Have we lost touch on feminism?

There has been a recent surge in “feminism” over the last five years, but is it really feminism?

People have demanded stronger roles in movies, television and even comic books for women. The talk about fair pay has opened wider. Generally, criticism for sexist remarks has been much more immediate.

Not long ago Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner referred to the character of Black Widow as a “slut” and a “whore”. The comments drew immediate criticism as slut shaming.

Perhaps we can take a closer look before rushing to judgement, however. Marvel’s Black Widow character frequently uses sexuality, manipulation and sometimes outright has sex with people to achieve her goals.

Dictionary.com defines Whore as the following:

“noun

1.

a woman who engages in promiscuous sexual intercourse, usually for money; prostitute; harlot; strumpet.”

In other words, a whore is a woman who engages in sex for money. Black Widow engages in sex as part of her occupation with shield. She is, by definition, a whore.

Admitting this doesn’t make someone sexist. It just makes them aware.

The modern habit of “feminism” is to eschew anything that could possibly be portrayed as negative about a woman. Or Should I be typing “womyn”?

This face value, lip service feminism has created it’s own enemy- Women now have to be portrayed as flawless, utterly perfect creatures in media that “strong female leads” have now become flat, melodramatic characters with no nuances and no flaws. It’s made female characters utterly unrelateable, and frequently absurd. The Film “Juno” comes to mind; Juno is a young woman with a snappy comeback for anything in life. Her wit and use of language are perfect. There is not situation she’s not prepared for, and is profoundly well informed. Over the course of this film not only are we told to suspend our disbelief that such a mentally perfect being could be unaware of the risks of pregnancy from sex, or the existence of condoms, but somehow the movie also manages to portray every male character as either sinister, or idiotic and every female as a victim, or hyper intelligent (in the case of Juno, both).

Don’t misinterpret me as saying men are subject to some sort of prejudice here. That’s not the case.What is the case, however, is that we’ve started to overcompensate so hard that it’s hurting more than helping. We’ve righted the ship and proceeded to turn so hard starboard we’re heading back from where we came.

The truth is Hollywood knows what it’s doing. It’s the same reason men are almost always put in “control” during pornography- It’s gratifying people through shameless praise. It’s saying “we get it, you’re perfect”.

It’s selling you something by appealing to your vanity and your insecurity.

It’s no different than anything else: politics, religion, capitalism.
It’s selling you something by exploiting you.

Perhaps we should all sit down and ponder over the real cure for misogyny; treating everyone exactly the same.