A Welcome Voice

As is well known to readers, this particular archetype -- the Xena Warrior Princess one, transposed into everything -- has long irritated me. Ms. Brit Marling, a former actress and filmmaker, writes of her own reasons for rejecting it.
Enter, stage right: the Strong Female Lead.

She’s an assassin, a spy, a soldier, a superhero, a C.E.O. She can make a wound compress out of a maxi pad while on the lam. She’s got MacGyver’s resourcefulness but looks better in a tank top.

Acting the part of the Strong Female Lead changed both who I was and what I thought I was capable of. Training to do my own stunt work made me feel formidable and respected on set. Playing scenes where I was the boss firing men tasted like empowerment. And it will always feel better to be holding the gun in the scene than to be pleading for your life at the other end of the barrel.

It would be hard to deny that there is nutrition to be drawn from any narrative that gives women agency and voice in a world where they are most often without both. But the more I acted the Strong Female Lead, the more I became aware of the narrow specificity of the characters’ strengths — physical prowess, linear ambition, focused rationality. Masculine modalities of power....

It’s difficult for us to imagine femininity itself — empathy, vulnerability, listening — as strong. When I look at the world our stories have helped us envision and then erect, these are the very qualities that have been vanquished in favor of an overwrought masculinity.
There's a lot in her piece that I am not quoting, some of which some of you may find highly sympathetic; some of which some of you will outright reject. I myself am always amazed when a woman thinks that women are the disposable sex in America, for example; she writes of domestic violence, which is a real problem, but men are far and away exposed to much more violence without anyone even thinking of it as a problem. The statistics she quotes on rape are long disproven, but even with rape, American men are more exposed to it than women thanks to our vast prison culture and disparities in just who gets sent to prison.

I acknowledge those things, as well as the ways in which her feelings -- whether or not they are supported by facts -- are widely shared by many women. I don't want to do more than acknowledge those disputes, because what I want to do is recognize a point of agreement. I also want, and long for, movies that celebrate feminine strength on its own real terms. I miss that as much as she does, because I'm a man who loves women. I want women around, strong women, feminine women.

I long for the days when our movies once again can show women who are strong in the way that Isabeau was strong in Ladyhawke.

UPDATE: A ‘paradox’ of greatest unhappiness.

6 comments:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Re Update: I wonder what the pattern of most unhappy men were. Perhaps similar?

I not only referenced this post in my newest, but cross-posted that at Chicago Boyz as well. I hope it gives your thoughts wider exposure.

Grim said...

Twitter didn't contain the link to the study until pretty deep in the comments:

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.1.2.190

You probably can access that via your professional credentials. I cannot, but here is a Psychology Today article on it:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/high-octane-women/201109/meet-the-least-happy-people-in-america

ymarsakar said...

Pretty sure it was tampons the soldiers used as makeshift wound pluggers, not maxi pads. Until the Israeli big brains came up with a synthetic material.

The gender stereotypes are not always on target. In war, anything can be used, gender feminine does not control it.

ymarsakar said...

Women are not 100% Divine Feminine and men are not 100% Divine Masculine.

That's the misunderstanding that humans cannot get past. They can't even get to the dualistic system, let alone graduate out of 3rd grade.

ymarsakar said...

It’s difficult for us to imagine femininity itself — empathy, vulnerability, listening — as strong. When I look at the world our stories have helped us envision and then erect, these are the very qualities that have been vanquished in favor of an overwrought masculinity.

Yin Yang graduation problem there. I'll help then.

When two vassals are fighting each other over something stupid or even a blood vendetta, you damn right better expect empathy, the vulnerability of the liege to the vassal's influence and power, and listening to vassal complaints, are going to matter. So is bringing harmony to the conflict instead of saying "You are Fired".

Yes, most toxic and lower level males will settle for one vassal over the other, or even no vassals. Stronger fuedal lords tried to keep their vassal companions harmonious, because the less they fought each other, the more they could combine to fight external enemies when it mattered. These were the liege lords that didn't get into wars, but just won wars so cleanly nobody even bothered to care about their war record.

As for actual examples, Sun Tzu,and Charlemagne.

ymarsakar said...

Butler’s heroine, the 17 year-old Lauren, has “hyperempathy” — she feels, quite literally, other people’s pain. This feminine gift and curse uniquely prepares her to survive the violent attack on her community in Los Angeles and successfully encourage a small tribe north to begin again from seeds she has saved from her family’s garden.

As someone who has mastered a similar ability, I'll share some feedback and thoughts on this for Marling's benefit. Is she, Brit Marling, reading this? No. But now that I have locked unto her signature energy, the Divine Counsel can send any number of angels and messengers to do the job in the astral/dream realm. It's nice to have loyalists... although I do not fire or hire them, they merely serve at their own pleasure, not mine.

The ability to sense fear and other things, has been documented in animals. Also humans. Sensing fear and emotions is useful in battle because it allows one to 360 detect the presence of enemies or neutrals, without resorting to infra red heat, visual movement, or sound. If a person sneaks up behind you, the sum total of their fear of being caught and their will power used to conquer this fear to create the Intent to kill you, will be easily detected.

At higher levels, both killers and peace makers use this detection ability in equal spades.

Another particularly more specialized use of this ability is the power to incorporate physical pain and graft it from a patient that is being healed, to yourself. This allows you to directly trace the nerve and energy channel blocks, to resolve the pain on your end, allowing you to greatly understand what the patient is going through. Not used in Western medicine, but very useful for energy healers that use intuition.

This is all from personal experience. None of which was copy pasted from your human fictions.

Some people may find that hard to believe while others would find it ridiculous. But to me, I have been at VoxDay and Alt Right HQ's home centers, telling them stuff they didn't want to hear. I have told Southerners things they didn't want to hear. I have told Catholics things they didn't want to hear. Name a human group I have not offended by cooking their sacred cow in front of them.

To those of us that use Divine energies, whether it is Masculine or Feminine has ceased to matter. Good and evil has ceased to matter. Light and darkness is no longer a matter of judging the difference.