#main purpose: eyecandy

[canonmisogynyvictimstournament]

PROPAGANDA

STARFIRE (DC COMICS) (CW: Sex Trafficking)

1.) She is frequently put down in the og 80s comics due to being more expressive and open with her emotions, and ever since the og she has frequently been painted as just eyecandy (ignoring her sexual trauma) when her character is so incredibly complex. Special mention goes to red hood and the outlaws (2011) (written by a sexual harasser) for just terrible stand out awful reasons which will be seen in the below photos and her 2015 solo for combining her vapid portrayal there with her cartoon quirkiness to culminate in a trash comic that is just her basically being the born sexy yesterday trope.

2.) 2011 reboot, in RHATO she was turned into a walking fetish by retconning most parts of her character and erasing all personality displayed in the past 30 years of comics. in that iteration she is only interested in sex and is dehumanised and ‘exotic’. she ‘forgot’ all her past relationships because she doesn’t care about them only sex. her only purpose in that book is as a powerhouse and a sex/love interest for one of the male characters who view her as a trophy because she used to date someone he dislikes (in this continuity) let’s also not forget that she was first created just to be a love interest and although she did grow into a hood character at some point, she is treated horribly time and time again by writers because of conflicting ships. she’s written as a ‘vixen’ as opposed to another ‘good girl’ female character who is shipped with the same guy in canon

3.) Her original characterization was fairly decent, however it still had her stuck in relationships with men that weren’t very good for her and had overtones of racism with how she was written. Post that her characterization was slowly chipped away at, some writers with harder sledgehammers than others, culminating in current writing where she’s dismissed as “just a fling” to her original counterpart (Dick Grayson) to prop up a different ship (Dick Grayson/Barbara Gordon) and frequently has been used as eye candy in other comics. Simply open the first comic of Red Hood and the Outlaws, which obliterated her personality to make her associate/be subservient to the Red Hood, and you’ll find plenty of panels of her appearing simply for eye candy in the boobs and butt pose for absolutely no reason. This is not the only time she’s been used to cater to the male gaze (I’d argue even in her original context that was part of her appeal) but in this comic she essentially has no personality beyond “i want sex” as her memory of all past events has been erased. She’s essentially just a tool for her male counterparts in the comic to bounce off of, and eye candy to bring more male readers in. She does eventually get more storylines later on, but that doesn’t excuse the bad writing she was put through. Her own solo series also cashes in on her sex appeal, by infantilizing at the same time as drawing her in skimpy outfits + more boobs and butt poses galore to go for the “born sexy yesterday” misogynistic trope.

GWEN (BBC MERLIN) (CW: Mind Control, Adultery)

1.) She was one the main 4 characters in the show and basically the leading lady as the show went on and YET. She was literally treated like an object to make her pain a point of conflict and angst for the male characters and then SHE WAS BARELY EVEN THERE. FOR THE SEASON FINALE. THE LEADING WOMAN. so that the writers could focus on their male characters more. Also in season 4 the writers forgot that they had to make a Guinevere/Lancelot affair happen (to follow the Arthurian canon that they ~totally~ were following before. this is sarcasm btw). But at that point Gwen as a character was not in a place where she would do that. So instead of writing something actually good they decided to just have Gwen end up with an Enchanted Bracelet That Makes You Cheat On People. I’m not joking. So it wasn’t even her choice to have an affair and they never explore the implications of this. And it’s never even revealed to the characters that she didn’t choose this. She’s just. Never vindicated. Evil and terrible.

2.) At the beginning of the series there was on episode when Gwen was like “women should be allowed to fight” (in a battle that was happening). A big part of her character at the beginning was also knowing armor and weaponry bc she was the blacksmith’s daughter. But then in the series finale they had her say something along the lines for “I’m not meant to fight” just so she could be gone so that the writers could just write about the two male leads

3.) Okay also in the last season they didn’t know what to do with Gwen’s character so for almost half the season they made a plot line where she was mind controlled (again :)))) after being kidnapped and tortured. And like. Again instead of focusing on her and the effects it had on her they made the whole thing an excuse to get Male Lead # 1 and # 2 angsty about it. They had to like. Knock her out and throw her into a lake (magic baptism???) to reverse mind control and then they literally never her reaction to the whole situation ever. Literally objectified for the plot.

