The western world is predicated on two major foundations. 1. Capitalism. 2. The male patriarchy. Clearly, every single perceived imbalance between male and female in society is caused by 2.
In Boardwalk Empire and the first season (I hear there is less later) of Game of Thrones there is an abundance of full frontal nudity of women. It's not a titty flash here and there. That's why the gender discrepancy was so noticeable.
Me! Ain't no shame in my game. I am as much a sexual being as I am a thinking or spiritual one. I embrace sexuality and sensuality as one of the few bennies life has to offer. I don't expect or need to see it everywhere, but when a show offers shapely, enviable bosoms every ten minutes, I appreciate them, I see the beauty in them (I'm gay, not blind), but I am left to wonder, "Hey, there are some hot guys up in this show. Where's the wingwang amongst all the boobiage."
The way I see it, it's about time we start moving towards true equality instead of claiming equality between the sexes while still leaning pretty heavily towards patriarchy in several areas of our societies. Also, my sense of justice may be somehow skewed, but since women were opressed so long by men (and in some countries this is still going on), it would be only fair to turn the tables 180 for an equal amount of time (a millennium or two), but I don't think that will ever happen, just like justice doesn't always happen, hence the realist in me sees us moving towards equality instead of matriarchy.
I've seen Game of Thrones mentioned a few times in this article and I think it's interesting that if there is some kind of inequality in gender sexualization, it doesn't appear to affect the viewership. According to the article, approximately 2 million women watch the show on average each week, which equals out to about 42% of the total 4.8 million viewers. Also, 50% of people talking positively about the show on social media are women. And this is for a show a New York Times review dismissed as “boy fiction” and inexplicably suggested that the show was oversexualized (mostly using naked women) “out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise.” I don't know what these numbers mean and I'm sure you will all come up with your own interpretations, but there is data out there.
I wonder if that has anything at all, prospectively or retrospectively, with the decision to leave most of the nudity out in the later seasons?
Or if it is simply that there are some very strong, engaging, and complex female leeds in the show. The New York Times review may well have dismissed it as “boy fiction”, but that sounds like a poor review to me more than anything.
Well, a show about swords and sorcery would be classified as male-oriented more often than not. Although twenty years ago, vampires wouln't have been associated with females so times do change.
See!!! Thank you for that. I think I'm getting it. That's all I needed. Well there isn't really much to say. You pretty much to summed it up. But I'd rather have equality then matriarchy or patriarchy. I don't think anyone will ever truly be equal once is said and done though. I really don't think its possible and if it is its a pretty long shot. I'm not just speaking of women I'm just saying in general. Though there is always hope I suppose.
More power to you brother man. More people need to embrace themselves. Just for what you said. I think there should be more penis in TV......when people are naked! Though um we can still keep the same amount boobs along with the salami right? Balance it out. Cause I still need something to look at to!!!
This sort of thing doesn't appeal to me because it does nothing to redress the wrongs. All it does is benefit those who weren't wronged (women of this future matriarchy you propose are not the ones who suffered under the past patriarchy) while punishing those who weren't responsible for the wrongs in the first place (men in this future matriarchy are not guilty of the oppressions committed by their great-great-great-great-grandfathers). That's kind of like executing the grandchildren of a mass-murderer for their grandfather's crimes.
There is a bit of a reversal, already. In the last few years I've seen plenty of cases where the guy sits in the passenger seat of the car, playing on his phone, while the girl gets out, pumps, and pays for, gas. In the words of Brandon flowers, our "boys have gone soft" and "our girls have grown wild." Take a look at the forum. How many threads (including this one) are dedicated to complaining about first world sexist issues against women? How many threads are dedicated to complaining about sexist issues against men? Believe it or not, there are issues, like: court policies, draft, cops tendencies to bully young men. But no one's bothering to mention them here. But forget about the guys. What about racism? homophobia (there's few, but comparatively little)? antisemitism? Inner city slums? Native Americans stuck in the desert? Instead, we get a new thread every week lamenting the unfairness in gender equality for females, and interestingly enough, it's very rarely about third world countries (I guess those people need to get internet, huh?) When the pendulum swings. It swings.
