By David Futrelle
In these troubled times, it’s good to know that the guys at One Angry Gamer have their priorities straight. Forget police violence, forget the tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths caused by Trump’s utter mishandling of the coronavirus. The crucial issue of our time is exactly how short the shorts of Faye from Cowboy Bebop should be.
As you may know, Cowboy Bebop is a famously sexy Japanese anime show from the nineties that Netflix is resurrecting as a live-action series.
But one element of the original might not make it into the reboot: the exceedingly skimpy clothing of the character Faye. In an interview with io9, you see, show writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach mentioned that Faye’s outfits will be toned down a scootch because “we need to have a real human being wearing that.”
Naturally this has made Billy D of One Angry Gamer even angrier. Accusing Netflix of having
a certain kind of formula … which almost always undermines the original work to push some kind of subversive, Left-wing oriented message,
he laments that their version of the
Cowboy Bebop show will not be faithful to the original, especially when it comes to how sexy Faye is supposed to be dressed.
Who likes short shorts? Apparently not Netflix.
Billy is especially outraged by the idea that cartoon Faye wears clothes not fit for a real human.
So basically, wearing short-shorts, thigh-high stockings, thong suspenders, and a cropped V-neck sleeveless halter-top isn’t something “a real human being” would wear?
Well, no, it’s not. I’ve seen plenty of skimpy outfits in my day but I’ve never seen anyone dressed like Faye walking down the street.
You mean to tell me that real women have never worn what Faye has worn?
Generally speaking, no.
So the women who attend sporting events in the summer wearing cropped tops and short-shorts aren’t real human beings?
He then shows women wearing much less revealing shorts than Faye. And without the thigh-high stockings.
You mean to tell me that celebrities like Lady Gaga wearing cropped tops and short-shorts with heels are women who aren’t real human beings?
Well, no, but to be fair Lady Gaga once wore a dress made entirely of meat that has its own entry on Wikipedia. One time she wore this. And another time she wore this. In other words, she’s not really a good bellwether for “what real people wear” in the real world.
In the comments, One Angry Gamer’s completely normal readers responded in completely normal ways.
“I’m just done,” wrote one.
let this shitty society burn and let the kikes take over and let everyone go extinct
Another responded:
Nah.
lets burn the kikes instead and take BACK the society we once held dear
only this time, no more sympathy for subhumans
Huh. If I were running One Angry Gamer I’d be a little more perturbed by my own readers’ inhumanity than by the exact shortness of Faye’s short shorts.
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@ Vicky P
I am sooooo glad to hear that! But not in the least surprised.
@Gaebolga
Gender essentialism is the belief that there is one singular “essential” experience of womanhood that makes a person a woman, something that all women experience and which only women experience. A gender essentialist say that if you don’t have this essential feminine experience, then you aren’t female.
If you dig into this concept for specifics, you’ll find that it is almost always a very white, very Western, very middle- or upper-class female experience, and usually also an ableist one. TERFs commonly hold this belief and define the essential feminine experience as basically identical to the experience of being AFAB.
If you really for some reason wanted to make it work, you could say that the essential experience of womanhood is misogyny. What unites women qua women is that women experience misogyny and non-women do not. Trans women experience trans misogyny, which is misogyny, which makes them women.
However, even this is not perfect, because non-binary people who present as female can also experience misogyny without being women. So even saying that the “essential” feminine experience is misogyny doesn’t quite capture an experience that all women have, and ONLY women have (because not only women necessarily experience it). Gender essentialism therefore fails even when you define it thusly. It’s just not very good philosophy.
@Policy of Madness
I am reminded of the “these are the problems that matter, and other problems don’t exist” seen in a lot of those “how privileged are you” checklists, where you check off statements that apply to you and get a score. The writers tend to strongly demonstrate what privileges that have and lack based on what they include and how they weight them.
For example, in one I saw just the other day, where they writer was clearly aware of all the privileges lacked by LGBT folx, but seemed only vaguely aware that disability is a thing.
Whether or not you have experienced homophobic harassment was five separate items, with two just for homophobic slurs.
For ableist harassment? Zero items.
So being called the f-word puts you down two points, but the r-word zero.
Whether or not you have had to decide to “come out” as LGBT was worth a point. Whether or not you have had to decide to “come out” as mentally ill or physically/mentally disabled? Not even on there.
Been told “it’s just a phase?” One point.
Been told: “Just cheer up!” or “It happened a long time ago, get over it?” Zero points.
My kidney disease, that affects me every hour of every day, greatly restricts my life, and will painfully kill me without continuous medical treatment?
