You an also pontificate on a hilltop on situations where you have no skin in the game. Whatever happened with your friend she wasn't your child--it's a wholly different situation.
And Iris isn't a child either. She's a grown woman, and if Joe can't respect that, then he's a crappy father.
She's still Joe's child. And Iris was overtly threatened by the Reverse Flash. I'm not certain how you don't get that good parents protect their grown children from things every day.
And Joe is not the one who needs defense here. This is about male privilege and female marginalization. The privileged are not the ones who need to be defended, because they're not the ones being made vulnerable.
Not really, but you're making it about that. It's happened across the sexes on multiple shows many, many times. Sara played Laurel for a fool for weeks on Arrow to protect her. What's the difference?
Have you never taken keys away from a drunk or told someone that they had to back off of a certain situation? Again, these are beliefs that work fine as a keyboard philosopher but in practice are rarely successful.
What the hell? How is Iris a "drunk" here? How is
she the one whose decisions are endangering others? On the contrary, she's the one being endangered by being kept in the dark about what's going on around her. Joe thinks he's protecting her, but he's being a fool to think that ignorance is in any way safe for her.
Dial back to your argument that it's not one person's position to deny another person whatever it is they rightfully want to do.
And how are you any less a "keyboard philosopher" than I am? This is equally abstract to both of us.
Well, I do have kids. And I imagine yes you have to let the little birds fly and eventually someday leave the nest. But you also don't let them fly into powerlines without doing what you can to prevent it. The abstract part is, thankfully, I hopefully will not have to make the sort of overtly protective decisions that keep my kids from violent death, as apparently Joe thought he was doing.
I'm also not speaking in absolutes as you often do on here. Or at least I'm trying not to.
You act as if, when and if Iris finds out, she won't be major-league pissed off at anyone who's held her in the dark.
If you think that, then you've completely and profoundly missed my entire point. What I'm saying is that, hell yes, she'll be pissed, and she
deserves to be pissed, because these men have no right to make decisions for her and treat her like a child. Wow, how could you possibly think that's
not what I've been saying all along?
That's likely the argument she'll make exactly. So why get all angsty and introduce sexism when it's obvious that's how it's all going to play out? Was your use of the phrase "creepy power imbalance" merited? If Iris was a male and the exactly same situation happened would you be saying that those in the know had no right to deny him his choice to know?
(as if knowing the Flash's identity is some sort of right, anyway)
Or, being a man, are you being subconsciously protective of how she's being treated because she's female?
Bruce, Dick, and Alfred kept the "Batman" secret from Aunt Harriet. Was that because she was a woman or magnified in any way because she was a woman? Or was it an obvious construct because of the TV show and superhero trope. Heck, they have to have somebody around who doesn't know. If the sexes were flipped I could imagine it being the same way.
Neither of us is the right person to ask, because neither of us is a woman. I wish we had some female contributors in this thread to offer some perspectives on the issue, rather than just having a bunch of guys trying to mansplain gender issues to each other, which is bound to get farcical if we keep it up. But I think that, yes, a woman in that situation would perceive a gendered element to being treated that way by the men in her life, and would be entitled to feel that it was unfair. Although neither one of can really say for sure.
Not being a woman didn't stop you from framing the entire situation in those terms.
Break it down to a power issue - Joe and Eddie are both cops. Barry has powers. Iris thus has limited means to protect herself--without her sex mattering.
What I'm saying is, in this case, I believe her sex is incidental. I could be wrong, and really nobody will know without psychoanalyzing the writers. I imagine if Mo Ryan reviewed this episode she had something to say on it. I know Alan Sepinwall said it was absurd to have Iris be the only character that doesn't know but he stated it more around the fact that it marginalizes the character.
And "if the sexes were flipped" doesn't cut it. I don't care how symmetrical you make the situation on the surface -- the larger context of societal male privilege is going to shade the issue and keep it from being symmetrical in practice. And it's only the people who are outside the circle of privilege who can easily see that.
Ok, so, as a man, how can you see it?
Believe me, there's plenty of horrible gender inequality in television--but I saw this as a daughter/sister/significant other situation when it could have just as easily been a son/brother/SO deal.
And I still they should bring back Shaun Cassidy as the Mirror Master from the old series and have Katie Cassidy guest star so we could have a father/daughter onscreen reunion.
(I haven't seen tonight's Arrow.)
