Horse be staring at that cart like WTF you’re in my way

Yes, yes, okay. The internet is not exactly a valid sample of the entirety of the human race. So I can’t post this and be all, look, everybody, look what people are like.

On the other hand, there is no scientific way to get a random sample of humanity, but taking a sample of people with the economic status to have a computer, an internet connection, and ample leisure time for fucking around on the internet is a pretty good way to get a sample of what the proportion of humanity with any chance of social power is like, and look, everybody, look what people are like.

There is a comic strip called XKCD. It’s good. I recommend it. It is some kind of super geek fun, but the guy who writes it is obviously intelligent and thoughtful, and somebody who seems to care for, respect, and love the women in his life. Which means he’s also spent some time thinking and caring about how their lives suck because they have girl parts. And yes, the latter has to come with the former, or it doesn’t count, you are just feeling residual warm fuzzies because your mom cleans your room for you and you have never considered that maybe that isn’t her goddamn job.

Anyway. Anyway. XKCD guy makes a post on his blog about women in movies. Doing an informal survey, using a handful of years, and only counting movies already rated as “the biggest” by another website, he concludes that (hold on to yer fuckin monocle) there are not a lot of successful movies out there with women as lead roles. Of the handful that are, the majority of female leads are romantic interests for male co-stars, if they are not mothers reconnecting with their daughters, that is. There is a slightly higher percentage of women as co-stars, but, again, primarily as romantic interests. He does not say that this is some kind of bullshit, though from the content of his comics and the fact that he undertook this informal survey at all, I would guess he thinks this is some balls nasty bullshit. All he says is that maybe Hollywood would suck less if they made movies that represented the other 50% of the population doing the cool shit men get to do. You know, like River Tam kicking Cheney’s ass to save the internet. Would you see that? I’d sit on Vin Diesel’s gangrenous corpse to see that.

So he’s making some really “out there” statements, yeah? I mean, BOOM, there it is: I WOULD LIKE TO SEE WOMEN WITH SAMURAI SWORDS BECAUSE THEY ARE PRETTY COOL. Whoa, back up the feminazi train, XKCD, you’re heading into Vagina Territory.

A summary of the main types of comments:

Comment 1. I don’t understand statistics.

• Subtype A: But I saw this one movie once with a girl in it. (What about Charlie’s Angels?)
• Subtype B: GEEK RAGE I understand statistics A LOT and am intentionally ignoring your explanation of how you conducted this so-called informal “study” and obviously your conclusions are FALSE BILE FOR MY BEARD because you did not include a Z-score and and and and I am uncomfortable with social discourse
• Subtype C: Has anybody mentioned Silent Hill yet? Silent Hill had girls in it. Yeah, man, Silent Hill was awesome. Long review of Silent hill.

Comment 2: I don’t read carefully and/or I have nothing to add to this conversation

• Subtype A: LOL River Tam
• Subtype B: The Devil Wears Prada sucks
• Subtype C: No, you suck.

Comment 3: They don’t make movies about women because nobody wants to see movies about women

• Subtype A: They’re all, blah blah blah, emotions
• Subtype B: Women aren’t believable in strong roles because women aren’t strong
• Subtype C: Women aren’t believable in interesting roles because women aren’t interesting

Comment 4: They don’t make movies about women because men are the primary market

• Subtype A: Women don’t go to movies because they don’t want to go to movies alone and so they need to net a man to pay for the ticket and he’s not going to pay to see a movie he hates
• Subtype B: I mean seriously guys you pay for dinner and a movie and then you still don’t get laid because women are just milking you for money, but they’re all, “no seriously I hate patriarchy” lolamirite

Comment 5: Movies about women suck

• Subtype A: I saw this one movie once and man it sucked
• Subtype B: All the movies with women as main characters suck because women never do anything that doesn’t suck

Subtype C: The movies about women that don’t suck are good because the women don’t act like women

Comment 6: There are no female directors/actors/producers/writers because women aren’t talented enough. There are no movies about women’s lives because women don’t have lives. There are no movies about women in history because women have not contributed to history. There are no movies about women because women don’t exist or contribute to the world.

Comment 7: This is just supply and demand. Hollywood is giving audiences what they want. Obviously audiences think women are boring.

Comment 8: Hey, XKCD guy, all your comics are about a heterosexual male! What’s up with that, huh? Pot calling the kettle black, yeah! Rhetorical WINNAR

Comment 9, otherwise known as The Rarest Comment Of All: This is the most sexist bunch of shit I’ve ever read.

• Subtype A: Movies with female characters are shit because none of them pass the Alison Bechdel test, and nobody male or female is interested in female characters who don’t talk, don’t interact, and don’t do anything but talk about boys. MY FUCKING MONOCLE IS BROKEN
• Subtype B: If you think misogyny doesn’t exist and isn’t a driving force in everything, read this goddamn thread.

