true things about gender that you can learn from watching Avatar:

(Some of you may have seen this before; it's a belated crosspost of something I said someplace else. To everyone else, hi again! I haven't forgotten you - just not in a bloggy mood atm).


1. No matter how much more experienced, more intelligent and more educated a woman might be than a given guy, he is still going to get more honoured for his accomplishments than she is.

2. If a guy repeatedly nags a woman, oversteps her clearly stated personal barriers and ignores her 'no's and her requests to be left alone, he won't be in any way punished for this. The woman in question may then be forced to give him her time, energy and attention.

3. Women are expected to 'civilise' and to educate men, even if they don't want to.

4. Related: in any mixed-gender officialdom, low-reward educative roles will be disproportionately occupied by women. (Trufax, just ask the next female education rep you see. In any group. Anywhere.)

5a). Also related: if a woman is better/more experienced than a guy at anything, it's only so she can teach him how to be more badass at that thing. She will never be referred to as a 'stone-cold sky hunter' or whatever the hell it was, no matter how many years of experience she has at it. If it's at all technical/athletic/masculine, no one will ever say that she was 'born to' do it, even if she was.
5b). The guy will end up with a more pimping ride than her.

6. Men are expected to choose a woman to pursue from a range of possible partners. Women are then expected to say 'yay' or 'nay'. Everyone is expected to be heterosexual.

7. 'Masculine' feats are easy ways to win public belonging. Even the possibility that you might have a masculine role - a warrior, in Avatar context - offers you potential value in the eyes of the people in control of your life, who are men.

8. So-called anthropologists will ascribe rigid gender binaries to the cultures they study. If the intelligence of non-white women is recognised, it's classed as cultural/religious rather than logical/scientific.

9. You will wind up in the magical data treefridge.


... :/

Ffs.

I am tired of seeing that stupid story over and over. I mean (when I wasn't trying to find a way to get my giant 3d glasses to stay on my face) there were camera angles in that movie that provoked physical-based emotional reactions from me, I was really wanting to get into it, but the fucking fratboy bullshit mentality was so frustrating that, god, I reached this point about 3/4s of the way through where I literally had tears leaking out of my eyes at how stupidly racist and sexist the story was. I was wishing it was a videogame because then I could have wandered about in it and talked to all the NPCs instead of looking 'down' on them camerawise as they sat on the floor and gyrated oh god James Cameron what is wrong with you? however gratuitous and crazy Zhang Yimou is at least he gives the impression of knowing that I exist and that I have a point of view.

...So basically I just switched off after that and started msting it with some of the imaginary people in my head, and had this tremendously eerie, detached moment of looking at the massed flying dino armies, asking 'so what would you do?' and getting that 3 Daft Monkeys line in reply:
Do you think gods hang round in bars and compare armies that they've got?

Mhm.