#they’d be men who cannot live up to the standards set by patriarchy!!!! this is feminism 101 yet some people run their mouths like it’s 1912 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

randomtvpollsjp · 9 months

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Anybody who walks out of the theater and says, “Barbie is anti-men” lacks media analysis skills. So let’s do a what I thought no one would have to do for this film—an unnecessarily deep dive. But it seemingly needs to get done for this crowd.

Shall we?

(And spoilers)

In Barbieland, men are seen as nothing but accessories to all of the exceptional women. Even the least exceptional woman—Stereotypical Barbie—is more exceptional than the average Ken.

(The exceptional Kens like Sugar Daddy Ken and Earring Magic Ken as well as Allan are othered within the hierarchy of Barbieland, a clear allegory for non-conforming/queer men. Even Weird Barbie is othered by the Barbies for her non-conformity but at least has a house)

Contrast Barbieland with the (still surreal) Real World, where the gender roles are often reversed.

In the lead up to the 2016 US Presidential election, for example, there were still people saying that they couldn’t vote for a woman.

That was it. Not her policies. A woman.

The film goes out of its way to prove that Ken—despite being cis/White/straight and male—cannot get EVERYTHING he wants without qualifications and experience. But he DOES get a basic level of respect that he never got in Barbieland from Barbies and the power structure they benefit from.

At one point, the film has a line where a man says, “I’m a man without power. Am I a woman?”

In the film’s Real World (and ours), women often struggle to get power. And so do men! But women face social barriers that men simply do not.

Meanwhile, despite being “everything”, in the Real World, Barbie’s a sexual object to men and almost immediately assaulted; and vilified by girls/women for setting unrealistic body standards. And is torn to shreds by Sasha, the girl she thought she had to help.

Ken takes patriarchy back to Barbieland and the Barbies—unable to conceive of a world like the film’s version of the Real World—basically short-circuit. The Kens, meanwhile, having always been second-class citizens, relish in the new idea and hierarchy.

But, as the film establishes, Kens don’t have an education or qualifications. They can’t even build a wall right because they weren’t conceptualized to be useful/given the tools to be.

Ken’s job was literally Beach.

They’d have actually destroyed Barbieland.

Similarly, nobody is saying you should just appoint women in our world into positions of power, just to appoint them. But we ARE saying that there are qualified women who deserve to be in places that they aren’t because they’re not men.

And that’s wrong.

By the end of the film, Barbie realizes that she actually owes Ken an apology. Yes, Ken tried to overthrow the Barbies. But Ken was reacting to Barbie’s rejection in a toxic—yeah, I said it—way.

And reacting to their society too, even if he doesn’t really know it.

The Kens had a point. The Barbies HAD mistreated them. Barbie didn’t even know where Kens lived in Barbieland, after all.

And to not acknowledge their point is to also not acknowledge the real world point that women are often mistreated in our world just for being women.

I’ve seen some people brandishing stats about how women USED to be marginalized. But now they aren’t. And can do anything. And earn just as much as men.

And yet, Forbes reports that only 10% of Fortune 500 companies have female CEO’s.

Anyway, so the film ends with Barbie telling Ken that he needs to define himself independently of being with Barbie. Which is analogous to how women in the workforce and getting educated/qualified in our world, allows them to be financially independent of men.

In Barbieland, Barbies have always been autonomous and allowed to be independent of men. And have flourished. And President Barbie promises to allow Kens to take part in the running of their shared society. Because everybody deserves to be seen and heard.

There are valid criticisms to be made about this film ranging from how its feminism lacks intersectionality; to how Mattel’s own workers in developing nations are often underpaid and overworked; to consumerism being the main tool of empowerment that Barbie (the toy) endorses.

But it’s one film and I understand that it can’t address EVERYTHING. It chose to stick with gender broadly.

And I think it successfully lands that point.

#Barbie #Barbie movie #margot robbie #Ken doll #barbie film #feminism #barbie live action #Barbieland #greta gerwig

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gyrlversion · 5 years

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SARAH VINE: The spoof snowflake who made a fool of the Lefties

Twitter, it is has to be said, is not known for its subtlety or sense of humour. With, that is, one notable exception: Titania McGrath.

For the uninitiated, Titania Gethsemane McGrath is a radical vegan, woke poet committed to feminism, social justice and armed, peaceful protest. She works to expose racism, bigotry and misogyny. As she herself confesses: ‘I was born woke. My wokeness is innate. It flows through me like a magical elixir, keeping my soul perched and poised for the fight.’

Woke, for those of you born before 1990 who may, understandably, be unfamiliar with the term, is to be terribly earnest (or pretentious) about how much you care about social issues, particularly racism.

I first came across this bespectacled, earnest-looking blonde on Twitter last summer, when someone on my timeline re-tweeted something she’d said.

I wasn’t really paying attention and took her words (something offensive about people who voted Brexit, as I recall) at face value. I was about to get all wound up about it (as one does on Twitter) until the friend messaged me to say it was a parody account to send up the modern obsessions with gender fluidity, identity politics and cultural appropriation.