[meandering-mind]

Ever just have a character that can’t fight worth shit

[mejomonster]

Imma be real being bi is intrinsically tied to how I am experiencing the yakuza games and I have No Fucking idea how this feels for straight women or men to play

As a bisexual I feel like it's so self indulgent (either on purpose or accident) and so like I'm having a great fucking time! I go on a date with my lesbian Bestie! I help her with girl trouble, I go on a date with goromi! Goromi kicks my ass! I go on a date with some other hostesses and just hear life stories. Majimas tits are out nonstop and it's glorious. Another hot man just ripped off his shirt and now I'm drowning in eyecandy. Oh there's an erotic photo taking minigame? Well I'm gay. Oh kiryus an erotic photo model? Well I'm gay and I get to make him pose like a tiger. Phenomenal. Oh earth mama loves us, well i love her. Oh nishiki was our dear bro whom I the player loved and now has deep pain? Well I'm in love with the villain. Oh yuki our childhood to adult friend went in hiding, stole 10 billion from the yakuza and a corrupt politician and is about to destroy it? I'm in love with her. Oh we have adopted a child now, and a puppy, wooh.

Like I'm obviously not referring to the drama angst city tragedy portion of the story which appeals to all audiences I think fairly similarly as some action suspense sad drama thriller. But like the other parts like. You are best friends with some host guy hotties. You save his life. You run a cabaret club and think of them as family. I'm guessing maybe ur supposed to crush on Said cabaret girls but you also play dress up with them and make them look super Cool. Now ur befriending them. Oh your head girl definitely has a crush on the cabaret owner lady u work for. Head girl may be bi. Join the club babe it's me and majima and we are having a phenomenal time.

Like? If you're straight I gotta imagine half of this self indulgent shit is?? What bizarre or something? If ur a straight guy then there's just SO much eyecandy. Yakuza pretty much codes who's good ish or not by how hot a man they are, with only a few exceptions. Ryuji Goda is a man u wanna RIDE and ur telling me a straight man sees him and isn't overwhelmed with facing how HOT ur new enemy is? Then there's daigo the typical hot guy of 2006, Again Majima who's just walking nonstop eyecandy flirting with you the player character. Stripping for you even. There's even a hottie for various ages, Kazes energy alone was angling for Attitude and ripping off his shirt, Nishitani is a Lot but part of its magnetism even Majima got charmed by and wanted to copy. If u like men it is a nonstop fest of hotties. Then if you're a straight girl? While like I said there's a parade of hot men, there's also a Lot of cute girls. While kiryu is fairly non romance centric which I find really nice (saying you can go out on a date with a friend without being in a relationship, the entire cabaret minigame with him tending to involve befriending and getting slice of life stories more than anything else, his adamance to reject any romantic proposal generally in sidestories) you're still hanging out with a ton of cute girls. Even if you ignore the cabaret minigames completely (which I like the girls life story plots so :/ you'd have to skip those and the fun dress up games) then there's still the erotic video and photo places which just throw boobs at you to no tomorrow. And some of that's not optional if you wanna do certain sidestories (tho tbh a lot of its funny in a detached way when ur feeling like kiryu and going ??? What do you mean an anteater can eat a human that can't be true?!).

