i think oceans 8 looks dykey & great but it’s worth noting all the white protagonists are upper class professionals and all the women of color protagonists are……street conman! jewlery bootlegger! hacker but like the kind that lives in a shitty apartment! and that’s it. Women-fronted movies have long been having issues with racial dynamics let’s try to change that yes thanks
tru but
the women of color are just as professional in their fields as the white women. the white women are just as criminal as the woc. judging from the trailer, three of them got their upper class lives from stealing. one of them (helena bonham carter) seems like a ditz. none of these women are respectable, ethically speaking.
a majority of woc are poor in real life. we live in shitty apartments. we work shitty jobs. sometimes it do be like that.
donna meagle, a character in parks and rec, was portrayed as a rich, boujee, sophisticated woman. she was secretive and sexy, she was shown to be desired by all sorts of conventionally attractive men. she was played by Retta; a fat, dark skinned black woman. people complained about how her character was unrealistic and didn’t portray the lives of black women accurately. there’s no one role/character that can accurately portray the lives of women of color. this is a fantastic start.
this movie looks great, like you said. it represents women of color. we are starving for representation. and here we are, represented. this is great. please watch this movie.
this movie cannot flop. misogynists are rooting for this to fail. they want female-led action movies to stop being a thing. remember ghostbusters?
the lack women in STEM has been an issue for years now. the lack of woc specifically in STEM is also a problem that doesn’t get talked about as much because it just gets grouped into the issue of “women in STEM”. to see a computer savvy black woman is something new and refreshing.
personally speaking, as an asian woman, i’m thrilled to see an asian woman who is a con artist. what are the expected jobs for asian women in media and society? doctors? nurses? therapists? something dutiful? cosmetologists? masseuses? something sexual? asians are seen as the “model minority”. it’s a stereotype and everyone should know at this point that there’s no such thing as a positive stereotype. to see a cool, street smart asian woman conning people out of money? performing sleight of hand tricks? being a thief? is thrilling tbh
op is white. i’m a woman of color. thought i could share my thoughts.
Those are all really good points. This is actually a really great post as a whole.
OP @benepla is doing a great job, as a white person, to be instantly critical and suspicious about the respectful portrayal of WOC, and @tachypneic (and most importantly her perspective and reassurance) is so important because she has the intracommunity perspective to offer that analysis.
Anyway, I’m way more reassured feeling about this after seeing both of these comments on it so close to each other like this.
If you go out and support this movie I’ll personally come to your house and suck ya dick
That mom at the end really made the entire trailer worthwhile
I rly thought it was gonna b some generic ass Romeo and Juliet indie shit … I did NOT expect
jadlkjflakfjdaeia
I’m not gonna lie I was screaming in pure joy when I first saw this ad because:
1.) the “hey we’re going to be another quirky hetero rom-com about two outsiders finding lo– NOPE fooled ya our boy here is gay!” within the first 30 seconds.
2.) “Why is straight the default and why are gay people the only ones expected to come out?” in such a mainstream advertisement. That is such a win in my opinion because we’ve all been talking about that very thing for years in gay communities and corners of the internet but I’ve never seen it so bluntly addressed in wider cultural forums.
When Clarke kissed Lexa in The 100, thousands of people rushed to binge-watch the show in order to catch up with the last couple episodes of the second season. Though the show had never gotten the deserved recognition for its Filipino male lead nor any kind of criticism for the blatant racism in it, suddenly a horde of white fans was rushing to hype it’s “amazing” sapphic representation before The Debacle or to criticize its biphobia/lesbophobia after it all went to shit.
When the first rumors of Alex coming out in season 2 of Supergirl started circulating, again, a myriad of fans rushed to marathon season one so they could catch up in time for the return of the show, and were quick to start stanning Alex, Kara and Maggie, though most paid no attention to James Olsen. Funnily enough, when Kara got with Mon-El, the criticism from these fans wasn’t that James/Kara had better build-up and that writing decision was blatantly anti-black; but that Kara had better chemistry with Lena, a white woman who should have been played by a disabled actress and instead had her disability completely erased. These fans don’t criticize the ableism in that choice, the racism in sidelining James or the issues with Maggie Sawyer being promoted as latina when she isn’t, yet praise Supergirl’s representation for (white, cis, thin, able bodied and neurotypical) sapphic women non-stop. The only criticism seems to be that Kara/Mon-El is happening instead of yet another white F/F ship.