Skipping over Comments 1 and 2, which are just your general internet hurfing, some responses:

Comment 3: They don’t make movies about women because nobody wants to see movies about women

Response: Examine what “nobody” means to you. Examine what, in your mind, are the people who count. Also, examine who “they” are. You might find, fucking shocker, that your mind is a fairly gendered place to be. That what you are actually saying is that you don’t want to see these movies, and that you imagine other people to be like you, when the other people you are imagining are other men. The people who are making the movies are also men.

I’m not going to say men aren’t interested in the lives of women, because that’s not true. But I will say that men are uninterested in what they imagine women’s lives to be. They are uninterested in the traits they associate as female, such as blah blah blah all my goddamn emotions and warbling about relationships. They are more interested in the traits they associate as male, such as car crashes, dinosaurs, and being President. What we imagine to be is so different from what actually is. But what actually is does not get made into movies. What the people with the pursestrings and opportunity (men) imagine to be women’s lives does. And yes, it’s boring as shit. You are not seeing an accurate reflection of women, but an accurate reflection of what we think of them. To take it a step farther, it’s not women that are inherently boring. Our vaginas do not secrete emotions. It’s sexism that creates boring shit, not ovaries. If you don’t believe me, try watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom again. And maybe, while you’re at it, tell me how many women you know who act like that, versus how many movies you’ve seen with female characters acting like that?

If that’s all too much for you, let me make it simpler: this argument is tantamount to saying we don’t make movies about black people because they are stupid looking. What’s stupid looking is blackface. Not black people.

Comment 4: They don’t make movies about women because men are the primary market

Response: I haven’t researched this, so I’m not going to say definitively one way or another that men are obviously the primary market, spending-wise. But, we still have a mighty wage gap in this country, and women are still considered the primary default caregivers of children and elderly, so it’s not inconceivable that men would have both more discretionary income and more leisure time with which to spend it, making them the primary market for something like movies.

Still and all, this begs the question of whether or not, as the hypothetical primary market, this is the kind of depiction of women that men want to see. The flip side of what I said in my response to the above comment is that men don’t get good entertainment anymore than women get good roles. Do men want to see women acting like retards and getting shoved in refrigerators while beefcakey men shoot big guns? Okay, yes, but do they want to see that all the time? Maybe men are primarily the market for sexist schlock because the maintenance of a sexist system relies on men continuing to think that women are boring and worthless, while men ride fire trucks piloted by dick.

If, on the other hand, men aren’t actually the primary market spending-wise, then we have a total contradiction of supply and demand and ohhhhhhhhhmygod the world has gone upside down. If, in fact, women are an equal or larger share of the market, we either have to assume that they LOOOOOOOOOOOVE getting shoved in refrigerators and walking around in trances kissing anybody with a bicep, or that they, along with the rest of the non-rich population, have little to no control over the content of what is produced and distributed en masse. That, in fact, the majority of products that require a massive amount of money to produce reflect the beliefs and agenda of the people with massive amounts of money who produced them, and the rest of us just don’t have a whole lot of indie options.

Also, so sorry for not fucking you because you paid for dinner and a movie, but you know, I guess I don’t get bought for 30 bucks. And no, that doesn’t mean you should’ve gone for 50. Pussy is not a token machine.

Comment 5: Movies about women suck

Response: HOLY SHIT YOU’RE RIGHT

THEY SUCK

THEY SUCK SO HARD

IN FACT I THINK I JUST READ ABOUT THAT RECENTLY

I THINK IT WAS THIS GUY ON XKCD

WHO PUT TOGETHER THIS INFORMAL STUDY

TALKING ABOUT HOW WOMEN AREN’T IN MOVIES

AND WHEN THEY ARE THEY’RE IN SHITTY ROLES

Again, movies about women don’t suck because women suck. Movies about women suck because you’re watching the gender equivalent of blackface. You are watching cuntface. Vagina slumming. Ovary appropriation. Do you know women? Are there women in your life? Do they all suck? Are they all boring as shit? Do they talk like women in movies? Do they act like women in movies? No? Well, shit, son, I guess media lied to you. I guess media lied to you hard.

Subtype C: The movies about women that don’t suck are good because the women don’t act like women

FUCKING RIGHT AGAIN you get a grape

“Feminine” and “women” are two different things. The meatbags that grow on my chest do not predispose me to a love of shoes, chocolates, and being insulted on the internet. Those things are behaviors, not body parts. And they’re shitty and stupid behaviors. And so, like most shitty and stupid behaviors, we have piled them on to a minority we have a history of oppressing, and a desire to continue to oppress. Because why else would women be the lesser sex if they weren’t so stupid and emotional? It’s almost like finding a woman who doesn’t wear make-up is like finding an African-American who’s very well-spoken. They’re not at all like the others, are they?

