espeonchan:

WARNING: THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS

Around the beginning of the third act of Man of Steel, I heard a line that actually made me raise my eyebrows.

“You will learn. I will teach you. And you will teach Kal.”

This line is spoken by the consciousness of Superman (Kal-El)’s father Jor-El, to Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane. I was shocked. The damsel in distress, Lois Lane, was in charge of saving superman? Of having to teach superman what to do to help him save the world? I wasn’t expecting it.

When you’re a comic fan and a feminist, you quickly learn to deal with the sexism you can notice in the books you love. Like any media, you must learn to accept that something can be problematic in order to fully enjoy it. You can’t just plug your ears and not enjoy anything, after all. And the comics industry, particularly DC Comics, has been facing some gender-based flak lately.

With a creative team downsizing right down to a neat one percent women a couple years back, coupled with some strange makeovers for the ladies of DC with the New 52, and the entire fiasco of Steph Brown and Cassandra Cain, women haven’t been particularly pleased with DC.

[image redacted; see at post!]

(seriously what is this pose) 

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redlanternzoom:

ladysaviours:

the author is dead inasmuch as I can read what I want into their work and alive inasmuch as I can acknowledge the context in which they wrote that work and possible hate them for it. *_*

im sorry i am totally going to hijack this post because THE AUTHOR IS DEAD gives me a lot of feelings, good and bad. and i agree with you laura i just want to speak word things.

so the author is dead is a double edged sword. on one hand, it grants a piece of work freedom from the constraints under which it was envisioned. intent means nothing—what the author wanted does not apply. we can take a work and make it become other in how we view it and analyze it. did Lucy Maud Montgomery intend for her work to be totally queer? who cares!! the author is dead and that is what we make of it. and so the piece can stand away from its creator, as a Separate Thing.

on the OTHER hand, it grants a piece of work freedom from the constraints under which it was envisioned. which can be REALLY, REALLY BAD!

let’s look at HP Lovecraft. he is a dead author in both senses of the world (good) (what a fucking douchebag). So we can take his works and declare him dead and examine his stories without the influence of his intent.

BUT. his stories are intrinsically, intentionally racist. in declaring the author dead (ie he no longer has a role in the stories/we should not be influenced by his personal views), we are cutting off very important context, in how the work was created and how it still functions today—as super fucking racist stories that are oppressive and violently bigoted!!

because the death of the author—well, one of the core principles behind it is that we should not look at aspects of the author that may be in their writing. WHICH! IS! BULLSHIT!! If a violent bigot writes something, you can BET as i read it i am going to keep that fact in mind, that this was conceived and created by someone who held harmful views near and dear to their heart—and it WILL influence my reading, and I think that is important!

because, look, im going to be honest, i am super sick of people trying to divorce works from their creators. look at roman polanski—that is a prime example of people becoming so infatuated with a work that they brush off the harm the author has done and continues to do! with the propagation of their work. and so people continue to buy his work and he makes money through which he can escape justice, because the work is sooo grand as a Separate Thing we are not seeing how it is also a tool for the author.

SO YEAH. a lot of the idea of the death of the author are good and intriguing and even true, but it also handwaves away more troubling aspects.

chocopal:

ipayrenttothedunya:

One criticism of major monotheistic religions from a feminist perspective is the use of masculine pronouns when referring to God, suggesting that God cannot also have feminine qualities. To quote my course text,

“One study found that presenting God as male brought to mind the conception of God as ‘powerful’, while presenting God as female brought to mind God as ‘merciful’.”

This chapter specifies Islam at key points as a religion that, when fundamentally interpreted and spread, breeds sexism. However, this excerpt did nothing but reaffirm my faith in Islam, and in its benevolence to women as a whole.

At the beginning of every single chapter in the Qur’an, what does it begin by saying?

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ

In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

In an almost endless number of verses in the Qur’an lie examples of God’s benevolence to not only mankind, but womankind as well—notwithstanding the entire chapter devoted to women.

It’s a wonder that Western feminists have made such bold claims against such a religion, particularly when the proof is so readily available. When their abilities allow them to only study it in English, however, it becomes problematic in an entirely different way.

You see, from an Arabic linguistic standpoint, the word for the One God, الله, is completely gender-neutral.

It raises the question of where we should really begin to source the sexism in our society. Can we disregard entirely the fact that the most quintessentially Western language in the world systematizes sexism within its very core conjugations? Where do we place blame for this perceived sexism, and how do we begin to reform it?

Another interesting thing is that in many verses and chapters, when God is speaking in the Quran, it is said with “We” — not I, but we.