176: Woman, Mother, Space Marine
- Thread starter Ray Huling
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A great book with a Fighting Mom protagonist is ''The Better Part Of Darkness'' By Kelly Gay. Bad-ass cop, single mother, fighting extradimensional beings with a combination of guns and magic. It's beautifully written and has some good humour as well.
I guess what I fail to see is how the paternalism of Lieutenant Gorman or the maternalism of Ripley led to their success or failure. Why would an officer who sees him (or her) self as a father to his (or her) men be any less successful than an officer who sees him (or her) self as a mother of abandoned orphans? Gorman didn't lose because he was paternal, he lost because he was a bad officer in a gory movie.
Re: The Margaret Thatcher model of females in politics, as described by an earlier poster.
Speaking as a woman with a little bit of military experience, it seems to me that rather than bringing out extreme versions of "male" characteristics in otherwise very ordinary women, systems that are traditionally geared towards men will only allow women with those extreme characteristics to make it to prominence. Thatcher won because she was perceived to be stronger, tougher, more ruthless than her male counterparts to an extent that outweighed the electoral liability posed by her being-a-woman'ness.
In this regard, politics and the military are similar - Women don't just have to be "as good as" their male counterparts - they have to be better, and to many people, that seems to mean being more male. Palin, for her part, succeeds at being... whatever the hell she is... by managing to simultaneously balance a glam lipsticky media darling veneer with elements of absurdly overblown machismo. Aw shucks, pass me another beer while I hunt wolves from my snowmobile and enjoy some televised sporting events.
Such figures only made it through the glass ceiling by climbing over their fellow women - the long term damage Thatcher did for women in British politics is incalculable, and I'm pretty sure Palin probably thinks "feminist" is just a fancy word for "lesbian".
As for Vasquez, she may not be a typical female, but she is a very typical female soldier. She has to be more of a dude than the dudes are, because it is the only way she will be taken seriously in the military.
Speaking as a woman with a little bit of military experience, it seems to me that rather than bringing out extreme versions of "male" characteristics in otherwise very ordinary women, systems that are traditionally geared towards men will only allow women with those extreme characteristics to make it to prominence. Thatcher won because she was perceived to be stronger, tougher, more ruthless than her male counterparts to an extent that outweighed the electoral liability posed by her being-a-woman'ness.
In this regard, politics and the military are similar - Women don't just have to be "as good as" their male counterparts - they have to be better, and to many people, that seems to mean being more male. Palin, for her part, succeeds at being... whatever the hell she is... by managing to simultaneously balance a glam lipsticky media darling veneer with elements of absurdly overblown machismo. Aw shucks, pass me another beer while I hunt wolves from my snowmobile and enjoy some televised sporting events.
Such figures only made it through the glass ceiling by climbing over their fellow women - the long term damage Thatcher did for women in British politics is incalculable, and I'm pretty sure Palin probably thinks "feminist" is just a fancy word for "lesbian".
As for Vasquez, she may not be a typical female, but she is a very typical female soldier. She has to be more of a dude than the dudes are, because it is the only way she will be taken seriously in the military.
neither men or women have a lock on being good or bad leaders. good leaders are damn rare period.
men can be horrible leaders and monsters as can women, men can be great leaders and visionaries as can women, problem is you have to get through about 50 leaders to get one good one and maybe 100 to get one great one and pray you do not get a facist dictator along the way. and the countless number of mediocre politicians that care more about their power and legacy than the people they are supposed to be serving, and any nation is absolutely nothing without its people.
only nitpick i have with the article is that men can be every bit as paternal as women can be maternal, again women do not have any automatic lock on being great mothers nor do men have any automatic lock on being great fathers. but it can go either way.
most soldiers have families, wives, mother, fathers, brothers and sisters maybe even children aback home. when you are fighting for your country in a war that you cannot fathom why you are there it is the family you have back home keeps you going. soldiers do not fight out some some blind devotion to their lt or country, tho the vast majority are professional enough to keep and doubts to themselves and do the job they are sent to do no matter what they think of the job or the place they are stationed at.
ripley was an excellent take on the tough girl, one of the greatest female characters written, she was human and believeable in how she acted and reacted to events around her.
sara conner in t2 was the worst written female character, she was little more than a robot with no human foundation left. it though the whole character was god awful.
japan has some great female roles, but it also has a over abundance of submissive bimbos to fill out the ranks. japan has no automatic lock on writing good female characters, tho there are some awesome ones if you look around for them.
aliens was a damn fine film tho i can see if someone does not like it but it got great reviews from critics and the public i do not think it is much of a debate if it was a good film or not. it took the first movie and instead of trying to rehash it it went its own direction and it worked following up a intense horror flick with a action one was fairly daring and creative.