One point, for “physical disability.” Which was offset by having been able to take a road trip to Canada one time.
Oh, and here’s one of the best parts: Guess how many items related to whether or not you have experienced abuse?
That’s right, zero.
I am privileged to have never encountered such a checklist! LOL It sounds pretty awful, which is maybe why my FB friends haven’t spread one of those to me.
“How privileged are you” is an unanswerable question. Nobody has all the privileges – some sets of privileges are contradictory – and being very privileged in some ways doesn’t necessarily counteract being disadvantaged in other ways. Racial privilege doesn’t necessarily make up for being socioeconomically disadvantaged, for instance, and being socioeconomically privileged doesn’t necessarily make up for being racially disadvantaged. It’s a silly exercise and I’m glad I’ve never wasted time on such a list.
@PoM, Allandrel
My experience with those checklists has been similarly bad. The one I saw recognized that disability is a thing, but also seemed to think conservatives were less privileged than people on the left because they are “silenced.” It also was of the opinion that Christians are disadvantaged in America. Basically every checklist on privilege seems to in the end become an Oppression Olympics for its creator.
Some people come pretty close. I’d be hard pressed to think of a privilege Jeff Bezos doesn’t have as an extremely wealthy white cishet man.
Re: misogyny as universal
It is true that all women experience misogyny, but some people who aren’t women also experience it. For example, a trans* man who hasn’t transitioned and/or is perceived by others as a woman will experience misogyny despite being a man. In addition, women can experience misogyny differently depending on race, class, etc; for example the misogyny that a wealthy woman like J.K. Rowling experiences will be very different than that of a working class woman.
@Naglfar
I get the feeling that that’s because she’s not really thinking that trans women should have certain lived experience in order to be treated as their gender identity, but is more experiencing some confusion about integrating her feelings about transwomen with the idea of how other people/society treat children that they perceive as boys even before those children are old enough to have a sense of self. In other words, I think it’s more about how outside people behave and perceive a particular person, rather than about what that person’s internal/external lived experience is actually like. (I hope that made sense).
But like I said, this is a guess/assumption, I may be way off base.
Re: trans women and privilege/oppression re lived experience
The answer is “it’s complicated”, but that’s not the answer anyone wants to hear.
e.g. male acculturation is absolutely a thing, and if you spend time in trans communities you will see it in action. It’s ugly. For at least some of us, shaking off male indoctrination and privilege is like breaking a chemical addiction – long, difficult, involving a high chance of relapse, and basically needing to become a way of life to have a chance of success.
OTOH trans fem lived experience before transition is… also its own thing. I’m definitely not going to call it “girlhood” or “lived experience of sexist oppression” but it seems to bring its own hardships.
e.g.
More of us are CSA survivors than most people assume.
Most of us seem to experience bullying and abuse from peers to a level that shocks straight people.
Almost all the trans fems I know have depression and CPTSD by the time they start transitioning, and that’s the shallow end of the trans fem mental health issues pool.
One of the more common stories of abuse from trans fems seems to be trying to find meaning and identity in someone else, a kind of self-annihilation in service of another, and being exploited as a result. I’ve seen this happen with the abusive partners or friends being cis women, trans women, trans men… TBH I have one of these stories myself, and I’m still paying the price for it.
And just overall, the sense of alienation from our bodies and psyches makes us super vulnerable to predators long before we transition.
Again, I wouldn’t call any of this the same as the sexist oppression that AFAB people experience. But it its own thing. If we want to get technical I’d say it falls closer to what gay and bi men experience growing up, even for those of us who never feel or show attraction to men. I’m bi myself, but I was bullied relentlessly for being “gay” long before I even started to understand that side of me. Abusive people recognize that self-alienation, they see that difference, before we even begin imagining it.
TL;DR No Seriously, It’s Complicated. And the more you dive in the more complicated it will get. And none of it will be the answers you wished for, whether you’re a trans person, an ally, or a TERF.
Maybe a thing that’s helpful for this: taking the view from 20,000 feet, through the eyes of a hypothetical random bigot.
CN: slurs
.
.
.
To some drunk asshole I run into on the subway, I’m not “trans woman” or “trans fem” or “AMAB trans person”. I’m “dyke” or “queer” if I’m lucky, “faggot” if I’m not. Drunk rando may have no idea what my birth gender is. These things are all nebulous and interchangeable. I could be the most blatant lesbian ever and still get called a faggot. I could get harassed for being a “little faggot trying to steal my girl” or such, sentences that don’t even make sense if you know what the words mean.
