Rising of the Shield Hero Discussion Thread
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Aurora Moon
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I've seen anti-feminists take up the instance that Captain Marvel is toxic for the fore-mentioned reasons he laid out, though. Seriously, there's whole conspiracy theories going around about how feminsts want to destroy men utterly and make it so that only women exist in this world, etc. Which is exactly as ridiculous as you think it is.
He wasn't supporting the anti-feminists, he was outlining how ridiculous they were for honestly beliving that Captain Marvel was a pipeline to eradicating masculinity itself, etc.
Oh, look, it's this again.
Let's play a game:
You will look for media where a victim of violence is shown to be okay with it or even liking it.
I will look for media where a victim of sexual harassment is shown to be okay with it (spoiler warning: this includes 80% of rom-coms)
Then we can compare and wonder whether the amount of media showing certain acts as non-problematic (the victim actually liked it, after all) would be a factor in stating there is a difference between the two.
The point is not that it will make people want to commit sexual harassment, but that it will convince people some acts are not sexual harassment, even though they are.
Personally, a decade ago I had a lot of ideas about how a relationship should work that by now I've realised were kinda problematic.
How did I come by these ideas? Why, because there was a lot of media depicting these ideas as normal.
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FortePlus
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I was done with that portion as I already stated before. Thanks. I'm not interested in talking with you.
Aurora Moon
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That seems to be common among most people though. Kids have a lot of ideas about how relationships apparently work that turn out to be false, even when the idea in itself isn't problematic to start with.
When I was six years old, I had this idea that one couldn't get married until one was exactly 88 years old. Because this way you were at retirement age and now had plenty of money to live on, and you now had all the time to love each other. I also thought that humans lived to be 300 years old, hence why I thought people should wait until they were old to marry.
And for some reason, I was obsessed over the idea that spouses should totally spank each other if they got out of line and didn't do as they promised in their wedding vows, etc. My mom still teases me about this nowadays.
Kids are kids, ya know? and most people grow out of all those ideas, both the non-problematic and the problematic ones.
I can actually think of a few, actually. One where they normalize Domestic violence by having the woman not respect the husband at all until he lays the smack down on her in the most literal way possible. And then she's all like "Oh my... you turned into such a manly man!"❤
In fact there's articles out there that talks about how TV is normalizing Domestic violence....
Yeah, just so you know, a decade ago I was 20, not a kid.
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Oh look, exactly the thing i was talking about with Shield Hero, except domestic abuse instead of genreal misogynism.
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One thing i keep thinking when i read the "well they are kids, kids have fucked up ideas" is, that why is this supposed to make it better?
Why is it ok to teach kids fucked up idea, and then hope they realise those ideas are fucked up before they end up hurting someone, either others or themselves?
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Aurora Moon
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to certain people, that age is still a kid.... just saying. Just not a underage one.
I'd bet that you weren't in that many relationships even then. And only then when you got some relationship expernice did you realize how shitty those ideas were.
Again, you'd be surprised how much that's completely normal.
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And that's bad.
No, seriously, that is bad.
Because not only do many people not realise how fucked up those things are, they did not come up with them on their own, we as a society teach them those things.
Like, even something as simple as accepting no as an answer can be incredibly controversial.
not because the people who won't take no for an answer is some rape monster, but because society has messed up views on sex and the "playing hard to get" is genuinely what lot of people, men and women, expect as a part of courtship.
Aurora Moon
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It's not that kids were taught those ideas, it's the fact that they came up with the ideas on their own. I mean, nobody in my life ever taught me about the concept of spanking your spouse if they ever got out of line and that the spouses had to take turns doing that to each other in order to be equal and fair. My parents weren't in a domestic violence situation, nor were anybody else I knew at the time. and I didn't see anything like that on TV. In fact my mom often expressed incredulity at this notion that I came up with, which helped disabuse me of this notion.
It's part of growing up, though, that you learn that fantasy and reality should be kept separate.
Example: having sex in the pool, tub or shower is a common fantasy. But reality ensures in that water is ironically a horrible lubrication and only serves to dry you out in places that shouldn't be THAT dry. it causes a lot of painful friction, etc. So reality ends up ruining the fantasy a lot.
