#neither of this other gender forms should exist because its just evil bullshit either way isnt it

[thesquidwizard]

As an indigenous radfem, what do you think of third genders, like two spirit? I notice many poc cultures have third genders. How are third genders different from trans ideology?

*disclaimer i'm just me and do not speak for any larger demographic*

anyway 2Spirit isnt anything. its not even a 3rd gender its a word invented 30 years ago during a gay& Lesbian international gathering

It was never meant to even describe a "third gender" it was more intended as like a uniforming word to distinguish NDN gays and lesbians and their unique experiences as its own community within the lgbt and give them a word that wasnt insulting or degrading. (this isnt even a secret this is all googlable and you can verify it like 9times over)

What do i think of third genders. I think for the most part they were a way for various societies to maintain their own status quo. the main purposes they fulfilled were

1. a lesser role to force upon gay men

2. a way to have working women without giving the majority of women this option

You can find a few historical stories where a woman may have pretended to be a man for various reasons usually escape male abuse or dream of something more so not at all different from figures like Margaret Ann Bulkey.

If you pick any 3rd gender ndn or otherwise ask yourself

any evidence the individual made this choice and their people just accepted this? or is it society driven

why?? is there a place or role that can only be handled by these people. is it a punishment or incentive to avoid something else.

do we have any info on how the people labeled with that gender felt about it.

are they all male and their role just seems to be "youthful pretty" ...

its not gonna take you very long to realize you just can not compare whats happening today to anything from the past.

And i am intentionally focusing on the past. because yes some of these roles still exist today but it is highly altered influenced by todays culture and world access ( and mostly still just men who feel feminine)

any 3rd gender today seems to just follow trans rules its a individual feelings thing that serves no purpose and greatly relys on gender roles to establish themselves.

[trombonesinspace]

Typhoid Mary: feminist femme fatale?

“Season 4 was going to be Typhoid Mary, Alice Eve [who played the role in Iron Fist], we were doing a kind of...I had a much different version of her than what Raven [Metzner] had done in Iron Fist. I was kind of rebooting what she was going to be like, and we were going to do a, you know, kind of a warped love story/murder mystery kind of femme fatale, but kind of a modern-day, feminist version of it, as opposed to kind of the older, sexist kind of femme fatale archetype.”

-Erik Oleson, in conversation with Steven DeKnight, SaveDaredevilCon 

As I said yesterday, I have some thoughts about this! If you want some opinions nobody asked for, about a storyline that may never come to pass, you’ve come to the right place! Let’s dive in.

A femme fatale is a character type with quite a history, that can take various forms. She is always an attractive woman who brings ruin to the man who gets involved with her. But sometimes she is deliberately manipulative, while sometimes she is more a victim of circumstances. She may be evil, or she may be sympathetic/tragic. But whatever her moral alignment, she has two defining traits: sexual allure, and some form of negative consequences for the hero as a result of his involvement with her.

A woman who schemes against the hero, and succeeds in harming him, but without using feminine wiles? Not a femme fatale. The Marvel TV universe has featured several examples on different shows: Madame Gao, Mariah Dillard, Alexandra. And, ironically, the version of Typhoid Mary who appeared in Iron Fist. (We’ll get there.)

A sexy woman who tries to manipulate/damage the hero, but fails? Also not a femme fatale. I wish I could give some examples, but sadly I can’t think of any, in dramas at least. Our current media culture loves a sexy manipulator, no writer ever seems to introduce one into a dramatic story without making her succeed in her schemes, to some extent at least.

Which is unfortunate, from my perspective, because I loathe sexy manipulators. It’s a character type I really dislike, whenever I encounter her. As soon as she shows up, I know the hero is going to fall for her bullshit like a chump, and I’m going to end up respecting him less as a result. I could try to unpack my feelings about this a bit more, but that would probably make a post all on its own, so for now I’ll leave it at that.

