A question to the ladies who follow me:
So there’s this girl Transformer Arcee. She’s a Warrior. That’s her function, and it’s basically what she does. She runs around and shoots things and gets to go on adventures. But in the subsequent series produced exclusively overseas for an overseas audience, it was decided her function was now “computer operator” (or something like that loosely translated), and now she stayed home at base and never fought any battles and instead delivered letters and hung off Chromedome’s arm all the time.
Is this caption which ridicules that conspicuous role change “femmephobic”? The reason given for this condemnation is that it allegedly casts a female role (ie, “secretary”) as inferior to a classically male role of “warrior.” Thus: femmephobia. And while I agree that we shouldn’t be doing that, I don’t think the caption does that. I think the caption ridicules the forced change of a female warrior into a more “traditional female role” rather than the vocation of deskwork.
But I am a dude. If I understand anything about sexism, it’s from listening to others who actually experience it, and this is a conversation between me and a female person. Since this is a single female person, I don’t know for sure if this is me being ignorant or me talking with someone who is incorrect.
And so I want input from other ladies. Please only respond if you are a lady! If you respond, I will assume you are a lady.
The issue, I believe, is representation. When you take a cast of dozens of characters, and only one or two are female, then those representations are important. When a change of this nature is made with no explanation and for no ‘reason,’ then the assumption must be made that the character was changed solely to fit traditional gender roles.
Now, if she’d gotten a meaty storyline about being injured in a battle, and struggling to take this new task as a way she could still support her people and her cause, that would be awesome. But that’s not what happened, was it? 8)
The caption made me giggle. It seemed a dig not at the role itself, but at the sudden and inexplicable change.
