WashPost Columnist: ‘Ghostbusters’ Haters Are ‘Virgin Losers’ – (via NewsBusters Site); Both the Right and Left Wing Get Some things Wrong About This
This story comes from NewsBusters, which is discussing a column written for Washington Post newspaper by columnist Kristen Page-Kirby about the new Ghostbusters movie.
The original Ghostbusters movie, released in the 1980s, contained four male leads. The reboot version of the movie, which was released July 15, 2016, contains four women leads instead.
Unfortunately, over a year or more ago, when news came out that there would be four women leads in the film, some of the sexist jerkwads who inhabit the internet started lambasting the movie all over You Tube, Twitter, and where ever else – not because the move was bad (it wasn’t even released yet), but because they were incensed that Hollywood was cramming some form of feminism down their throats.
Interestingly, I didn’t see as much backlash over the main character of the new Star Wars film, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” being a woman – Rey.
At any rate, I will be discussing two or three different topics in this post that are related to this new film, or mentioned by the conservative essayist at the NewsBusters site.
This is another story where I am in the middle. I can’t say as though I’m completely on one side or another in regards to some aspects of this story, depending on what is under discussion.
I am currently a moderate right-winger (I used to be more to the right than I am currently. In the last few years, I’ve been reconsidering if some of my former political and Christian beliefs are wrong.)
I’ve been more open the last few years to hearing the criticisms and views of liberals and Non-Christians – which is not to say I agree with everything I see left wingers and Non-Christians espousing or arguing in favor of.
I sometimes think secular, liberal feminists have good points on some topics, but I normally disagree with them.
As far as the Ghostbusters film reboot is concerned, I do think some of the backlash against the movie does in fact stem from sexism. But then, I do think some people may honestly feel that the movie is genuinely bad due to having a poor story line, or what have you.
I have not seen the movie yet. I don’t go to movie theaters that much anymore.
I usually wait until movies air on cable television; I’m willing to bet that this Ghostbusters reboot will probably be shown on F/X channel, or SyFy, or some other cable network in the next two years, and I have cable television, so I don’t know if I want to invest my time and cash into driving down to a theater to see this, since it will eventually be on television.
I saw the original Ghostbusters in a movie theater when it was in theaters in the 1980s. I was a kid at the time.
The original was okay, it was quite enjoyable and plenty of fun, but it was no movie masterpiece, so to all the men online who were griping about the reboot featuring all women leads: get the hell over it already.
And yes, you were, or are, being sexist douche bags about it. I don’t buy for a moment that ALL male griping about the film is based on non-sexist reasons, like shoddy trailers, or supposed poor CG work.
The vast majority of the professional reviews (and I have read a ton of them) for the new Ghostbusters film have deemed it “okay.” -Not terrible. Not great. But just “meh.” It’s so-so, most reviews have said.
What I don’t appreciate is that the columnist for WaPo who was discussing male backlash about the movie is using virginity as an insult.
As I have written about on a regular basis on this blog the last few years, I myself am over the age of 40 and am a virgin, due to several reasons, one of which is strong personal conviction on the topic. I always felt that sex prior to marriage was risky and a sin (morally wrong).
I was engaged to a guy for a few years, but I told him upfront there would be no nooky unless we got married – and we did not get married. So, I have had opportunity. I have a libido. But I have thus far abstained.
I have recently decided to being okay with having sex prior to marriage if I get involved in a serious relationship with a man. I still refuse to engage in one night stands, sex on a first date, or other types of casual sex, however.
In the meantime, I don’t appreciate newspaper columnists and average joes online tossing the word “virgin” at someone as though it’s the gravest of insults or acting as though people should be ashamed for being a virgin, whether it’s a male critic of the new Ghostbusters movie, or whatever the context is.
If you read some of the older posts on my blog – such as these-
- (Link): An Open Letter to Male Virgins by A. Broadway
- (Link): Bitter, Frustrated 22 Year Old Male Virgin and Member of Men’s Rights / PUA Groups Kills Several Women Because He Couldn’t Get Dates – what an entitled sexist doof
- (Link): A Teen Boy Tried To Kill Three Women “In Revenge” Because He Was A Virgin – felt that women “were the weaker” breed
- (Link): Chris Harper Mercer (Oregon Gunman) Angry Over Being Single and A Virgin
-you can see that I’ve discussed how using a virgin status as a form of insult may exacerbate the situation where male virgins who are in their late teens or 20s get very frustrated that they cannot get a girlfriend, let alone have sex, so they go on shooting sprees where they mainly shoot and kill women.
I have argued in older blog posts, that if perhaps people respected virginity – instead of ridiculing it on Twitter, in newspaper articles, movie reviews, and elsewhere – we would not see such mass shootings.
(On the other hand, as you can see from one of the headings on one of my posts, I do detect that some of these mass murdering male virgins are also motivated in part by entitlement and sexism.)
I have some more comments to make below these excerpts:
(Link): WashPost Columnist: ‘Ghostbusters’ Haters Are ‘Virgin Losers’ – via NewsBusters Site
(Link): Who Are “Incels”? Behind the Misogynistic Ideology That Inspired The Toronto Suspect
- The feminists seem to think that if they can just call enough Americans “misogynists” and “sexists,” their all-female Ghostbusters reboot will be successful.