Just like. As a bi person I'm like ah yes gratuitous fanservice everywhere all over the place. But if ur straight wtf is it even like? I Assume it's like... 50 percent fanservice and then 50 percent just kinda pushing thru the sexy bits absolutely not aimed at u. You'd think tje sexy men would be easier to ignore but I cannot overstate how much ALL the main cast is generally hot men, and if u want full enjoyment of the game u let urself pick up on the homoerotic overtones shoveled on there as well as just fully appreciating they made someone as pretty as Tachibana, and just like. Fuck. The way one of the goals is digging into masculinity and how it's defined and questioning it and what it means to who, means even fuckers like Sagawa you're forced to realize what majima may admire about him, Kaze you're forced to admire what kiryu acknowledged as admirable of him to be so tenacious. That odas horrific but kiryu still grew emotionally close to him. That Tachibana was loved as dearly in kiryus way, as makoto was cared about by majima. That the way kiryu loves nishiki and yuki is deep and life long for him. That the way majima cares about his cabaret girl family is likely similar to how he feels about his valued underlings now. That kazamas a fucking monster but he also had a kind of love for all his kids that happened imperfectly but affected everything. How daigos feelings of his dad, of his rivals, affect him now and all of tojo clan. How ryuji used to care so deep for barely friends so his upfront brutality has to have a fucking motive. How even rhe cops I could care less for, the writing itself is trying to dig into who they love, what drives them, what defines every fucking man on screen (and sayama who's in a way parallel to kiryu, nishiki, yuki, and a lot of the orphan with murdered parents the games like to parallel). This game is SO driven by what men love and care for and their feelings, it's the center of the more dramatic heavy story portion. That like idk if you're trying so hard to only interpret it in the least caring way with the shallower of relationships, you're missing so much.

In short like I know majority audiences are probs straight and so these games manage to appeal anyway. Just like being bi and playing it is like nonstop nice story and/or fanservice without much break. And its odd to me that like that amount of indulgence is my experience but who knows for who else. (Then there's also the matter of I don't think it's intentionally made to appeal so much so that's luck almost but also another topic entirely)

[tangledbea]

i’m coming from a male perspective here:

Florian and Charming : Literal eyecandies

Phillip: Pretty good no large complaints

Eric: Pretty decent too but all he wants is to “find that girl” and “i will marry that girl”

Beast: i like him. he’s pretty decent

Aladdin: Look he’s great but he’s the main character, he’s not a disney prince in the same way the others are.

John Smith: A coloniser plus really bland.

Li Shang: He’s alright and serves his purpose

Naveen: A spoilt idiot. i’m sorry he’s great towards the end but he’s just a weaker Eugene to me.

Eugene: to me hes the best. He sacrifices himself but so does Rapunzel. They’re one of the only teams. They work together and well. When fighting they dont argue and they grow a very natural love for eachother.

I think Eugene is the best, too. Don’t get me wrong about that. He is my favorite Disney character, the end. But I also don’t want people all up in here saying that the others could be replaced by a block of wood and it would change nothing. That’s rude at the least and grossly inaccurate at the most.

The thing with P Frog is, I like it as a movie, and it’s very important, but to me it’s just all over kind of weaker storytelling. It’s beautiful, but the pacing is off at times and the characters aren’t as strong. However, Naveen and Tiana both sacrifice themselves for each other, too. He gives up on having a relationship with her in order for her to have her restaurant, and she gives up on her restaurant in order to have him. Just because it wasn’t life or death doesn’t mean it wasn’t a sacrifice. And the beauty of it was, they got what they wanted in the end after they decided to be content with what they had.

It wasn’t until recent years that Disney has tried to make their princes as much of main characters as the princesses whose movies they were in. Naveen - and P Frog in general - feel like a practice run to me, and Tangled was when they finally got it down pat.

But hey! With Tiana getting a series, maybe Naveen will have the chance to have as much development as Eugene has!

[mittensmorgul]

So. The lamp. As in, a sexy lamp. Like that one test. And wouldn't that just be a bibro early seasons' manly macho man ideal of heterostraight Dean (so, like, Chuck's), getting "intimate" with a disposable female eyecandy. But then he just, waves it goodbye. Good riddance, lamp. I have stuff to do, places to tapdance on. This was obviously supposed to be a crack ask but it sorta kinda almost holds water?? I'm???

Lol... but seriously... I had this exact thought... but like... haven’t said it out loud because, first off, was that lamp sexy? It wasn’t this lamp:

but it WAS dancing... Dean made it sexy by his interaction with it, I guess we could say.