Yeah, women who don’t act like what we have decided is female are cooler. That doesn’t mean they act like men. It means they act like sensible, rational, logical, and sentient creatures. Cocks don’t have a monopoly on those characteristics, you know. Just mature beings. And so yeah, movies with popular female leads have women who don’t do all the boring, irritating, whiny, and shitty things we have labeled as female traits, when actually they are just the traits of irritating, whiny, and shitty people. And whoa whoa whoa, back up, if movies with strong female leads who don’t act like shitty people are popular, wouldn’t that indicate that, in fact, there is not something inherent about vagineers that make movies boring? That it is, in fact, the behaviors we associate with vagineers that have no basis in our actual interactions with other women that we find boring and banal? Or did all the interesting female leads in the world just grow cocks overnight to explain their interesting-ness?

Comment 6: There are no female directors/actors/producers/writers because women aren’t talented enough. There are no movies about women’s lives because women don’t have lives. There are no movies about women in history because women have not contributed to history. There are no movies about women because women don’t exist or contribute to the world.

Response: Punch drink cry.

Comment 7: This is just supply and demand. Hollywood is giving audiences what they want. Obviously audiences think women are boring.

Response: To this, I would like to point to a market whose revenue, production, and audience far outstrips movies and television: pornography. You’d think porn would be even more dependent on supply and demand. This is a cash cow that is based entirely on giving people (usually men) what they want. Ostensibly.

When was the last time you saw that shot, where the camera and lights are lined up behind the guy’s balls, and they’re just flapping away, and you can maybe see some of his pubes, but it’s mostly just balls, balls flopping on the camera, balls waving at your mother, balls lit up to the last pore, and you’ve thought to yourself, oh fuck yeah, ball shot *whack whack whack*

When was the last time you googled up the first piece of porn you could find, and said to yourself, now this is what gets me off, an overweight man covered in hair sweating all over an anorexic woman with crystal four inch high heels, pink press-on nails, and lips bigger than my palm? I mean, so hot. Oh, and could the girl maybe grunt like a boar? Fuck yeah.

For my part, when I go trolling for porn I know what I’m looking for is two girls sticking their tongues out at each other and sort of writhing while a group of twenty frat boys go “WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”

Wait, that’s not what I want at all.

And yet, it’s all I can fucking find.

Any industry with mass saturation and distribution needs monied backers. And monied backers aren’t interested in giving you what you want. They’re interested in finding ways to make you buy what they already have. Nobody is writing to porn producers saying, “More balls shot plz thx.” And yet, BALLS.

People have LOVED movies with strong female characters. Like Aliens. Like Kill Bill. You would think Hollywood would jump right on that, be all, holy shit, look what a cult following this shit has, look how much people talk about these women. Moar moar moar. But no, we get the equivalent of ball shots. We get Paris Hilton being anemic at us.

And, likewise, look at how many standard fare movies flop. For every one that covers the cost of its own production, there are twenty more that we can’t remember the name of because we never went to see them unless we were really really high. If this was really about supply and demand, Hollywood would realize nobody is demanding 20 more Jessica Simpson movies. But it’s not about supply and demand. It’s about providing no viable alternatives. There is no supply and demand if there is no competition.

Comment 8: Hey, XKCD guy, all your comics are about a heterosexual male! What’s up with that, huh? Pot calling the kettle black, yeah! Rhetorical WINNAR

Response: XKCD guy went on a long defense of himself and the technical aspects of creating jokes and comics that I think was unnecessary. Heterosexual male is no more synonymous with sexism than women are synonymous with stupid. The XKCD guy, by the content of his comics and the fact that he started this thread to begin with, has already illustrated how one can be both heterosexual and not hate women at the same time. It seems fucking insane that heterosexual men are more generally assumed to hate women than, say, gay men, considering how much they want to spend their most intimate moments with women, and yet, this is what we assume. And it’s not without basis. A lot of heterosexual relationships are built on that fundamentally shaky double consciousness of what we know men and women to personally be like versus what we imagine them to be like. Men know women aren’t retarded fuckholes, and yet they expect somehow that they are. Women know men aren’t too stupid to learn how to do the laundry, and yet we expect somehow that this will be the case, and are surprised when it’s not.

XKCD has more main female characters, with more interaction, respect, and intelligence than the entire history of Hollywood has managed to cobble together. Because, holy shit, it’s possible to be heterosexual and male and treat women as equals AT THE SAME TIME. XKCD guy is doing an excellent job of it.

Comment 9, otherwise known as The Rarest Comment Of All: This is the most sexist bunch of shit I’ve ever read.

• Subtype A: Movies with female characters are shit because none of them pass the Alison Bechdel test, and nobody male or female is interested in female characters who don’t talk, don’t interact, and don’t do anything but talk about boys. MY FUCKING MONOCLE IS BROKEN
• Subtype B: If you think misogyny doesn’t exist and isn’t a driving force in everything, read this goddamn thread.

Response: Check out the Alison Bechdel test, and prepare to never like movies again.

I should read through all this and edit but why am I writing this at midnight anyway. Jesus christ.