Yet, though these and many other examples (Orphan Black, Jessica Jones, Agent Carter and OITNB are ones that comes to mind) show that Femslash Fandom™ is always willing to collectively flock to a new show as long as there are (white) sapphics in it, it doesn’t look like they (we?) apply the same to all media.
A common argument by white sapphics who refuse to watch racially diverse shows is that there are no sapphics in them (for example, The Get Down), or that they are treated badly (for example, Jane The Virgin). It is impossible to have a conversation about how important the racial representation in these shows is without a white sapphic jumping in to derail the conversation, so one would expect that the combination of racial diversity and sapphic representation would be a winning match for Femslash Fandom™. And yet…
As predicted by many black fans at the beginning of the season, Queen Sugar’s first season, though critically acclaimed, went almost entirely unnoticed by fandom. The show is led by a black bisexual woman and her siblings, and Nova (the lead) was shown to be kissing her girlfriend from the very first promos that aired near the beginning of 2016. The show doesn’t have homophobia, Nova is a fully fleshed character and her relationship with her female lover gets decent screentime, which is way more than The 100 could ever say about Clarke and Lexa. Yet the great majority of Femslash Fandom™ completely ignored it.
For two seasons now, fandom has also completely ignored Rosewood. From the very first episode we knew that the show had a main black lesbian happily engaged to a white bisexual woman, and the fans watching it made sure to publicize it on Tumblr and Twitter as much as they could. Yet, now in the second season and with Pippy and TMI only getting more development and screentime as time passes, I have yet to see a single Rosewood gifset crossing my dash, much less one in the many Multifandom Femslash Blogs™ I used to follow.
The first season of No Tomorrow is close to an end and, save for the tweets from my friend @tryingtosprinklealittlefairydust, I had not seen it mentioned it at all. It’s particularly strange, since it’s been almost a month since episode s01e06 aired, and one would assume that a badass, hilarious, hot pansexual Indian woman kissing a beautiful, sweet, charismatic Latina would have Femslash Fandom™ running to catch up with it before the next episode. Now, with Kareema and Sofia happily engaged, I can’t help but wonder why there is only one gifset of them together in the entire #notomorrowedit tag, and a grand total of maybe fifty gifsets for the show at all.
I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, really. It seems like lack of sapphics is always a good reason for y’all not to watch a racially diverse show, yet non-white sapphics are never a good enough reason to begin one. Following femslash blogs is an endless parade of racist white ships that exist only at the cost of black and brown men being sidelined in canon, abusive ships and content from awfully racist shows that are hailed as progressive because white sapphics get to feel good about themselves at the cost of everyone else and, the fact is, I’m often everyone else.
As a chronically ill, neurodivergent bisexual latina, I’m not content giving up every other part of my identity to feel like I can be part of a community that doesn’t give a shit about me or any other sapphic who doesn’t look like Alycia Debnam Carey or whatever over straight white actress y’all are stanning for playing a lesbian on TV this week.
this is so so real. white feminism and Femslash Fandom are inextricably linked at this point and it alienates so many wlwoc
all of this + the fosters. it has loads of main characters of color and an interracial lesbian couple as one of the main ships, yet no one watches it?? even though the storyline of lesbians coming to terms with their sexuality after being married to men/having kids is so underrepresented??? and if u compare no tomorrow to wynonna earp where everyone FLOCKED and was hailing it as amazing and talking about how beautiful the wlw were from the earliest stages, way before they even kissed….it has everything to do with whiteness. Femslash Fandom cares about white women only.
never forget that this was originally meant to demonstrate that lesbian representation was so rare that you wouldn’t even see two named women interact in a platonic manner let alone in a sexual or romantic one onscreen.
That’s a pretty bold claim given that lesbians and lesbian representation was never brought up once in this strip. This strip is pretty clearly about female representation in fiction and how far too often a woman is only seen as worth including in a movie as a love interest for the male protagonist. Lesbian representation is also important, but let’s not lie as to what famous comics are saying to make a point, okay? Okay.
The comic series is literally called “Dykes to Watch Out for” and the author has a Broadway show based on her memoir about growing up as a butch lesbian, what the fuck are you talking about
Theme of the comic in general? Maybe. I can’t speak to that. Message of this specific strip in particular? I really don’t think so. Whatever you think is there that indicates that, I’m not seeing it.
the original message of this comic is “haha lesbians sure do get shafted”
Mind giving the source for that?