This doesn’t mean I hate all femmes fatales—it really depends on her motivation and her behavior. If she isn’t trying to harm the hero, and it happens due to circumstances, then I might like the character, but the story becomes a tragedy. Which is not necessarily bad. Just, you know. Tragic.

Anyway! Let’s talk about Typhoid Mary.

Mary Walker is a woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personalities), and high-level combat skills. In the comics, she is also a mutant with mental powers. She appeared in the Daredevil comics starting in 1988.

In this original version, her personality fragmented due to childhood abuse, leading her to vow as an adult that no man would ever hurt her again. Her personalities are: Mary, who is timid and gentle; Typhoid, who is adventurous, lusty, and violent; and Bloody Mary, who is even more violent, sadistic, and hates all men.

Mary becomes romantically involved with Matt Murdock, who is cheating on his girlfriend, Karen Page, to be with her. At the same time, Typhoid is trying to ruin him, having been hired to do so by the Kingpin. Matt can’t tell they’re the same woman, because when she switches personalities all her bio signs change (voice, scent, heartbeat, etc) so much that he can’t recognize her. (Uh, sure.) She may also be using some of her mutant powers to confuse his senses. I haven’t read the comics, I’m relying here on what I could learn from the internet.

Eventually Typhoid drops him off a bridge, but then Mary finds him and gets him to a hospital, saving him. Karen is with him when he wakes up, but he breaks her heart by calling out for Mary.

This storyline...does not thrill me. As I said, I haven’t read it, but comics writing about mental illness is generally neither nuanced nor accurate, and comics writing about women circa 1988 is also not great, by today’s standards. And comics Matt’s disastrous love life is legendary—cheating on your girlfriend is bad, Matt! Don’t do it! 

I have, however, watched season 2 of Iron Fist, where we get a different version. This Mary Walker is a US army veteran, special ops, who was captured by the Sokovian military. Her personality fragmented due to the brutal abuse she received from her captors for nearly two years, until she finally escaped. She got a medical discharge from the army after being diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Her personalities are: Mary, who is innocent and naive; and Walker, who is a ruthless, coolly efficient mercenary-for-hire. The existence of a third, ultraviolent personality, previously unknown to either Mary or Walker, is revealed near the end of the season. 

Mary meets and befriends Danny Rand, while Walker is hired by his enemies to stalk him, and eventually capture him so they can steal his Iron Fist powers from him. She later changes sides, getting hired to bring down Davos, the season’s main villain, by Joy Meachum, his former ally.

There are clear parallels to the Daredevil comics storyline, albeit in less extreme form—Mary befriends the hero, but isn’t romantically involved with him; her more violent personality works against him and fights him, but doesn’t try to destroy him. 

I enjoyed this version of the character more than I expected to, for a couple of reasons. For one, she is never the out of control, “crazy” stereotype of a person with mental illness. Both Mary and Walker are more-or-less functional adults, managing to live a strange hybrid life, aware of each other’s existence even though they don’t share memories.

But what I especially like is that she isn’t sexualized, at all. It’s incredibly rare, in my experience, to see a young, female antagonist opposing a male hero, and not have her be sexy. Older women are exempt from this obligation (see my list of examples above), but the young ones always vamp it up, and I am so tired of it. I am not opposed to sexy women, but I am very opposed to the requirement that all women must be sexy. (Unless they’re old.) Male antagonists aren’t required to be alluring, so why should women be? (Yes, I know why. I just don’t like it.)

There’s also a lot of potential YIKES in sexualizing a woman with a severe mental illness, which was caused by (among other things) repeated sexual violence. Could it be done in a way that isn’t super problematic? It’s possible, sure. Am I assuming that most television writers would give the subject the respect it deserves? NOPE! 

I’m really glad they chose to just not go there. Walker is extremely good at what she does, takes no shit from anyone, and (almost) never gets riled up. After everything she’s been through, nothing in her present life has the power to faze her, and none of the men around her have the power to intimidate her. It’s pretty great!