I wouldn't see it quite like that. My understanding is that the oppression of women has had a significant effect on our cultures, how the sexes are portrayed, how we view ourselves and each other. If the roles were reversed, men would be introduced to a new way of looking at things as would women, and even though that will likely never happen, I wonder how a period of widespread matriarchy would affect us and whether these changes would help level the playing field in the end, when we'd move to true equality (which will probably never exist). This actually works as a nice segue to 12345689's post: I know those issues exist but there's one reason why they don't bother me even though I, too, encounter them: because of our patriarchal past, men are still seen as the stronger sex, i.e. we can take a hit. That's why things like organizations promoting men's rights etc. are seen as silly by quite a lot of guys (pretty much every guy I know has, at one point or another, laughed at / joked about such things): we are supposed to be able to withstand all kinds of shit because of our upbringing, our still persisting status as the protectors, providers, remnants of male-led times. Men aren't supposed to cry about a few bumps and bruises (figurative or literal), after all, that would make us look like wimps, right? Warrior values FTW and all that jazz. Now, if our upbringing and culture was more tolerant of, say, boys/men crying, complaining about how they are objectified etc, things might be different. I bet it would likely take quite a bit of top-level misandry to make men, as a sex, get up and rush to the barricades. Why not start such threads?
I don't see any reason to believe the notion of men being stronger than women should be stigmatized. It's just one aspect of our biological diversity between sexes. Woman generally live longer and have a higher tolerance for pain. The issue is that we place physical strength as some kind of heralding attribute the makes men better people, which it doesn't. People are people, no matter how many muscles or no muscles.
Wait a second here, if this is true, the ratio of full frontal female nudity to male, then guys on television need to start keeping their shirts on. There is an extreme in-proportionate number of men who take their shirts off compared to women.
This is a good point. If we want true equality, we need to compare chests to chests and penises to vaginas, or kooka's as my wife calls it.
You have half a point, Lewdog, but not a whole one. If you want to want to start comparing like that, one can make an endless list.
It's true though...I don't want to see all these guys taking off their shirt all the time, but women on the other hand...
I' One could make an endless list, which is why one could call this thread nitpicking. If you want to see more or less of a particular body party, go ahead and get your local community to sign a petition and send it off to HBO. But using something as minuscule as nudity on Game of Thrones to prove a point about gender equality in society...that's a little much. And if you insist, then I think Lewdog could do the same.
No, sorry, you cannot. Not unless that endless list equalled a wash when you did the math, and it doesn't, not even close. Lewdog suggested a false analogy, one that might have appeared relevant if all you considered was the facade. Way to miss the point. I think we're too far apart here and I don't have the time it would take to do anything about it. Sorry, maybe someone else can take this up with you.
People are surprisingly concerned about things that directly affect their lives. If we started down this road, I might as well go, "hell, why do I waste time writing here, why am I not in Africa digging wells?" Male chests/nipples aren't currently eroticized similarly as those of a woman. Seriously, I go out shirtless and I'm bound to draw ten times the attention my husband would. Are women to blame? Should we react more strongly to bare male chests? Are we not "wired" the way men are? Maybe media should start censoring topless men, that might turn male nipples into a forbidden fruit, and then us the women would crash our cars or whatever during summertime when those tout teenage boys skate around toplessm omfg. I'm not sure why we're build this way, really -- at which point did this happen to Western boobs? What about those tribes in Papua New Guinea? Do they view them equally attractive? OT, but they actually haven't been able to prove this; apparently it's quite difficult to test. Some resources/abstracts: 1,2, 3, 4
Are you saying social conditioning has made males callous in this regard(to be honest I don't care about any of the aforementioned "gender inequalities" I listed, other than for the sake of argument) and that, were we not, we might be more sensitive to a lot of the current complaints? If so, that's a tricky argument, and I have to give you props.
