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My read on the whole Gina situation from Pegasus and Razor is that it speaks more to how mentally screwed up Admiral Cain was and the way that war and tragedy can erode one's moral compass to the point that there's nothing they wouldn't condone or sanction, implicitly or otherwise, than it does to any sort of stereotypical thinking, so that it's not so much about Cain's sexuality having an effect on what she allowed to happen to Gina as it is about the ways that the trauma she'd suffered as a child at the hands of the Cylons led her to 'subhumanize' Gina and leave her open and vulnerable to the kinds of things that happened to her at the hands of the rest of the Pegasus' crew.
Also, remember how Gina reacted (in "Razor") when she was outed as a Cylon: she immediately abandoned her human cover identity and went into full Cylon mode. Given this, Cain's subsequent reaction becomes a bit more understandable - if Gina was able to shed her human cover so quickly, then it's a logical assumption that she never actually loved Cain, and the whole relationship was part of Gina's mission as a Cylon. And Cain, being witness to all of this, assumed that any creature capable of such cold, logical, emotionless behavior must not be human, or capable of any human feelings, and thus Cain feels justified in her later treatment of Gina.
To put it another way: Cain reacted the way she did, NOT because of her sexual orientation, but because she felt betrayed by a spy. If either Cain or Gina had been male characters, this would have played out exactly the same. To believe otherwise assumes that writers should always cast villainous characters as straight, for fear of being accused of homophobia, and why would we want to do that?
Maybe, but it's still something to be careful about. The thing about stereotypes is that they don't have to be intentional to be hurtful. If someone drives over your foot by accident, their lack of ill intent doesn't mean you weren't harmed. So it's important to be careful. Yes, you can do stories with villains who are lesbian or some other minority. That shouldn't be completely off-limits. But it should be done advisedly and with care, because it runs the risk of tripping over ugly stereotypes.
And I don't see Razor as a story that was done with care. I think it profoundly dumbed down the Pegasus story and robbed it of any value it had previously had. In "Pegasus," I could've believed that these "best and brightest" characters only gradually degenerated to this point as a result of being broken by the endless horrors they'd endured, but then Razor came along and showed that Cain was a psychopath from the beginning and the crew unhesitatingly embraced brutality at the earliest opportunity, with no transition and no explanation for why they were so awful. Cain and the Pegasus are the one instance in which the revival series's version of something was more simplistic and lacking in nuance than the original '70s version. So making this grotesquely evil, psychopathic, caricatured version of Cain a lesbian on top of everything else just makes me even more ill at ease about the whole thing.
I'd disagree here. People often complain about a joke being out of place or the tone veering in to comedy at the wrong time. Films or shows not quite knowing where they're aiming with this or that piece of humour. Badly timed, executed action scenes. CG that just completely took them out of it.
Well, that's certainly true, but we're talking about a quantitative difference. People may complain about a specific aspect of a show or its execution, but they don't object to the very existence of that element or politicize it in the way that they do sexuality. Nobody ever says that humor is an acceptable topic for fiction as long as you don't tell the punch line. Nobody ever said that it's okay to use CGI as long as it empowers women and minorities and supports health care reform. Nobody ever said the actual use of CGI is pervy. Nobody ever started what's destined to be a hundred-page thread because humor is only for fourteen-year-old boys. It's like I said before: People, whether they understand that they're doing it or not, still follow that religious tradition that sexuality and beauty are subject to a completely different set of rules that are completely inconsistent with all other areas of human interaction.
Well, that's certainly true, but we're talking about a quantitative difference. People may complain about a specific aspect of a show or its execution, but they don't object to the very existence of that element or politicize it in the way that they do sexuality. Nobody ever says that humor is an acceptable topic for fiction as long as you don't tell the punch line. Nobody ever said that it's okay to use CGI as long as it empowers women and minorities and supports health care reform. Nobody ever said the actual use of CGI is pervy. Nobody ever started what's destined to be a hundred-page thread because humor is only for fourteen-year-old boys. It's like I said before: People, whether they understand that they're doing it or not, still follow that religious tradition that sexuality and beauty are subject to a completely different set of rules that are completely inconsistent with all other areas of human interaction.