That part of the oppression we experience isn’t about being seen as women or not, it’s about falling outside the lines of normative gender, and therefore the lines of what is wholesome and acceptable and human. And that is the part of our oppression that is lifelong. The misogyny there is mostly a kind of splash damage, the misogyny that drives straight men to beat gay men for acting or looking feminine.
Is it part of the universal woman experience? No. Is it anything like an AFAB person’s lived experience? No.
Is it oppression? Take a look at the list of stress-linked illnesses in my medical file, and you tell me.
@Cyborgette
This happened to me as well. I got taken advantage of by so many people because I was trying to, like you said, find meaning outside of myself because I had failed to find it within. I tried to find meaning in doing things for other people because it distracted from my own internal issues (dysphoria, anxiety, depression, etc).
@Allandrel
I don’t know if taking a road trip to Canada should be worth a full point, but I must admit I did feel kind of privileged the time I got to go.
(I am assuming the point was for visiting another country. I just find the idea that “road trip to Canada” might be a specific item on the list to be funny.)
@moregeekthan, Allandrel
I’ve been on two different road trips to Canada. I had a good time, it was a privilege to go, but I don’t think it somehow cancels out other obstacles a person could encounter.
For those curious, my first road trip there was to Montreal to visit friends, and my second visited an assortment of towns in New Brunswick and also Prince Edward Island.
@Naglfar
Oh, fucking mood. And my sympathies. 🙁 All of that is just super familiar.
I bet the “Road trip to Canada” question doesn’t account for not only what state a person lives but where in that state either.
@Cyborgette
Thank you for explaining your experiences and thoughts anyway. I appreciate it more than you can imagine (same goes for everyone who shares their experiences).
Look – I’ll never understand on a deep level what you describe – simply don’t have the tools in my mental toolbox – and my lack of that understanding does bug me from time to time. Yet at the same time, it’s not the sort of thing you go poking at people about with your questions.
Fortunately, not understanding doesn’t stop me accepting anyone being *trans as immutable fact. 🙂
GOD DAMMIT JOE BIDEN
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1270041926373462016
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/501657-biden-campaign-opposes-calls-to-defund-the-police
Honestly I have to wonder if the Democrats are purposefully self-sabotaging at this point. What kind of a selling point is “vote for us, we’ll do exactly what the Republicans do, only less so!”
The people who like what the Republicans are doing aren’t going to vote for a watered down version of what they’re already getting, and the people who are disgusted by the policies in place aren’t going to be strongly motivated to vote for something that’s only marginally less bad.
@Fabe
It’s also very specific. What about road trips to other places? Or trips that aren’t by road? There’s certainly more privilege in, say, flying to Europe, so ability to afford more expensive forms of travel (long distance flights, cruises, resorts, etc) seems like a better predictor of socioeconomic status than road trips. Not that this makes the checklist valid in the first place, but just my 2 cents.
Democrats mostly aim for the centrists, the moderate liberals, and what small number of moderate conservatives they can manage. There are some exceptions who aim for the progressives, but ultimately, progressives haven’t been “the base” for a long time now. It’s a case of “Who else ya gonna vote for, the Rebublicans? Jill Stein?” There was a major progressive turnout in 2008 because of high hopes for Obama, who appealed to both moderates and progressives, but he turned out to be Reagan-lite, more or less.
They can’t get all of the centrists or most of the moderate conservatives, of course. Some of those people just consistently vote for whichever party they had a good opinion of at one point and it takes a lot to change their views. Some of them are single-issue voters and the Republicans do better at catering to their issue. Meanwhile, what quite a lot moderates on both sides really want is a return to pre-1980s bipartisanship, and that’s exactly what Biden is offering. So in the short run, it doesn’t hurt him, or a lot of other Democrats, at all. It won’t work, though. Bipartisanship requires bilateral cooperation, and present-day Republicans can’t do that because they’ll lose a hell of a lot of power, and probably won’t recover for a generation.
I’ve said this before, that this is not stable. The Republicans are inching further right because they need their increasingly fanatic base more than ever. The Democrats are generally (though not always in individual cases) inching further right because they need to peel off every last vote they can from the other side, due to needing to make up for the effects of vote suppression, gerrymandering, and the electoral collage, all of which currently strongly favor Republicans. Having a majority of the votes often isn’t enough to win. Something has to break, eventually. You cannot have increasingly conservative politics in a country which increasingly agrees with the liberal view. Not without a dictatorship, anyway.