Likewise, people tend to learn on their own that the fantasies they had isn't as sexy in real life like it was inside their heads. That the fantasy just turns out really, really creepy if done in real life.
but, you seem to be conflating a sense of privilege and entitlement with what's considered acceptable romantic behavior. I feel that those are separate things, even if they may overlap occasionally. There's questioning what kind of courting behavior is normal, and then There's the entitled boys who won't take no for an answer. Those boys aren't confused kids who have werid and problematic ideas about relationships... they're just entitled assholes who most likely will grow up to be rapists.
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*looks at media landscape of the past 4 decades*
I'm going to disagree.
Oh sure, individuals may come up with original shit occasionally.
But most of the issues we have talked here have all been very strongly present in one form or another in media.
Ideas like yours, sure, but that wasn't the kind of problematic ideas I was talking about.
But the problem with 'learn on their own' means that they learn after they've done it. I'd really prefer they learn before.
Of course they are confused. What did you expect when hundreds of rom-coms have told them they can get a date if they just ask a dozen times in ever more elaborate ways.
Aurora Moon
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Fair enough, you can disagree if you want.
However you have to ask yourself when and how people first came up with problematic ideas... because some problematic ideas are older than the bible itself! Back then when there weren't books, no TV or no newspaper.... how did people come up with this problematic shit? Especially if their own parents weren't the one to teach that shit to them?
When was the first recorded instance of domestic violence? rape? and so on forth.... Just think about that, okay?
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I did say people come up with original stuff, occasionally.
Societies evolve over time.
That's no fucking excuse to just leave people to make mistakes that could be prevented by not filling their heads with shit.
And this "kids will be kids", sounds lot like "boys will be boys", which usually gets said after some guy gets beat up, or some woman sexually harassed (if not assaulted).
Aurora Moon
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I don't mind trying to warn kids that those ideas are problematic, etc. Having older women come in and tell the young girls: "Honey, I thought this was romantic at your age but I learned the hard way it really wasn't." and stuff like that.
But the problem is, will those kids honestly listen? Every generation seems to think that they invented those concepts first, or that they're somehow superior over the older generations to that point that all those troublesome stuff that happened to the older people will never happen to them. Just because. It's not unusual for teenagers to think they're immortal and immune to any trouble coming their way, after all.
Heck, we had people come in to our class consisting entirely of nothing but girls, teaching us self-defense and how to prevent ourselves from being raped. Most girls attitudes at the time basically boiled down to: "Why do we have to learn this? This will never happen to me, just because!"
Teenage girls just honestly thought they were so invincible, and the teen boys felt that way ten times over too as well.
Teaching people are well and good, but sometimes you can't cure foolhardiness... unless those people go though it for themselves to realize that you were right all along.
If perhaps instead of one person telling them 'this is problematic' and a thousand movies telling them 'this is fine' it were the other way around, they wouldn't think it was fine in the first place.
Aurora Moon
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We have media telling us a thousand times why drinking and eating cleaning products, etc is a bad idea. Yet we still got teenagers supposedly eating tide pods despite thousands of messages telling them not to.
Sometimes some people don't care about the message itself, they just wanna do problematic shit regardless. and well, I feel there's no hope for those kinds of people.
Yes, some people will always do shitty things. I'd really like to keep that amount of people as low as possible.
Aurora Moon
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This part we can agree with, I think that's something we all want here. I guess the issue is that we don't agree on HOW to go about it, ya know?
I feel that the best way to do this is let expernice itself become a teacher. Because some people can't learn it just being told things... they're not wired that way.
So both men and women sometimes need to experience the perils of dating and stuff before they finally figure out that the romantic ideal they wanted as a teenager or even younger than that isn't one they wanted as an adult. and not only that, but that the ideals they had was kind of toxic?
Most go though this and mature into adults who know that toxic ideals isn't always the best thing for relationships. Yes, some never grow up and still cling on to those outdated ideals. but I get the feeling that those kind of people would've never learned anything even if you told them over and over that what they stan for was toxic.
That's just life, ya know? But I know you'll disagree.
At any rate I'm done with this conversation topic. we're in danger of going in circles after all.