I don't necessarily disagree that there are hang ups around sex, whether from some Victorian attitude or religious argument but still wouldn't necessarily agree with you in this. People complain about the punchline of jokes because they're offensive whether in general or to women, minorities, disabled, etc. Entire premises of films because they play on bigoted ideas. Complain about adolescent humour of Sandler and his stable. And humour is often funny because it plays around with ideas rather than coming to a conclusion and outright stating it. And CGI being pervy is you bringing it back to being about sex there but people complain about CGI for numerous reasons, including some who would argue that it actively makes films worse just by being used.
But the reason most or even all subjects are politicised, including sex and sexuality, is because one side is inherently on a weaker side. Whether that's because Women have historically, or even still presently, under represented and used in stereotypical ways, or gay people, or disabled people, or minorities. Basically it all comes down to reinforcing the view that people are other and it's perfectly fine for them to be exploited for laughs, titillation, or demonisation etc. So I don't think it's just sex.
Intendant Kira in DS9's Mirror Universe episodes had the same issue with stereotyping -- the good Kira was conventionally, respectably heterosexual while her evil twin was sexually aggressive, hedonistic, and bisexual. Which also played into the more general stereotype of women who enjoy their sexuality being bad or dangerous. At first, her fascination with her other self was portrayed more as narcissism than bisexuality, but later Mirror episodes amplified the Intendant's sluttiness and made a running gag of Mirror characters being at least implicitly gay or bi while their counterparts were still played as strictly hetero. (Dax being the exception. I think Jadzia is the only canonically bisexual series lead in any Trek series to date, though that may change next year...)
But the reason most or even all subjects are politicised, including sex and sexuality, is because one side is inherently on a weaker side. Whether that's because Women have historically, or even still presently, under represented and used in stereotypical ways, or gay people, or disabled people, or minorities. Basically it all comes down to reinforcing the view that people are other and it's perfectly fine for them to be exploited for laughs, titillation, or demonisation etc. So I don't think it's just sex.
Right. That's the key to the points I've been making about good and bad uses of sexuality, and to the articles I linked to earlier discussing the use of sexual imagery in comics. The thing is, modern comics/SF fandom is about half female, and yet a lot of creators and publishers/studios are clinging to the old assumption that their target audience is exclusively adolescent males. So there's a tendency to pander to the presumed tastes of adolescent males and to treat women merely as sex objects to be gratuitously put in skimpy outfits and sexualized porn-star poses. And that's alienating to the many, many women who love comics and superheroes and don't want to see themselves treated as though they're not welcome. And that's self-defeating for the creators and publishers, since they're driving away a sizeable portion of their fanbase. More and more, we're seeing that works that are more female-inclusive, that treat their female characters as people rather than fantasy objects and that appeal to female readers as well as male, are highly praised and popular, and not only among women -- comics like Ms. Marvel and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, films like Mad Max: Fury Road, etc. It's smarter to appeal to both halves of your audience than to assume that one half doesn't count.
So you're absolutely right. It's not about sex being intrinsically good or bad. Of course sex is good. None of us would exist without sex. Sex is an important part of human bonding and social rituals, a shared activity that conveys warmth and affection, relieves stress, stimulates the mind, and builds trust and allegiance. It's a very healthy and positive thing, when it's approached in a healthy way. But it can also be twisted into something unhealthy, something selfish and exploitative and demeaning, even a tool of abuse and subjugation. It's the misuse of sex that's the problem, not sex itself.
Not true. She used her powers to incapacitate a gay male security guard in "Food for Thought." He even expressed surprise that he was enjoying it before he fell unconscious.
And in the Season 3 episode "Fae-de to Black," Bo goes undercover as a relationship therapist, a job she's woefully unqualified for. At one point, she's working with a gay couple complaining that the spark has gone from their relationship. To resolve the session quickly, Bo uses her touch on the two men to make them attracted to each other again. (Which seems a bit irresponsible considering what happened with that one psycho stalker woman in "Faetal Attraction.")
True dat! Just go to the Lost Girl Facebook page and say that you're a Bo/Dyson 'shipper, then wait to see how long it takes for them to imply that you're a homophobe.
Oh, she's such a drag.
Lost Girl was a light, fun guilty pleasure show. Then someone said, "You know what this succubus adventure show could really use, is a needy monogamous girlfriend that's always jealous and insecure and she'll be in every episode and she'll be just a bland featureless slab who calls during the adventure to ask what time Bo will be home and if she really, really loves her."