Supernatural has a long-standing cracky history of Lamp Abuse, and a lot of folks immediately picked it up in that respect. I mean, I have a tag for this going back to May 2015:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/this%20is%20a%20lamp%20abuse%20awareness%20blog/chrono

So I didn’t mention the Sexy Lamp Test, because heck... SPN also has a long history of Female Character Issues, and making the comparison to actual abused lamps, even in a joking way, just struck me as... an uncomfortable subject... An Actual Lamp got treated with respect before some of the female characters SPN has treated horrifically. And I don’t think that’s the message this scene was attempting to convey.

For reference purposes, as I’m typing this, I’ve got 4.16 on in the background, and Alistair is singing Dancing Cheek to Cheek, and I’m feeling really grateful they didn’t pick THAT song for Dean’s dream sequence... okay moving on from that >.>

For people who don’t know what we’re talking about, please read the Fanlore page on what is meant by the Sexy Lamp Test:

https://fanlore.org/wiki/Sexy_Lamp_Test

It’s similar to the Bechdel-Wallace test (that at least two named female character have a conversation that isn’t about a man), but again, both of these “tests” are also specifically regarding the representation of women in media. When fandom also began ascribing meaning to Dean’s dance with the lamp, suggesting the lamp he actaully wanted to dance with was Cas... I began to rethink this. Or at least to rethink how I could discuss this.

Andrew Dabb really likes using one scene to say or suggest multiple things. The more references or parallels he can pack into a single thing, the happier he is. I mean, he brought us Jack, after all, who has served as a narrative mirror focal point for no less than six other characters. It’s... his favorite thing, I think. :’D

So, bearing that in mind, and understanding that I am NOT suggesting that any of those other interpretations are wrong, because I completely agree with them, too, and argue that all of these interpretations can be applied to the same scene at the same time here without conflicting, and that this is legitimately a valid interpretation of Dean’s Lamp Dance as well, please have a loose definition of the Sexy Lamp Test:

If you can take out a female character and replace her with a sexy lamp without changing anything else about the story, then you’ve failed.

I don’t know if there’s a Queer Content Sexy Lamp Test, but considering this phenomenon of sequestering queer content to easy to edit out quarantine zones, the fact that major media outlets are literally doing the sexy lamp to LGBTQ+ characters, relationships, etc, and literally leaving them on the cutting room floor entirely... well... that is something I find even more disturbing than the Sexy Lamp.  But that’s a conversation for another post, and for someone with a more direct knowledge of this phenomenon in media in general. I’m just here to talk about one dude tap dancing with a lamp in an anesthesia-induced dream sequence, not the whole of the media industry...

The dance sequence was lampshaded (lol... I love discussing this because I get to be punny without actually even making a pun... this is literally what they did) Dean’s dance with his lamp partner as romantic, by tying it directly to his observation of and comments on Bess and Garth’s explicitly romantically coded dance at the end of the episode.

Is this a commentary on Dean’s past relationships? He sure has had a lot of encounters with women who could’ve just as easily been replaced by sexy lamps. Characters we don’t even have names for, sometimes, or whose only lines were directly about flirtation or innuendo, or even as the unwitting objects of Dean’s innuendo. And while the show may have been making a commentary about that, I don’t think that was the main intent of him dancing with a lamp, directly connected with a sense of longing for a real dance partner (irrespective of gender... a lamp is inanimate, and even in this context serves as a stand-in for a person. Technically, in this test, the person is a female character, but lamps-- at least in English-- don’t have an inherent gender).

It’s also been a while since Dean’s “danced with a lamp” in that respect. He’s “kissed that dance goodbye” a while ago. And had even been struggling with it going back as far as s9, you know? He wants a relationship, but something truly meaningful, and not just occasional dances with random lamps.

They tied this to Garth and Bess, who found something truly special together. They found a way to live their best lives, and they’re both happy together. They’re... metaphorically on top of the world, like Dean dancing on the map table at the end of his scene. All Dean needs is a real dance partner who’s willing to learn the steps with him. Much as he might know who he’d like that to be, Dean himself still doesn’t know if that partner is willing to dance with him...