Sure! Here’s a tutorial on how to find information on the internet.
use a search engine
find the part in the wikipedia article where the above quote is cited. its those little brackets with the number inside of it.
wow if you click the number the citation is given!!! the link is dead though so you have to put it in a web archive search
you did it!!! you found the source!!!!!!!!! this tactic can be used for many situations, including things like “essays” and “learning”. i hope you found this tutorial really insightful and that you tell your friends about how the internet can be used to seek knowledge, which is its intended purpose. technology is amazing
Brutal
I mean yeah NOW it’s used as a general litmus test for female representation, but how dense can you freakin’ be? Alison Bechdel is a pretty well known comic artist, she’s won an Eisner for crying out loud.
That was just fucking embarrassing. The first time *might* have been forgivable, if followed by an apology, but they just had to double-down.
I mean really?
“Message of this specific strip in particular? I really don’t think so. Whatever you think is there that indicates that [lack of lesbian representation], I’m not seeing it”?
Ppl be like “ I want an actual male gem, not just Steven.”
Jeez, it’s like having only one character
to represent your whole gender
in a group composed all of another gender
is a bit upsetting huh?
I wonder
what
that’s like
no really
can you
even imagine
what this lack of representation
MUST
FEEL
LIKE
This
post
isn’t
long
enough
none of the listed shows are named after the one female character, either
it’s actually physically impossible for me to not reblog this post.
I want to say I’ve reblogged this before, but I’m reblogging again for the brilliant addition of, “None of the listed shows are named after the one female character, either” because FUCKING THANK YOU.
mmmmmhm.
Every time I reblog this, there are new shows on the list.
Wow
it’s almost
as though
this happens
almost constantly
But normally you don’t notice, because it’s not about you.
this may be too controversial for some of yall but not everything by lgbt content creators has to be the absolute pinnacle of representation and gay media is allowed to be just as fucking shitty as straight media can get. gay content creators dont magically make better content just bc they’re gay and they should have the freedom to produce as much hot steaming gay garbage as they want because god fucking knows there’s a lot of hot steaming straight garbage out there
^^ Absolutely 100% agreed!!! LGBT+ content creators have the right to be just as flawed as anyone else. They also have the right to create what they want as much as everyone else! They go through so many obstacles on a daily basis in their respective career fields. They don’t need Tumblr’s ungrateful and impossibly high standards rammed down their throats too.
Tumblr’s desire to seek out the next pure unproblematic uwu symbol of representation puts lgbt+ content creators in a situation where their golden pedastal can become a guillotine in the blink of an eye.
yeah why don’t the stupid homos just accept everything we throw at them
See? This is what I’m talking about here on Tumblr. You all don’t know how to chill. I never said you had to accept everything thrown at you. Everything deserves critique. You can like something and still note their flaws. You can dislike something and still note their good points. But the problem with Tumblr is that the moment something is deemed problematic, it’s over. it’s done. even if it’s created by fellow members of the lgbt+ community. You all damn know how hard it was for them just to get this far and get their content published, created, or even seen because of how unfair the industry is. Ya’ll know that but you vipers will still attack LGBT+ content creators like they’re the devil for not being perfect.
I’ve seen a black gay webcomic creator get nothing but smack from tumblr for having a white main character and his story not being “black” enough for ya’ll. How dare he write what he wants to write instead of dedicating his life to helping all black people 24/7?! I’ve seen a latinx lesbian writer get doxxed because she dared to feature a lesbian couple in her story that had realistic problems in their relationship. It was deemed homophobic by Tumblr for not putting the couple in a completely pure and good light to emphasize how wonderful being gay is 100% of the time. I saw another webcomic creator who put lesbians, blacks, gays, bisexuals, pansexuals, latinx, and many other under represented people in their comic, but they didn’t have any notable trans character representation so they were suddenly “canceled” by tumblr. Like tumblr’s standards are so high. Here, you gotta got go 100% or don’t do anything at all. And in a society where LGBT+ creators don’t have much in the first place, tumblr makes them scared to even try less they face your “righteous wrath”, causing even less LGBT+ content to be created.
What I’m trying to say is, I get it, it can be discouraging when what you’re specifically looking for isn’t in the content you’re digesting. But how about ya’ll
1) give lgbt+ content creators some slack because it was hard enough getting here anyways
2) if they did something problematic, you can explain it to them like actual civlized people instead of…ya know..being tumblr and literally ruining their lives
3) rethink your priorities and consider that maybe actual living breathing LGBT+ creators are more important than LGBT+ characters????
Question of Smoke 