You're kinda right, at least when it comes to the first 2 seasons. I thought they did a much better job of giving Lauren a personality from Season 3 onwards. It wasn't much but they gave her kind of a cute nerdyness that she was able to play for some fun scenes. And... "Drunken surgery!"
But even when Lauren became a more interesting character, I still felt that her relationship with Bo didn't make much sense. I could certainly see a physical attraction between the two of them early on. But they wanted such different things in their lives. Lauren seemed ready to settle down right now while Bo was more adventurous.
Meanwhile, I thought Lauren had much more interesting chemistry with the Morrigan in Season 4. It's a shame they didn't have more scenes together. (My av is from one of their scenes together in "Origin." So is my "location," but it cuts the line short ever since the TrekBBS changed formats. )
Meanwhile, the Bo/Lauren 'shippers seemed to hold the show's writers hostage.
By the end of the series, it seemed like the writers had lost interest in both the Lauren/Bo/Dyson triangle and in Bo's sexuality in general. While Bo & Lauren do kinda get together at the end of the finale, it felt like one of the most half-hearted relationship resolutions in TV history, like the writers only put it there to keep the Doccubus fans from rioting.
Meanwhile, so long as we're talking about Lost Girl's sexuality, it's worth noting that, while the show's creator & head writers were all women, Michelle Lovretta created the show based on a brief from producer Jay Firestone to create a modern, bisexual Buffy ripoff. And to see Firestone talk about it in interviews, he's more reminiscent of the proverbial horny 14-year-old boy. (He's also the guy that produced Relic Hunter, which often searched for any excuse to get Tia Carrere to take her clothes off. "Oh, the entrance to the secret ancient underground treasure cave is in the middle of a nudist colony!" )
Meanwhile, Lost Girl demonstrates another interesting double standard of sexual politics: Can you imagine any network even touching this show if the gender roles were reversed? What if it were a show about an incubus using his sexual hypnotic touch to get information out of women and occasionally seduce them into sleeping with him so that he could feed?
While Bo has sexual agency for herself, her powers take that agency away from other people. Granted, most of the time, the intercourse that she has is consensual. But, other times, when she's badly wounded, she'll just find some random schmuck in a convenience store (SEE "Something Wicked This Fae Comes").
It gets into this common stereotype in Western culture: All men want to have sex all the time. Most women never really want to have sex; that's just something they occasionally do to placate their men. But if she does, she must really REALLY want to have sex and that urge must always be right.
I tried to do much the same thing as Lost Girl in my SF-superhero novel Only Superhuman -- to portray the female leads' sexuality in a very positive, uninhibited, empowering way, rather than something to be stigmatized, condemned, or used to exploit.
Well, the villains certainly seemed to exploit it. First, they seduced her with their super pheromones. Then, she seemed completely blind to the fact that they all practically had giant blinking neon signs above their heads that said, "I am a manipulative villain." But then, much like Bo in the later seasons of Lost Girl, I often got the sense that Emerald Blaze wasn't very bright.
It's a shame because the book was otherwise very well written with crisp prose & plausible world building.
But what good is an "empowered" heroine if she doesn't actually know what's going on?
That always seemed like making a big fuss over nothing. It was such a brief moment and Carol Marcus didn't seem particularly exploited. She easily could have waited for Kirk to leave the room before she started undressing. And when he did see her, she didn't seem to particularly mind. She asked him to turn around, but in such an offhand way that I got the sense that she was deliberately teasing him. (Considering Kirk is such a notorious Lothario, it was a funny reversal.)
Meanwhile, I would argue that the topless Hoshi Sato scene that's been cited from Enterprise was intended more for mild humorous effect than titillation. For a more extreme male example, I give you this scene from Red Dwarf, "Pete, Part I":
Buffy the Vampire Slayer used fantasy themes to explore sex and compulsion all through its run, and Dollhouse got mileage out of a deliberately dark and squicky core premise (despite actual sex being mostly inferred).
Ironically, it seemed like Buffy/Angel often found itself in the middle of unintentionally sex-negative messages. "Expecting" even made a joke about it: Cordelia: "I learned something, too. I learned, um, men are evil? Oh, wait, I knew that. I learned that L.A. is full of self-serving phonies. Nope. Had that one down, too. Ahh, sex is bad?" Angel: "We all knew that."
