Why No, We're Not Particularly Sexist, Why Do You Ask?
So, I'm cruising about the Marvel website looking for blog fodder, when I stop by their Wikipedia-like catalog of the Marvel Universe.
***WARNING: CHEAP SHOT AT MARVEL WEB SITE APPROACHING***
And I see this.
And so, the IGN-ization of Marvel continues.
(Does this count as a feminist post?)
UPDATED: There are those who would give the benefit of the doubt here and just assume that Marvel was looking for a way to put their female heroes on a pedestal and so called them out in this manner. In the interest of fairplay, I thought I would mention that.
7 Comments:
No need for the benefit of the doubt.
"women and other minorities" is a classic and seperating "women" from "people" as Marvel have done here is a fairly elemental mistake. Regardless of whether the intent behind it is praiseworthy (again, see the minority example above).
Well, those are just the popular categories there. Here is the complete list.
You can see that they are NOT separating out "women" from "people," any more than they are suggesting "Canadians" aren't "people" either. Clearly one character can fit into many categories (Wolverine, anyone?) and someone thought it would be useful to list all the women together (it is). But it would be nice if there were also a category simply labeled "men" to complement "women."
Favorite category, though? "People who were dead but aren't anymore." Unsurprisingly, it's a pretty long list.
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Let's try that again...
I have to say with no category labeled "men" they're certainly singling out women characters as something different from normal characters.
Either way, nice catch.
Yeah, like I said, this was a cheap shot --- the real mistake I think isn't the fact that there's a "Women" category, it's the fact that there's a "People" category (which would seem a fairly useless category) juxtaposed so blatantly as a separate classification.
I agree with Steven and Ragnell here -- there ought to be a "Men" category, if for no other reason than to prevent bloggers like myself from taking potshots like this one. :-)
It's not the creation of a distinction group that's the problem here, Kevin. The problem is that the groups are worded very poorly. It looks like they're saying "Well there's people, and then there's you." Women don't count as "people" apparently.
Marvel was looking for a way to put their female heroes on a pedestal and so called them out in this manner.
Who are we kidding?
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