She isn’t the least bit coy or seductive, and, equally refreshing, none of the men try to sexualize her or hit on her. Everyone Walker talks to knows she is a highly skilled professional, and they treat her accordingly. Or, when someone does disrespect her, it’s never gendered as far as I can remember, and it stops as soon as she calmly states what she’s going to do to him if it doesn’t.

As for Mary, although she has a more feminine appearance than Walker (hair down and loose, makeup), she is also not sexualized. Her friendship with Danny, who is in an established relationship with Colleen Wing, is platonic, and no one else tries to hit on her that I remember.

So this is the version of Typhoid Mary that Erik Oleson was going to reboot, into a femme fatale. Only, you know. A feminist one. 

I...have some questions. What does that even mean? What does feminism mean to Erik Oleson? Let’s be real, the idea of a woman becoming an ultraviolent, sadistic man-hater as a result of sexual trauma would have been seen as feminist in some circles, back in 1988 when that version was written. So what, exactly, did he have in mind?

As I said before, sexual allure is a necessary component of a femme fatale. So she was definitely gonna be sexy. And you know now how I feel about sexy female antagonists. As for the “warped love story” part...Matt wouldn’t be cheating on Karen, since they aren’t together (please, for the love of mercy, don’t have them get together right before he meets Mary, we did that once and I do NOT want to see it again), but I am still not a fan of Matt/Mary as a couple.

Her Dissociative Identity Disorder raises some serious issues around consent, and even if the show chose to ignore that, there’s still the issue of past sexual trauma. Unless Oleson’s reworking of the character was going to include a completely different back story, a Matt/Mary relationship would mean Matt unknowingly having sex with a woman who has suffered brutal sexual abuse in her past. Not to mention, having sex with her that only one part of her personality actually wants.

Is it possible for someone with Mary’s past trauma and present mental illness to have a positive sexual relationship? In reality, of course! In the hands of writers with only a layman’s knowledge of psychology, on a show that loves to torment its hero, I wouldn’t bet on it. How do you suppose our poster boy for Catholic guilt would react when he inevitably finds out the truth?

Plus, aside from any issues around Mary herself, Matt starting a relationship with anyone other than the handful of people who already know his secret identity, means a whole new round of Matt lying to someone he cares about. Does anyone really want to see that? I know I don’t. Sure, maybe he’d tell her eventually, but how long would they have to date before he decided to trust her with the truth?

I’m not opposed to the Mary Walker from Iron Fist appearing in Daredevil, if the writers could come up with a new story for her (i.e, don’t just have her repeat all the same plot beats with Matt that she already did with Danny). But bringing her in as a femme fatale really doesn’t sit well with me. We’ve already seen Matt in an ultimately destructive relationship with a sexy, violent, morally grey woman. I really don’t want to watch Round 2: now with multiple personalities!

Of course, maybe we never will. The quote at the beginning of this post is from just a couple of weeks ago (July 25 2020), so Erik Oleson still seems to think it’s a fine idea. But obviously we don’t know yet if there will ever be a season 4, or who the show runner will be if there is. He may never get to make the story he was planning.

So yes, I realize I’m merely speculating about a completely theoretical story that may never happen. But I wanted to write this anyway. I had a strong “ugh, no” reaction to the idea of a feminist femme fatale Typhoid Mary, and I wanted to go deeper and pick apart my reasons for not liking the idea.

To the three of you who have read this all the way through to the end (this post is nearly 2000 words, yikes), thank you for indulging me! These are, as always, my own opinions, and YMMV. 

[mst3kproject]

Hercules

Now that we’ve all seen Starcrash, I’m sure we can agree that there was only one question on our minds while we watched it – namely, what would happen if the same group of people got back together and made a Hercules movie?