There's nothing wrong with deliberately creating a work of erotica. If that's the clear intent from the start, then people know going in what they're getting. It makes perfect sense to use sexual imagery in a work that is intentionally and primarily about creating sexual arousal. But if you're telling a story that isn't sexually themed, e.g. an action movie, and you randomly toss in a shot that sexually objectifies a female character in a way that contributes nothing to the narrative, then that's more gratuitous.
How often do people have panic attacks over a "gratuitous" comedy scene in a movie or TV show? "Goddamnit, the story could have been told without that joke! That was just inserted to make the audience chuckle!"
Lost Girl lesbian fans can be kind of extreme. I was on a fan page a couple of years ago and identified myself as gay and said I thought Bo might have a poly happy ending with both Lauren and Dyson and I was accused of being homophobic because I wasn't demanding a Bo/Lauren monogamous relationship.
Yeah. I always felt that Bo, Dyson, Lauren, Tamsin, Kenzi, & Hale should all just move in together in one big polyamorous commune and be done with it!
I was torn because, on the one hand, I thought Bo & Dyson had a very easy chemistry with each other, even and perhaps especially when they weren't "together" and were specifically trying not to be a couple. On the other hand, from Season 2 onwards, I started to feel like maybe Bo wasn't good enough for Dyson and I became more of a Dyson/Kenzi 'shipper.
But even when Lauren became a more interesting character, I still felt that her relationship with Bo didn't make much sense. I could certainly see a physical attraction between the two of them early on. But they wanted such different things in their lives. Lauren seemed ready to settle down right now while Bo was more adventurous.
That's what made it interesting, though. Story comes from conflict -- which doesn't have to mean fighting, just different people having different goals or priorities that they have to negotiate. If everyone's in agreement, there's no story.
By the end of the series, it seemed like the writers had lost interest in both the Lauren/Bo/Dyson triangle and in Bo's sexuality in general.
They'd lost interest in anyone's sexuality in general. In the last couple of seasons, especially season 5, it had pretty much abandoned being erotic urban fantasy and just become urban fantasy.
Meanwhile, so long as we're talking about Lost Girl's sexuality, it's worth noting that, while the show's creator & head writers were all women, Michelle Lovretta created the show based on a brief from producer Jay Firestone to create a modern, bisexual Buffy ripoff. And to see Firestone talk about it in interviews, he's more reminiscent of the proverbial horny 14-year-old boy.
Which just goes to show that the key isn't in the idea, but in the execution. Lovretta was able to develop the concept through a feminist filter and thus make it more inclusive and positive than a different showrunner might have.
(He's also the guy that produced Relic Hunter, which often searched for any excuse to get Tia Carrere to take her clothes off. "Oh, the entrance to the secret ancient underground treasure cave is in the middle of a nudist colony!" )
Hmm... I missed that show in first run... maybe I should track it down.
Meanwhile, Lost Girl demonstrates another interesting double standard of sexual politics: Can you imagine any network even touching this show if the gender roles were reversed? What if it were a show about an incubus using his sexual hypnotic touch to get information out of women and occasionally seduce them into sleeping with him so that he could feed?
Isn't that how Dracula's often been portrayed, even in movies that painted him as a relatively protagonistic figure? Then there's Marvel's Starfox, one of the lesser Avengers, whose power was basically to make people horny and overwhelmed with pleasure and who often used it to get women to sleep with him, which was so creepy in retrospect that there was a later She-Hulk storyline where he was basically charged with serial rape.
Then there was that bit in Gene Roddenberry's early ideas for Spock, that Vulcan men would have a sexually hypnotic power over women, which was "necessary" to overcome their lack of emotion by essentially compelling them to mate. Mercifully this was never made explicit on the show, but the fact that Roddenberry intended this explains so much, like why Nurse Chapel and Leila Kalomi were so fiercely in love with Spock, and why he was able to hypnotize Sirah into giving him the communicator in "The Omega Glory" even though he was too far away for a mind-meld.
In short, male characters such as you describe have been done in fiction on a number of occasions. If it's more unacceptable today, it's because we're becoming more aware and less tolerant of rape culture. The thing is, there is a double standard in real life. Women being victimized by men is a very real, common occurrence. The culture's sexual power dynamic is heavily slanted in men's favor, and that's a problem.
I think Bo was concerned about the potential of her power for abuse and tried to respect consent as much as she could. Remember, at the start of the series, her power killed people because she couldn't control it, and she hated that. So she didn't want to exploit or victimize people if she could help it, which made her different from Dark succubi like her mother.