men can be horrible leaders and monsters as can women, men can be great leaders and visionaries as can women, problem is you have to get through about 50 leaders to get one good one and maybe 100 to get one great one and pray you do not get a facist dictator along the way. and the countless number of mediocre politicians that care more about their power and legacy than the people they are supposed to be serving, and any nation is absolutely nothing without its people.
only nitpick i have with the article is that men can be every bit as paternal as women can be maternal, again women do not have any automatic lock on being great mothers nor do men have any automatic lock on being great fathers. but it can go either way.
most soldiers have families, wives, mother, fathers, brothers and sisters maybe even children aback home. when you are fighting for your country in a war that you cannot fathom why you are there it is the family you have back home keeps you going. soldiers do not fight out some some blind devotion to their lt or country, tho the vast majority are professional enough to keep and doubts to themselves and do the job they are sent to do no matter what they think of the job or the place they are stationed at.
ripley was an excellent take on the tough girl, one of the greatest female characters written, she was human and believeable in how she acted and reacted to events around her.
sara conner in t2 was the worst written female character, she was little more than a robot with no human foundation left. it though the whole character was god awful.
japan has some great female roles, but it also has a over abundance of submissive bimbos to fill out the ranks. japan has no automatic lock on writing good female characters, tho there are some awesome ones if you look around for them.
aliens was a damn fine film tho i can see if someone does not like it but it got great reviews from critics and the public i do not think it is much of a debate if it was a good film or not. it took the first movie and instead of trying to rehash it it went its own direction and it worked following up a intense horror flick with a action one was fairly daring and creative.
That's a tricky one. Also a bit difficult considering Janeway, while having the most authority of any of the captains, also had the least strength to call upon.Dogstar060763 said:
To put it differently, Janeway was responsible for her crew, and stuck far from home without any allies. Sometimes, you end up making very messy decisions just to try and survive.
A repeated theme, in fact of Janeway's situation in voyager is the conflict between trying to keep her crew alive and get them home safely and quickly, and sticking to her morals and ethical principles.
Basically, morality VS basic survival.
Clearly, something's going to give one way or another. (And while there were many ethically questionable decisions, there were also many demonstrated cases of her putting everyone on voyager in serious risk for the sake of a moral principle)
Captain Sisko on the other hand... Seemed to genuinely follow the notion that 'the ends justify the means' on more occasions than I care to think about.
But then again, arguing about which captain is the least ethical is really a different kind of discussion.
Ripley, meanwhile, has at times been described as a character who could be called 'a man in drag'. I suppose that implies that there are people who don't consider her a very well thought out character, if you actually want to see a situation from a female perspective.
EDIT: Yes, I've fallen for it again. Sorry for digging up a thread related to a 2-year old article.
I only just noticed what you're saying here... And it makes some sense, but it shows that to a degree it's a numbers game.cerebus23 said:
If a good leader is 1 in a 100, then history is going to be severely skewed, for the simple fact that male leaders outnumber female ones by an extremely wide margin.
As to Ripley being a good character, some would disagree. They don't find her a believable character at all (Generally accused of being 'a man in drag' - IE. not well written from the perspective of her actually being a woman). But then, I can't decide personally. It kind of comes down to what expectations you have about how a person is supposed to act to make them believable.
And Japan's female characters? Yes, there's a lot of bimbos. It seems because Japan has a lot of forms of sexism that we no longer accept in the west.
It also seems to have an unfair share of strong female characters though. But again this simply seems to be a numbers game.
Think about how many female characters you can come up with that even have more than a tangential role in western media...
Now contrast this to Japanese media, and it should be obvious why it seems like there are more strong female characters. - There are simply way more female characters in general. Strong or not.
EDIT: I apologise for not noticing how old this post, thread and related article are. It seems to happen to me a lot when links to old articles crop up.
Wholesale Genocide?Dogstar060763 said:
Appalling lapses of professional military conduct?
I don't remember any of that in Voyager, granted the countless violations of the Prime Directive is fairly accurate though hardly ever on purpose ('hey we cant interfere.. oh wait we caused the problem.. well better interfere then'). I remember her getting pretty damn preachy about the prime directive even when it was painfully obvious that it was the best option, e.g. destroying the caretaker array in the very beginning to save the stupid pointless ocampa who probably would end up getting picked off by the kazon when the energy ran out anyway lol.
Point out where the genocide happened and all the 'appalling lapses' in professionalism or it didn't happen lol
to be fair its been a while since i watched it and i might not remember everything, but i think its just a little over the top to call Janeway a genocidal unprofessional captain.