a cast of four women. Iâm not sure the marketing would capture me in that case. I would hope that having a female lead cast would not have prevented me from playing FFXV. I like Nathan Drake more than Lara Croft. I canât tell if thatâs because of the writing, Nolan Northâs performance, or sexism. In Resident Evil 6 there were four campaigns with only one with a woman as the lead. Some campaigns had women characters but the driving focus of the narrative was on the men in them. Adaâs campaign was my favorite but that may be due to the execution and style of the others. In Overwatch my mains are split 50/50 which is a credit to Blizzard for diversifying its cast and the roles they play to encourage its players to be a different hero. In gaming I canât tell with certainty why I seemingly donât play games with women playable characters. It could be the style of the game-indie title skew more towards equality (not yet equal though) of female leads than AAA games. Maybe the genre of game is part of it. I prefer action oriented games and those overwhelmingly have guys as the protagonist.
In anime, none of my favorites have a woman lead. In some cases, like Bleach, the girls are there as fan service or damsels in distress. While they all have characters and motivations, their purpose within the story isnât as important as the fellas that move the story along. I especially love Shonen style battle anime and there will seemingly always be a focus on men as itâs target audience in Japan is young boys. My favorite anime series is Full Metal Alchemist, a series with male leads yet is written by Hiromu Arakawa, a woman (Arakawaâs name is Hiromi but she uses a male pen name).
When it comes to wrestling and (real) sports I, simply, prefer watching the men. When I was a teenager I would watch womenâs tennis cus upskirts hehe now that Iâm (less im)mature I know now how silly and wrong that was. When I was that age professional wrestling in the US overly sexualized women and thatâs the reason why I would watch it then. I would outgrow that behavior too because promotions focused on aesthetics and the women that they hired were trash performers. Itâs only recently with NXT generation of women wrestlers (and Natalya too) that I care about womenâs wrestling in the US. I love the Japanese style of wrestling, puroresu, but I donât watch Joshi (female) promotions. I will seek out Joshi matches but at the time, I havenât yet done the research and the promotions arenât as easily available as New Japan Pro Wrestling. Back to real sports, now that I, more or less, know what I like. I do not watch any competition between women when there is a male alternative. With MMA I kind of luck into watching women fight as theyâre on the same card as the men. I watch only World Cup for womenâs soccer. I donât think Iâve seen a high level soccer game on television other than WC. When I attended UAB, I never watched womenâs basketball but went to a few menâs, I only went to one womenâs soccer game and I didnât support any other womenâs sport on campus at all. I donât follow the WNBA at all. I can only name a few players and canât name a champion team. In womenâs NCAA I only know about UConn because theyâve been so dominant. But even without watching ESPN regularly, I can tell you whoâs hot and what the teams are doing in the NBA and menâs NCAA.
The crux of my problem is that I donât know how much fault I bear in having an aversion to womenâs artistic pursuits. While I feel like I am a feminist and am all for equal rights and pay, I do not seem to care much or at all about the creative work that women produce. I think it has to do with the exposure of their work. There are very few works of art that have a female lead that are marketed towards me. But I recognize that I should seek these things out as well. I should support womenâs work because that, presumably, would help get more women hired in the fields and mediums that I enjoy consuming. In sports I can see clearly that Iâm biased toward male competition and I donât know how to fix that issue. Watching womenâs sports would help a bit, sure, but Iâm not a huge sports guy and so Iâll generally watch only the âmajorâ events. Those events are, of course, overwhelmingly male. For the arts, literature (which I didnât touch), film, music, tv, anime, games, etc. I need to consume more works by women featuring women to send a messages to labels, publishers, channels, and studios that there is a demand for their products. The thing is Iâve done things like this before every summer I look for new artists and try to find their work and I regularly seek out new anime. So I think I need to try to find new news sources as well and, perhaps, that would help alleviate the problem I have of not being exposed to whatâs popular, critically acclaimed, and highlights women. Thereâs a lot of work that I have to do to be more inclusive in my hobbies. Iâve tried to do so in the past and while I think I tried to do so sincerely there was little to no impact on diversifying the types of art and its creators that I consume. In order to call myself a feminist and mean it, I NEED to try more works by women. What do you recommend?
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