Well, the villains certainly seemed to exploit it. First, they seduced her with their super pheromones. Then, she seemed completely blind to the fact that they all practically had giant blinking neon signs above their heads that said, "I am a manipulative villain." But then, much like Bo in the later seasons of Lost Girl, I often got the sense that Emerald Blaze wasn't very bright.
It's a shame because the book was otherwise very well written with crisp prose & plausible world building.
But what good is an "empowered" heroine if she doesn't actually know what's going on?
Well, what I was trying to do was to explore the positives and negatives of power, whether physical, political, emotional, or sexual, and to contrast characters who used their sexuality positively (like Emry herself or her mother) against those who used it to manipulate or exploit, in the same way I had characters representing the positives and negatives of those other uses of power. Many of the villains in the book are sexually controlling or exploitative toward others, but my intent was to counterpoint that with the characters who understood and embraced the more positive side of sexuality, and to show the villains' attempts to impose control fail consistently.
In retrospect, though, I can see how the inclusion of so many sexually manipulative or exploitative characters could work against the perception of it being a sex-positive book. It's not like people aren't already aware of such attitudes, so maybe there didn't need to be quite so many reminders. There are a couple of bits I would dial back more if I were doing it now.
As for Emerald's intelligence, she's natively a genius, but she hasn't yet learned to respect or embrace that part of herself, seeing herself more as a physical being. So she tends to barge into situations without thinking them through, even though she's brilliant when she makes the effort. She was also emotionally vulnerable in a way the Thornes were able to exploit. These were her father's people, and she had very ambivalent feelings about what that meant to her. And the Troubleshooters were going to a dark place at the same time, so she didn't know who to trust or where to belong.
For what it's worth, the Thornes didn't need to use their pheromonal and other influences to seduce her; she would've slept with them anyway, quite eagerly. Indeed, the mechanism of Psyche's powers required her to have close physical contact with people for some time in order to gain mental influence over them, so she has to be able to attract them through other means and make them want to be close to her before she can really start to wield her powers on them. So Emry wasn't coerced into having sex against her will; she was simply gaslighted and emotionally manipulated by people she'd already chosen to sleep with. Still exploitative, but not in the same way.
Meanwhile, I would argue that the topless Hoshi Sato scene that's been cited from Enterprise was intended more for mild humorous effect than titillation. For a more extreme male example, I give you this scene from Red Dwarf, "Pete, Part I":
As I said, though, it's disingenuous to treat such things as symmetrical when there's such a clear societal double standard. Because the media are biased toward male gaze, it's more common for male nudity to be treated as a joke and female nudity to be treated as titillation. In the former case, it's assumed the target audience will identify with the embarrassment of the naked man; in the latter, it's assumed the target audience will identify with the arousal of the man seeing the naked woman.
And really, just look at T'Pol's costume design and tell me that Enterprise's producers weren't catering to male gaze.
Lost Girl lesbian fans can be kind of extreme. I was on a fan page a couple of years ago and identified myself as gay and said I thought Bo might have a poly happy ending with both Lauren and Dyson and I was accused of being homophobic because I wasn't demanding a Bo/Lauren monogamous relationship.
I don't necessarily disagree that there are hang ups around sex, whether from some Victorian attitude or religious argument but still wouldn't necessarily agree with you in this. People complain about the punchline of jokes because they're offensive whether in general or to women, minorities, disabled, etc. Entire premises of films because they play on bigoted ideas. Complain about adolescent humour of Sandler and his stable. And humour is often funny because it plays around with ideas rather than coming to a conclusion and outright stating it. And CGI being pervy is you bringing it back to being about sex there but people complain about CGI for numerous reasons, including some who would argue that it actively makes films worse just by being used.
We're not talking about whether a specific joke is funny, or whether a specific CGI model is photorealistic, or whether a particular nude scene is sexy, we're talking about the concept of humor, the concept of CGI, and the concept of sexuality. While there may be a random crank here and there who wants no humor or no CGI ever, there is no millennia-old religious tradition to suppress and censor sexuality.
But the reason most or even all subjects are politicised, including sex and sexuality, is because one side is inherently on a weaker side. Whether that's because Women have historically, or even still presently, under represented and used in stereotypical ways, or gay people, or disabled people, or minorities. Basically it all comes down to reinforcing the view that people are other and it's perfectly fine for them to be exploited for laughs, titillation, or demonisation etc. So I don't think it's just sex.