(I’m talking about Cas... obviously... the guy who was literally introduced to the narrative in a non-human form of screeching sound and light that shattered glass and had Dean diving for cover and hiding his face, whose original form is a “wavelength of celestial intent.” Who’s since rejected that Celestial Intent and truly come to identify with Humanity when confronted by the Divine. Who’s now had an entire decade-plus-long character arc of un-lamp-ifying himself in the story, in every possible interpretation of that phrase, metaphorical and literal.)

Dean’s moved beyond wanting to just dance with passing lamps. But he still isn’t sure the dance partner he’s longing for even wants to learn how to dance, you know? But this episode accomplished one thing in that regard. Dean actively knows what he wants. We now have to wait and see if he works up the nerve to ask for it...

[chikkou]

I'm not sure if you've been asked this already, but I finished death note today and I was wondering about your opinion of Misa? since you give her so much love

this is a very fun and sexy question and i thank u for asking it! (im also gonna answer it publicly, i hope u dont mind)

the short version of how i feel about misa is, essentially, that she is THE most important character in the story, bar none.

firstly, she possesses a level of social awareness and people skills/emotional intelligence that light simply does not have. he looks the part, sure, and he does have a certain level of charisma, but his interactions with other people - especially people he considers “lesser,” which is pretty much everyone for mister god complex - are stilted and awkward, meaning that no one ever fully trusts him. for example, the only reason misora was bested by him (in-universe, anyway) was due to his connection to L, someone she DOES trust - she knew that light was off somehow and even gave him a false name at first to protect herself. in a more meta sense, it was shitty writing on ohbas part since it was basically a crap excuse to get her out of the story, as i think everyone knows that misora wouldve solved the case in 2 seconds had she been allowed to live.

misa, on the other hand, is VERY easy to trust, because everyone she encounters underestimates her. its easy to see why - shes ditzy, not very book smart, obsessive of light, and overall pretty flighty. but her initial conversation with light and her manipulation of higuchi later on make it very clear that she isnt really like that. she knows how people view her and uses that to her advantage. she messes things up for the detectives on purpose and uses her “brainless celebrity” persona to justify it. but working as the second kira, her actions are completely calculated and well thought out.

to circle back to why shes the most important character, its pretty simple - if she hadnt come in when she did and killed ukita, light would have gotten caught right away. its that simple. L already knew light was the killer, and only had to gather the evidence to prove it before arresting him, which he was already on his way to doing (due to the murder of lind l taylor isolating him as living in kanto, his intimate knowledge of the criminals in custody identifying him as someone with ties to the police department, and his “killing schedule” identifying him as a student). misa coming in and killing ukita without knowing his name and in such a public, messy way was actually a massive boon to light, as it threw the detectives off his trail long enough that L was no longer able to act using the same information as before. in spite of that, no credit is given to misa for basically allowing the series to happen, and she tends to be cast to the wayside by fans because of it

this is an overarching problem with ohba as a writer. its well known that death note has absolutely ABHORRENT writing for its women characters, and is just deeply misogynist in its content. although misa is basically indispensable as a character, shes treated as superfluous due to ohbas views on women, similarly to takada (who, in fairness, is much less important to the story than misa) and misora, both intelligent characters in their own right who instead get pigeonholed into their connections to some of the male characters. but instead, shes one of the most interesting characters in the entire story, with a backstory that actually explains why she’d want to work with someone like kira and a personality that makes her much more sympathetic than light as a main character. instead, she gets delegated to “gothic lolita eyecandy”. 

the anime adaptation tried a bit harder to rectify that by making misa more classically troubled and sad, like with the addition of her song showing her doubts about light, but the manga really couldnt decide what kind of personality they wanted her to have. they flipflopped between useless ditz misa and cold calculated killer misa (one of my favorite misas by the way) so often that its clear they couldnt figure out what to do with her. she had such an incredible amount of potential to be the storys breakout character due to her subtle influence on everything, but ohba hates women so much that all potential for it was completely squandered! it infuriates me to this day and i will never forgive death note for how it treated misa. ok thats it LMAO

tl;dr misa good

[scyllua]

Chap.185

"Sugimoto the Immortal!" And just as Ogata adds in the next panel (though I edited the text out), yes, indeed, he was alive, after all. It's sort of bound to happen when one is immortal.