Well, okay... it was probably more like “what drugs were these people on?” or “what terrible secret did Christopher Plummer have, and who found out about it and blackmailed him into this movie?” or even “who was wearing more eye makeup, Caroline Munro or David Hasslehoff?” but I don’t have answers to any of those questions.  I can, however, answer the Hercules one, because that's more or less exactly what we have here: Luigi Cozzi, Golan and Globus, and their insane design team made a Hercules movie, and it's a legitimate fucking masterpiece.  If not the Mona Lisa of terrible movies, this is at least the School of Athens. I found the DVD in the ninety-nine cent bin at Zellers back when Zellers was a thing, and it was the best dollar and six pennies I ever spent (pennies were a thing then, too).

The so-called plot is an absurd mess.  It's as if one movie starts, then another, then a third, and it's only by complete accident that most of the threads are sort-of-but-not-really tied up by the end.  After the most confusing history of the universe you will ever hear, the god Zeus creates Hercules to be a hero among men and sends him to be incarnated as the prince of Thebes.  Sadly Zeus' timing is not very good, for shortly thereafter the King and Queen of Thebes are overthrown and murdered by agents of the evil King Minos of Thera, and baby Hercules is saved only by his nanny putting him in a boat to drift downstream and be found and adopted by some childless peasants.  So surely this story will be about Hercules discovering his royal heritage and reclaiming the throne, right?

Nope! Our hero's origin story is more or less immediately forgotten.  He grows up on the farm, doing useful chores like uprooting stumps and pulling a triple plough, only to be tragically orphaned again. First a bear mauls his adoptive father, and then his mom is killed by a giant robotic fly created by Deadalus, goddess of science, at Minos' behest.  Okay, so this movie is going to be about Hercules searching for the killer of his adopted parents and taking revenge for that, right?

Still no!  Instead of setting out on a quest for vengeance, Hercules rather more practically goes looking for a job. This brings him to the court of King Augeas, who needs a new bodyguard for his beautiful, be-veiled daughter Cassiopeia. Herc gets himself hired but falls in love with the princess he's supposed to be protecting, whereupon Zeus for some reason strikes them with a lightning bolt.  Maybe this is because Cassiopeia is already supposed to marry somebody else, but I can't see that mattering to Zeus of all dieties.  The lightning incapacitates the lovers, so Minos and his daughter Adriana kidnap Cassiopeia in order to sacrifice her to the phoenix who lives in their volcano.  So the movie's gonna be about Hercules rescuing his true love and taking her home to marry her with her father’s blessing, right?

Well... sort of.  We never do see King Augeas again or meet Cassiopeia's original fiance, but after considerable sidetracking Hercules does manage to save her from the Phoenix.  In the process he also defeats Minos and Adriana, but I'm not sure whether he has any idea that Minos is the one who killed both sets of his parents.  It's apparently important that the Phoenix is now free from Minos and 'its fire can serve the universe', but this comes out of nowhere and I'm not sure what it means.  At the end, Hercules and Cassiopeia kiss and then ascend to the stars.  Over the course of the story, Hercules did a number of 'heroic' things like separating Europe from Africa, slaying some monsters, and retrieving Circe the Sorceress' amulet from hell, but there's no real sense of him having 'saved the world'.

The ending still kind of works, though, possibly because nothing else in the film makes any sense either.  Hercules has shown us a bunch of scenes that don't really fit together into a coherent narrative but kind of look like a movie, so as long as the ending kind of looks like an ending, it's a fitting close.

If you want humour, the major source of giggles in Hercules is the special effects.  These are a mix of poorly-chosen and poorly-executed, often both, and sometimes one and then the other in succession.  The only effects moment I can think of that looks all right is Hercules pushing Spain and Morocco apart – and it comes only seconds after the utterly ridiculous shot  of him growing to enormous size to accomplish the deed! Swordfights are accompanied by flashing lights and laser noises.  The miniature robots are atrocious.  Hercules beats up the bear that killed his adoptive father and then throws it into space, as represented by a shot of a completely stiff model bear in a crucifix position tumbling head over teakettle into a starfield. I've only got room for one screenshot here, though, so my vote for the worst effect in the entire movie is the moment when Zeus' hand reaches out of a waterfall to catch the boat with baby Hercules in it.  It looks like a plasticine octopus.  It's so awful, the first time I saw it I nearly pissed myself laughing.