As I’ve pointed out before, the fundamental agreement between the Democratic and Republican parties is white supremacy. Democrats chase the white moderate, Republicans chase the white conservative, and people who actually want equality don’t get a seat at the table and are beaten, gassed, and/or killed when they try to demand one. This has always been the case, and until it’s acknowledged and rooted out it always will be. It’s not just the police that need abolished and something new built from the ground up.
…Also, for those who think that they can’t possibly afford to lose the support of progressives, then outside of areas where progressive candidates are very popular, they actually can, to a point. Consider this: If they gain one moderate vote by shifting right but lose two progressive votes in the process, then they’re down by one vote, but so are the Republicans. Of course, they can’t just do it at parity, because due to the Republicans changing the game (in ways which are highly unethical, but not always illegal) so that a majority support often isn’t enough for Democrats to win anymore; they’ve got to get that loss ratio down to less than 2:1, when possible. Even 1.9:1 will do, because the Republicans can’t screw things up *that* much (yet), only enough to give themselves an edge where they really need it. If the Democratic party breaks first, it’ll probably be because they went so far right that the vote loss/gain ratio significantly worsens.
@Snowberry
“Democrats going right”
And there I stopped, because it’s clear you don’t know what you’re talking about. If anything, Biden’s swung to the left, even if he’s still Generic Moderate Model D.
Pay attention to the context; “defund the police”, while I’m thrilled it has become an acceptable position, is literally a new slogan. Trump is attempting to tie Biden to it, when Biden’s candidacy is based partly on returning normalcy to America (and increasingly becoming clear that normalcy isn’t the only goal). Police reform, though? That just got mainstreamed, and Biden is no fan of police training – as well he shouldn’t be. So, avoid what might be a political trap, but keep on the side of the protestors.
You know what drives the Dems leftward? Passing policy. You know how that happens? Winning.
Regarding the road trip to Canada, the actual item in the quiz was “I have traveled to a different country.”
Which of course meant that my driving three hours to the Canadian border was worth the same number of “privilege points” as someone who spends every birthday in Monaco.
Because really,what is the difference?
@Leliel
I find it odd that the last bit of Snowberry’s post that you read was evidently this bit:
And you responded with a claim about an individual Democrat. Snowberry is clearly talking about the party as a whole and said explicitly that individuals may vary, so whether or not your claim about Biden’s leftward shift is correct, it’s not a counterargument to what Snowberry has said.
Further, I interpreted (perhaps wrongly) Snowberry’s comment as referring to a trend in the Democratic party going on for years. Are you talking about a very recent change in Biden’s stated positions? If so, it seems to me (as someone who obviously can’t read either of your minds) that you’re really not talking about the same thing at all.
I’m sorry to double post. I missed the edit window by a mile.
I just wanted to clarify that of course I know why you were talking about Biden, Leliel, since a statement from Biden is what kicked this whole discussion off. I guess what I was trying to say and maybe could have said better if I didn’t choose to post in the middle of the night is that it seems to me that you are comparing Biden to Biden, whereas Snowberry is I think talking about larger trends within the Democrats as exemplified by Biden–put another way, comparing Biden to the party as a whole now and historically.
I’m sorry if I was initially unclear, and I’m sorry if this is also unclear. Now I sleep.
A bit of an addenum:
I don’t know about the general trend of the Democratic party at the state level, or lower, on the occasions when positions are partisan. I have been paying attention to the House and Senate for a long time. There has been a very slow, creeping trend toward older and more conservative among the party. Progressives do get elected, but aside from Bernie Sanders who is grudgingly accepted due to having a long and distinguished career (and also, possibly, due to being an old himself), the relatively small number of progressives are largely treated as irritating upstarts. They also don’t usually last long. Most of the current progressives were elected in 2016 or 2018, and most of the ones before that are no longer in office.
“Defund the Police” is a talking point on the City level, and in a few cases on the State level. At the Federal level, we’re seeing just Kamala Harris, mostly? Not much yet from anyone else, unless you count Tom Cotton’s call to murder protesters. Joe Biden is saying nonspecific stuff about police reform at this point, but also that he’s specifically *against* defunding. I suspect that whatever “reforms” might happen on the Federal level will just be more surface stuff which hasn’t worked since at least the 1960s because the root of the problem is that some cops are prone to ignoring the rules and powertripping, especially if they’re also racist.
Given his history, I’m not going to trust him to do even *that much* unless he keeps mentioning it during the general election campaign. He can be dragged into supporting liberal-ish positions if it would hurt him not to, but he can also be wishy-washy about it.