Sugimoto's epithet is 不死身, fujimi, the first character 不 a prefix indicating negative ("-non"), 死 meaning "death" and 身 for "body" or "oneself", among other meanings. Another possible renditions for the term 不死身 as an adjetive are "invulnerable" and "insensible to pain"; given all the wounds and injuries Sugimoto sustained during the war and past it, it becomes obvious why the first meaning makes more sense (with the third beind proved appropriate for the times he goes berserk). I'm mentioning this because, in the original Japanese, it might sometimes sound a bit weird (contradictory?) to state that the Immortal is, well, still alive. In any case, I find way more curious Ogata's reaction to Sugimoto living up to this epithet after he himself declared (in chap.139, vol.14) he was sure our protagonist was alive, going after them and not very happy about the turn of events, generally speaking. I could interpret Ogata's reaction as unexpected surprise at finding the Immortal was way closer than anyone might have thought (and still not very happy about things)... but personally, I think the cat's surprise has been used for narrative purposes and a dramatic cliffhanger, as chap.185 finishes precisely at that point.

...yet my main reason to color the above panel was Sugimoto, because of a comment by my sister when she showed the chapter to me: "So much eyecandy needed a two-page spread to be properly depicted." I couldn't but agree with her (though the original panel isn't actually two-page spread, but covers about 3/4 of the spread, the remaining 25% being covered by Ogata and His Reaction, of course). In Spanish, she said caramelo instead, which, as you might know, means "candy" in English: in Peru (I wouldn't know about other countries), this idiom means an attractive person, as a reference to their face or to their appearance as a whole. Anyone who's pleasant to be looking at, in any case. I'm making the distinction here because "eyecandy", though a close enough equivalent, might not convey the same meaning, as I think the term in English refers to someone attractive but lacking some other attribute.

[permian-tropos]

comparing someone who doesn't like a movie to the alt-right is kinda...mean. considering those very same people might be the victims of the alt-right.

I appreciate your concern, but I’m not talking about people who don’t like a movie. Every single “here’s why TLJ was garbage” post and youtube video and twitter rant is valid (except when it’s bigotry). You watched the movie, you had an opinion, your opinion is real.

Here’s the connection to the alt-right. 1) The alt-right formed a campaign to pull people in and tell them “the things you hate about this movie are because the cultural Marxists want to kill the things you love and promote minorities and women”. People who could be swayed by this are not the bulk of the TLJ antis on tumblr! But their reasons for hating the movie diffuse into the main hate mob and that mob amplifies the alt-right agenda BECAUSE… 2) the alt-right’s tactics have been used, excused, enabled by the specific “people who didn’t like the movie” I’m criticizing. 

Ad hominem attacks on creators, standing by while these attacks happen because they give vicarious pleasure or because one can’t bring oneself to care, victim-blaming (saying Jason Fry and Pablo Hidalgo, who did not write TLJ, “brought it on themselves” for simply being there when the evil Rian Johnson made reylo ambiguous), and not trying to find any good things in the film like

*clears throat* 

the casting of a Vietnamese-American actress to play a character whose backstory reflects the Vietnam War, identifying the capitalist war machine as the real enemy, giving an arc for every POC that wasn’t about them supporting a white character (white characters were supporting their arcs), criticizing elitism and the idea your bloodline makes you special, never sexually objectifying Rey or any other female character don’t argue this okay being in a sexually charged situation is not the same as objectification there are subjects as well as objects and if you forgot what eyecandy for men looks like please refer to Emilia Clarke’s character in Solo, having a female character who isn’t white and also isn’t thin…

You see, none of these individual things deserve to be swept under the hate rug because no movie will replicate everything TLJ did good and everything TLJ did bad. No one has to express any overall love for the movie to make it known that these elements are good and should be repeated elsewhere! 