Not really? Like how many works of media have you actually seen where somebody kills themselves by eating a tide pod?
Aurora Moon
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Tracking the numbers, The majority of cases faked eating a tide pod on video and thus that moral panic was definitely overblown as not literally every teenager was doing it for real.
However, there was still 86 teenagers out of thousands who actually bit into one and then spat them out afterwards. Eight died from that despite spitting it out afterwards.
Consumption of Tide Pods - Wikipedia
That literally doesn't address what I said at all. My point is that your example doesn't actually support your argument that moralizing about the messages in fiction is pointless because "don't eat Tide Pods" isn't actually a message that shows up a lot in fiction.Tracking the numbers, The majority of cases faked eating a tide pod on video and thus that moral panic was definitely overblown as not literally every teenager was doing it for real.
However, there was still 86 teenagers out of thousands who actually bit into one and then spat them out afterwards. Eight died from that despite spitting it out afterwards.
Consumption of Tide Pods - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
That's just a function of them believing feminism is inherently out to destroy men and so anything feminist is part of that agenda, not that Captain Marvel is unique among feminist media for it. There's no question that Captain Marvel is a strong supporter of feminism. Explicitly so. As all media, it helps shape one's view of the world around them, and their view is a feminist one. Just like how Shield hero is so strongly incel and helping push that world view. That toxic dangerous murder inspiring world view.
Here's a thing, if you don't want to continue an argument at someone because you believe they are dishonest or too hostile or whatever, it never makes you look good to go "Don't @ me man!". Just... like, don't respond. It's not hard. This "Don't @ me" stuff makes you look petty and like you're trying to win the last word without engaging any further arguments.
The tide pod thing was a brief flash massively exploded by the internet.
Very VERY few teenagers eat cleaning products. The children liable to do that are mostly preliterate. I don't know why you are deflecting from the idea that media has influence on people's perceptions, and especially children's perceptions. Like, this isn't a controversial statement, this is an extremely well studied area.
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Aurora Moon
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I tend to think such a mindset on both sides where they honestly think the other side is out to get them, is a highly dangerous one. I would rather that this is just a delusion that they eventually grow out of, instead of being convinced that they're right because the "other side" keeps on giving them ammunition to play with.
And I'm not so sure that Captain Marvel is truly that influential enough the same way the movies "9 to 5", "Revenge (2018)", "Thelma and Louise", "Wild" (2014), and "The First Wives Club" (1996) are. It's more a superhero story than anything else. In fact I think Wonder Woman's movie was more influential when it came to feminism than Captain Marvel is.
But hey, that's just me. Likewise, I don't think Shield Hero has that much of a impact on the incel movement. in fact, most of them aren't even anime fans to start with. In fact my own study of the incel movement seems to indicate that they're more influenced by various problematic books than they are media. Hamlet seems to be one of the classics they're obsessed with, alongside with "The Things They Carried". in fact, this article highlights problematic books that inspires the incel movement quite nicely: The Literary Roots of the Incel Movement - Electric Literature
Incels are a toxic ideology that regularly inspires mass murder. Don't be radical centrist about this, feminism is overwhelmingly good, incel culture is overwhelmingly bad.
And it is difficult to the extreme to point to any one work of art and go "This is the main influence of a movement". Captain Marvel is just one work that has a feminist theme among many, that together help make feminism more palatable, and inspire young women to excel by placing people like them in positions of strength. Just like Shield Hero is just one among many (sadly) works that places a negative light on women and suggests the idea that men are owed subservience and sexual favors. But, like, also, it is so very explicitly an incel thing beyond that. Captain Marvel is a general portrayal of feminism, it doesn't really have anything specific to say, it's pretty basic, and that's fine. Shield Hero is really specifically incel, since incel is a much more specific ideology than feminism is. It's a subset of the current right wing misogyny culture alongside MRAs PUAs, and a number of other groups who are about the degradation of women and the loss of their rights in regards to men. So it is easier talk about Shield Hero in the context of incels, because it is so incel in a way captain marvel is not, like, second or third wave feminist or anything.
And any incel media is bad. Shield hero should not exist.
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