For the uninitiated, Titania Gethsemane McGrath is a radical vegan, woke poet committed to feminism, social justice and armed, peaceful protest

I felt a bit stupid — and I wasn’t the only one. Countless Twitter users have since been fooled by Titania — who has nearly 200,000 followers — and agreed with or railed against her earnest pronouncements. Twitter was taken in, suspending the account briefly following complaints last December. Even satirical magazine Private Eye recently featured a tweet by Titania McGrath in Pseuds’ Corner.

The ‘woke’ tweets that duped so many

I have always stood up for minorities. As such, it is essential that we respect the wishes of the minority of UK voters and overturn Brexit.

So what if Shamima Begum joined ISIS when she was 15? My sister got caught stealing a croissant on her gap year in Marseille. TEENAGERS MAKE MISTAKES.

I’ve been accused of living in a woke ‘echo chamber’ and that my opinions are out of touch with regular people. But I’ve asked around my close friends and they all agree this isn’t the case.

I’ve been forced to muzzle my dog, because although it identifies as a cat it keeps bloody barking.

White people: stop trying to help destitute Africans. I’m sure they’d rather starve than perpetuate negative racial stereotypes.

Dieting is fat-shaming yourself.

Straight men should be in a zoo.

The media’s coverage of ISIS is underpinned by deep-seated Islamophobia. If it isn’t, how come they never say anything nice about them?

Luckily Titania was reinstated, her brush with the internet patriarchy having only served to strengthen her resolve in the face of Big Tech fascism.

This week we finally learned the identity of the person behind Titania. She isn’t even a woman (or, as she would put it, a non-binary feminist icon). She was unmasked as Andrew Doyle, 40, a former private school teacher with a doctorate in early Renaissance poetry from Wadham College, Oxford.

Mr Doyle drew on his academic background when setting up the account, using the name Titania, the queen of the fairies in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

‘She is named after the queen of the fairies because I think all of this “woke culture” is an utter fantasy world,’ he said. ‘The people who promote this hyper-inclusive culture are fantasists.’

For many of us, the modern millennial world is a minefield, a social battleground where, at any point, one could unintentionally blow oneself up. Many rail against it, others retreat to the sidelines. The genius of Doyle is that he takes it down in a way that is extremely witty — and clever.

Such is his success that yesterday ‘Titania’ published her first book, ‘Woke: A Guide to Social Justice.’

Thus, in Titania, we find all the arrogance (‘I cannot but help come to the conclusion that I am the only living artist worthy of note), and entitlement (‘beyond the provision of DNA and a modest trust fund, I cannot see what purpose my father has served’) of today’s self-styled social justice ‘keyboard warriors’.

She also exposes the unconscious bigotry (it is not racist to hate someone on the basis of their skin colour if that person is white) of the woke brigade.

This week we finally learned the identity of the person behind Titania. She was unmasked as Andrew Doyle, 40, a former private school teacher with a doctorate in early Renaissance poetry from Wadham College, Oxford

Oh, and let’s not forget the hypocrisy: ‘I was the only child of two barristers. I learnt only that my private education and frequent family holidays to Montenegro and the Maldives were merely a ruse by which my parents could distract me from my oppression.’

The secret of the character’s success is, of course, her plausibility. Social media is awash with people spouting nonsense, from the mad to the merely misinformed. Her Twitterings were just the right side of believable.

Indeed, there are many occasions when she is indistinguishable from the likes of prominent figures such as left-wing journalists Owen Jones, writer Laurie Penny or columnist Afua Hirsch (who once argued Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square should be removed because it was a symbol of white supremacist patriarchal oppression).

Or, as Titania herself would put it: ‘If you don’t think exactly the same way as me, then you’ve clearly got a lot to learn about diversity.’

One of Titania’s most convincing attributes is her lack of self-knowledge, a tendency to take for granted the privileges that come as standard for her generation — and an inability to see things from anyone else’s point of view.

‘People are far too sentimental about the elderly,’ she writes. ‘I am no longer helping them cross the street. They opted for Brexit, so as far as I’m concerned they can take their chances with the traffic. Remember too that these are the people who fought in the second World War. How can shooting at Germans be anything other than xenophobic?’

Statements such as these are, of course, absurd and funny. But they also sail close to the wind. Compare the above with the comment of the former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg (the original virtue-signalling politician) in 2017 that older voters were to blame for Brexit and that, now they were dying off, a second referendum should be held in order for the younger generation to return the correct result, i.e. Remain.

Or look at Prince Harry’s speech on Wednesday. He said: ‘You may find yourselves frustrated with the older generation when it seems like they don’t care.’

The world today is now so obsessed with maximum political correctness that it’s hard to distinguish between reality and parody.

Just as Bridget Jones was the embodiment of the anxiety-ridden Nineties feminist, a creation whose diary entries encapsulated all our hopes, fears and failures, so Titania McGrath is her millennial successor, a girl every bit as lost and confused, every bit as accurately observed — and equally, catastrophically, hilarious.

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