People think that if they hate the movie loud enough, Lucasfilm will listen to them re: POC, queer rep, depicting healthy romantic relationships, etc. But they are not the loudest detractors, and if LF takes criticism into account, they’ll start with the reactionaries, not with the progressives. They’ll remove the women and POC and push right-wing messages. 

This idea of “you can’t compare them to the alt-right” comes from false equivalency about the morality of people’s causes. It comes from people using allegations of hypocrisy to discredit the oppressed standing up to oppressors. I’m not thinking of this as hypocrisy, and I’m not trying to discredit the cause of social justice. And I will defend victims of the alt-right against the alt-right! Good thing Star Wars Episode 8 The Last Jedi isn’t alt-right. When the alt-right tried to co-opt Marvel’s Black Panther, claiming it was pro-ethnostate, they were obviously full of shit, but it tells me that they see Marvel’s politics as a better entry point. They don’t want to disown Marvel, they want to co-opt it. But they want to disown Star Wars. Disney owns both Marvel and SW so I wouldn’t be surprised if they let one be more overall conservative and one be more overall liberal to rake in both audiences. It’s all a machine, partner. But at the very least we don’t have to get confused about which is left and which is right. 

I spent a lot of time listening to TLJ critical opinions because I thought there must be something I’m missing. But something I could not deny was happening as I revisited the film over and over:

- The movie was making me sympathize with Kylo less, and take less interest in the villains overall. 

- The movie made me more actively appreciative of the Resistance side. 

- I was more intrigued by every character who was “sidelined” or “not treated right”. 

- I was becoming fascinated over and over by ideas the movie seemed to be conveying, and the more I looked for meaning, the more I found it.

- Literally every agenda that the detractors claimed the movie was pushing was the opposite of what the movie was doing to me. Either the movie was having this effect on me accidentally, or it was a good movie that richly conveyed its point. 

No, I don’t intend to be mean to anyone. I intend to critique actions I think are self-defeating. 

None of us should ever assume that all our actions are rational self interest. And besides the fact that the comparisons to the alt-right seem apt here, how else am I suppose to communicate “I think you’re unintentionally doing something wrong here” if I don’t say “people who mean you harm do this thing on purpose”?

You’re basically telling me, and I understand this point, “don’t assume you know better than them, maybe they’re right and you’re wrong”. And you know what, I would hate to act against my own interests here! My interests and most of the liberal TLJ detractors’ interests are aligned. I’m going to assume, though, that I’m not presenting manipulative or well-poisoning or truth-obscuring ideas. Since you’ve come with concerns that my statements have been harmful (ie. that they disparage victims of bigotry as “the same” as their oppressors), I hope this longer post addresses that.

I also think the mentality on tumblr that “victims can’t be victimizers” or “victims can’t make mistakes” is deeply flawed. I think we should all respect and pay attention to what marginalized groups say about their own experiences. But when it comes to solutions, I look to people of marginalized groups who have expertise. I will consider the opinions of random tumblr users but I won’t adhere to them as superior insight. I can’t assume they’re experts because I’m not an expert in things that victimize me!

And I don’t look to Star Wars fan discourse for the most complete picture on systemic oppression.

Call this a wild conclusion but if victimizing groups of people didn’t disrupt their ability to advocate for themselves and have solidarity with each other, and instead made them extremely good at those things, would systemic oppression ever work? 

[stopmakingliberalslookbad]

I think 'grid girls' exist instead of 'grid guys' because racing is something that's mostly watched/participated by straight guys, so grid girls here exists like how dancers/cheerleaders perform before a basketball match starts (and ofc because they're eyecandies for guys), unless ofc there's a female-only racing or even better if women become the main demographic, maybe then 'grid guys' would be a thing, and if these girls aren't being abused and love their job so much it shouldnt be stopped

True, but hiring grid guys is a good step. Not only for equality purposes, but because it can attract new demographics. Hey, straight women and gay men like eye candy too 😉