Women have historically fought against sexual suppression. Feminists throughout history, from the Women's Libbers of fifty years ago to the New Women of the early 20th century to the Adventuresses of the 19th century and back and back have always fought for sexual freedom, including free love, pornography, and prostitution, in addition to social and financial freedom. The sex-negative aspect of contemporary Feminism is historically anomalous and just a sign of the current age of extreme conservatism. The pretense that there is a separate set of rules for sexuality and that this protects women is simply an excuse to perpetuate antiquated religious values (patriarchal religious values, ironically).
It gets into this common stereotype in Western culture: All men want to have sex all the time. Most women never really want to have sex; that's just something they occasionally do to placate their men. But if she does, she must really REALLY want to have sex and that urge must always be right.
The Cliche is "Men trade intimacy for sex and women trade sex for intimacy," which is another way that religion has de-sexualized women. Mommies are supposed to teach their little girls to just close their eyes and make up their shopping list until it's over. For contemporary conservatives, both on the Right and Left, the message is that sexuality is for fourteen-year-old boys and women are supposed to roll their eyes at this immature behavior and then everybody agrees that the priests and nuns were right after all. Which is certainly not consistent with the women that I've known.
Meanwhile, I would argue that the topless Hoshi Sato scene that's been cited from Enterprise was intended more for mild humorous effect than titillation.
My Mother saw that scene and thought it was funny, and followed it up with a similar story from when she was a teenager in the 50s. When the nuLeft is more conservative than a 75-year-old Irish Catholic church lady, you know something has gone badly wrong.
In that case, "gratuitous sex" is not a moral failing, just an artistic one. It's not offensive, just worthy of a whole lot of these: "."
As I said before, beauty needs no excuse. The Venus de Milo and Michelangelo's David exist only to be naked. Ars gratia artis. However, I do think that one of the highest motivations for art is to make conservatives squirm.
I think you've just described the raison d'etre behind the DC cinematic universe in its entirety!
^I don't think anyone has argued the very concept of sexuality is bad. As far as I can see most feminists are for sexuality and it being expressed as long as it is inclusive. The problem with a lot of sex in the media isn't that it exists it's that it is done badly. You seem to be arguing from the perspective that anyone who has issues with it is a cultural conservative but it's not about "Sex=bad" it's about the balance of power. The idea that 30 year old women is "too old" to be the love interest of a 60 year old man but "man - any age" being right for a 20 something woman in casting calls. The idea that Game of Thrones is sexy but throws in rape and abuse in regularly. Very little done for the female gaze, even completely ignoring female audiences. There are things that are bad about the sexuality the media portrays.
Some of what you're saying is right but you cast the net far too wide and make it a blanket statement.
In "Pegasus," I could've believed that these "best and brightest" characters only gradually degenerated to this point as a result of being broken by the endless horrors they'd endured, but then Razor came along and showed that Cain was a psychopath from the beginning and the crew unhesitatingly embraced brutality at the earliest opportunity, with no transition and no explanation for why they were so awful.
Bad as a theme or element in the arts? Absolutely they are. It's the whole reason this thread exists and sex is considered "controversial" in our culture.
As far as I can see most feminists are for sexuality and it being expressed as long as it is inclusive.
That's how it's been in the past. A real Feminist, for example, would not complain about female nudity in film-- they would campaign for more male nudity in film. The opposite is true of the more conservative, Millennial-Era breed of "Feminist."
The problem with a lot of sex in the media isn't that it exists it's that it is done badly. You seem to be arguing from the perspective that anyone who has issues with it is a cultural conservative but it's not about "Sex=bad" it's about the balance of power. The idea that 30 year old women is "too old" to be the love interest of a 60 year old man but "man - any age" being right for a 20 something woman in casting calls. The idea that Game of Thrones is sexy but throws in rape and abuse in regularly. Very little done for the female gaze, even completely ignoring female audiences. There are things that are bad about the sexuality the media portrays.
The part about "female gaze" is true (I'm not familiar with those other examples, except GOT, which takes place in a brutal Medieval world), but the reason for that is, again, politicization. In the Judeo-Christian tradition that these attitudes are derived from, women are taught to suppress their sexuality and deride the idea of sexuality. As we've seen in this thread, sexuality only "panders" to fourteen-year-old boys and girls are supposed to roll their eyes at such immature silliness. In real life, though, women are just as sexual as men. Take for example the book Fifty Shades of Gray, which was the female equivalent of those pulp sex novels of the 50s-- it was hugely successful among liberated women, but caused fits among the more conservative.