The movie's attempt at mythology is not even worth mentioning.  Names appear out of a dozen different stories, many of them in places that have nothing to do with the characters they're supposed to belong to.  Cassiopeia, for example, was the mother of Andromeda in the legend of Perseus – she had nothing to do with Hercules. Daedalus was a male human inventor whom Minos imprisoned, not a hermaphrodite deity he worshipped.  Circe lived on one of the islands in The Odyssey, and never met Hercules – she doesn't even turn anybody into a pig in this movie.  The one thing Circe is known for in popular culture to this day is turning people into pigs!  Ducktales knew that, for crying out loud!  Why would you put Circe in your movie and not turn anybody into a pig?

There's exactly one place in the movie where it really got its mythology right, and weirdly enough it's something almost everybody gets wrong. The container given to Pandora was a pithos – a clay pot – rather than a box.  How did Hercules get that right while screwing up practically everything else?  The Italian Wikipedia article for 'Pandora's Box' is titled Vaso di Pandora, even though the illustration on the page shows a box, so it appears the correct translation is common knowledge there.  That explains it... and then, having done that right, the movie dives cheerfully back into its totally bullshit creation story about how the planets formed from the pieces of the broken jar!

Does any of this matter?  Well, no, not really.  The whole movie is so completely divorced from its source material that it's hard to even think of it as Greek mythology.  It's more a piece of particularly bizarre heroic fantasy with some mythologically-inspired names. Between the weird sound effects, colourful stars, robotic monsters, and jarring appearance of a literal rainbow bridge, it feels like what you might have got if the early eighties had tried to make a Thor movie.

Is Hercules trying to say anything?  Rather shockingly, I think it is. Throughout the film runs a theme of science as being something opposed to the gods.  Plenty of movies have tried to take a look at the complicated relationships between science, magic, and religion, but Hercules goes about it in a particularly strange way.  After all, this is a world in which the gods actually exist. How can Minos talk about science when he's standing on the moon talking to a divinity, and when his secret weapons are a fiery bird and a magical sword?

I think maybe what this is getting at is that science is how humans become gods, by learning to do things that only the gods ought to be able to do.  Either that, or once we have science and technology, humans no longer need gods, either for protection or as an explanation for what's going on around us.  If either of these is what was intended, it's pretty muddled... not least by the fact that in the final battle, science loses and the gods, via their champion Hercules, win!  What are we supposed to learn from this?  Should we put curiosity aside and go back to trusting in deities to make the world work?  Or does this dichotomy actually mean anything at all?  Maybe somebody just thought it sounded cool, and I'm seeing meaning where none exists.

The only place where I'm confident that somebody was making a point was with the figure of Daedalus, goddess of science – I'm  not sure 'goddess' is the right word here, but I don't know what else to call her.  Daedalus is played by trans actress Eva Robin's (that's how she spells it), and wears a costume with both a sweetheart neckline and a codpiece to emphasize her nontraditional gender.  The gods of Greek mythology were male and female, and susceptible to the passions of lust and jealousy that go with that – Daedalus, as personification of science, is not subject to such irrational emotions.  She is male and female, both and neither, in a single body.  I'm not sure what this says about Luigi Cozzi's views of trans people, but it does seem to be the only place where anybody thought about the theme very hard.

So yeah, Hercules seriously is all-around terrible in every possible way – and it's one of my favourite movies ever.  If I had to pick one movie to watch every day for the rest of my life, Hercules would be on the short list with real movies like Back to the Future, The Martian, and Lilo and Stitch. It misses out on being my favourite Hercules movie only because the Disney version had catchier music.  This is not only the Starcrash of Hercules movies, it's also the Space Mutiny, entertaining in its very incompetence, and I love it.  Wait'll you see the sequel!