Some of what you're saying is right but you cast the net far too wide and make it a blanket statement.
If you look back at this thread-- and to these discussions in general-- you'll find that it's all a knee-jerk negative reaction to sexuality that all goes back to a bunch of Medieval monks who had problems relating to women. Even the people who want you to think that they're very concerned about the balance of power between men and women, or whatever, are just hiding behind a bunch of ideological poli-sci blank verse to promote the same stale ideas.
I wish I could quote Bob The Skutter (post number 73) but my quote function doesn't want to work at the moment. Regardless, he speaks the truth!
It has long been my observation that sexuality has been presented from the male perspective of what is sexy, with little to no consideration of what a woman may find appealing. Hubby often looks at me and grins during a sex scene, saying, "so, are you turned on yet?" to which my response is usually "Oh, is that the goal of this scene...I thought it was to put me to sleep".
Add to that the age discrepancies Bob addresses, and the sad fact that if male nudity is shown it is often someone a woman wouldn't want to see naked (yes, I'm glaring at you Game of Thrones!) it results in me completely tuning out a scene that is supposed to be sexy.
And don't get me started on rape scenes. If this is a writer or director's "go to" scene to depict evil I call that choice lazy and inept. Sigh. Sometimes I wonder why I still watch GoT.
I wish I could quote Bob The Skutter (post number 73) but my quote function doesn't want to work at the moment. Regardless, he speaks the truth!
It has long been my observation that sexuality has been presented from the male perspective of what is sexy, with little to no consideration of what a woman may find appealing. Hubby often looks at me and grins during a sex scene, saying, "so, are you turned on yet?" to which my response is usually "Oh, is that the goal of this scene...I thought it was to put me to sleep".
Add to that the age discrepancies Bob addresses, and the sad fact that if male nudity is shown it is often someone a woman wouldn't want to see naked (yes, I'm glaring at you Game of Thrones!) it results in me completely tuning out a scene that is supposed to be sexy.
And don't get me started on rape scenes. If this is a writer or director's "go to" scene to depict evil I call that choice lazy and inept. Sigh. Sometimes I wonder why I still watch GoT.
I personally despise bedroom scenes and it has nothing to do with morality or squeamishness. They just annoy me. All that lips smacking and usually badly written flirting... bleah. I rarely find it 'hot' and those deep conversations the couples have after it's all over while still in bed...they couldn't have had that same conversation around the breakfast table? I don't know, maybe I've just been unfortunate to have seen actors who don't do them all that well or something.
Now a well written romantic scene that might lead to something in my own imagination...those I enjoy.
Take for example the book Fifty Shades of Gray, which was the female equivalent of those pulp sex novels of the 50s-- it was hugely successful among liberated women, but caused fits among the more conservative.
In my experience, most of the fifty shades crowd are far closer to the conservative set - mildly sexually repressed and taking advantage of a cultural phenomenon to give themselves 'permission' to be naughty. Meanwhile, while I'm sure plenty of churchfolk called it satanic or whatever, almost every comment I've ever seen against it was made by people who actually enjoy sex and good writing and even both of those two things put together, but were completely baffled by the fact that this was the book that somehow got crowned as 'great erotica' when it wasn't even remotely close to that.
[QUOTE="RJDiogenes, post: 11647119, member: 2147" Take for example the book Fifty Shades of Gray, which was the female equivalent of those pulp sex novels of the 50s-- it was hugely successful among liberated women, but caused fits among the more conservative.
In my experience, most of the fifty shades crowd are far closer to the conservative set - mildly sexually repressed and taking advantage of a cultural phenomenon to give themselves 'permission' to be naughty. Meanwhile, while I'm sure plenty of churchfolk called it satanic or whatever, almost every comment I've ever seen against it was made by people who actually enjoy sex and good writing and even both of those two things put together, but were completely baffled by the fact that this was the book that somehow got crowned as 'great erotica' when it wasn't even remotely close to that.
I just thought it was badly written. I read ONE paragraph of that book and had to put it down wondering if people would know good writing if it walked up and slapped them in the face.
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