- Since that hasn’t worked yet, Washington Post columnist Kristen Page-Kirby has a new insult to try out. In her review of the film, she wrote that “’Ghostbusters’ is pretty funny and anyone who says otherwise is a virgin loser who lives in his mom’s basement.”
- Yep, that’s guaranteed to make men storm down movie theater doors in a rush to see the film. Good job, WashPo.
- …Because defending Ghostbusters is apparently a top priority for the Washington Post, it (Link): published a second review, this one by liberal Petula Dvorak. She wrote that all of the Ghostbusters hate is really just a sign of rampant misogyny in the U.S. According to her, “what really sets off the haters is when women do things that men have traditionally done: Firefighter, sportswriter, Army Ranger, video game designer, commander-in-chief. Even a made-up occupation — Ghostbuster — is apparently off limits to women.”
- /// end excerpts
Here is where I part company with the conservative author, Ms. McKneely, a bit. I’ve had my eyes opened in the last 2 or 3 years that some of what feminists criticize as being sexist in our culture is true. They are right.
I want to reiterate I have never been a liberal. Even when I was a teen, I was a conservative. I too used to roll my eyes at everything I read or heard from left wing feminists.
I still think some of what left wing feminists say or write is weird or wrong (and I sometimes criticize them in other blog posts on my blog here – because they can be hypocritical on some subjects). But I have come to see that some of what they carry on about has a basis in truth.
There is a phenomenon in American culture called Benevolent Sexism. Many people, and especially my fellow conservatives, remain completely blind to this type of sexism.
When you say or read the word “sexism” you probably think of hostile, overt sexism, the sort where a boss may threaten a female worker that if she won’t have sex with him, he will fire her. Or, perhaps you picture in your mind’s eye a husband who insists his wife be “barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.”
However, gender stereotypes can still be harmful to women and girls, even the ones that sound nice and pleasant. This “nice” sounding form of sexism still holds girls and women back, and gives boys and men unfair advantages over them in employment, school, and other areas of life.
Here are links about it, if you would like to learn more:
(Link): The Problem When Sexism Just Sounds So Darn Friendly…
(Link): 7 Examples Of Benevolent Sexism That Are Just As Harmful As Hostile Sexism
(Link): Why Aren’t Women Advancing At Work? Ask a Transgender Person.
- Having experienced the workplace from both perspectives, they hold the key to its biases.
So, when McKneely, crticizes Dvorak in this portion of her essay:
- She [Dvorak] wrote that all of the Ghostbusters hate is really just a sign of rampant misogyny in the U.S. According to her, “what really sets off the haters is when women do things that men have traditionally done: Firefighter, sportswriter, Army Ranger, video game designer, commander-in-chief. Even a made-up occupation — Ghostbuster — is apparently off limits to women.”
– I am more apt to take Dvorak’s side on this.
I do think there is a bias in the minds of men and women, especially in America, where people feel uncomfortable or angry when they see women who do not fit the gender stereotypes for women, where or if they see women taking on jobs, hobbies, or tasks that are considered masculine.
I do think that left wing feminists have a point on that.
I have read studies that do in fact say that women on jobs who buck the gender stereotype trends get penalized in one form or another – they get demoted or don’t get pay raises as often or as much as male coworkers, or as much as women who do follow the gender stereotypes.
According to studies I have read in the past few years, Women get punished in our workplaces for not conforming to expected gender norms – usually meaning, women are expected to be in-direct, passive, wimpy, warm and fuzzy little doormats, and if they are not, bosses (or co-workers) will view them with suspicion, or not as friendly, or what have you, and pass them over for promotions and other perks.
Any time news stories break over something like the U.S. military is going to draft women (what’s the big deal with that? Our military is all voluntary), or allowing women to take on roles previously carried out by men only, I do see a lot of my fellow right wingers engage in pearl clutching, screaming that liberals are ruining everything, and insisting that people are acting as though men and women are identical and that is just horrible, they say.
(Women and men may not be identical, but that does not mean women should not receive equal opportunities in life, a key point lost on most conservatives and Christian gender complementarians. They want to hold tightly to the gender stereotypes they were raised to believe in, and limit women and girls based on those stereotypes.)
Returning again to this excerpt from the NewsBusters page – which is what actually prompted me to make this blog post in the first place:
- “…anyone who says otherwise is a virgin loser who lives in his mom’s basement.”
Look, I don’t even hate the new Ghostbusters film (maybe it’s okay – I haven’t seen it yet), I am a woman, and yes, I do believe that some (though perhaps not all) of the hatred directed towards it was based on sexism, but it’s in poor taste to use being a virgin as an insult against one’s opponents.
So thanks but no thanks, Page-Kirby for slighting me and all other virgins in your movie review. In your quest to stomp on sexist male pigs over a movie reboot, you also managed to step on and offend adult women (and men) virgins, too.
Edit. Here’s a good article about the sexist backlash against the movie:
(Link): Was 2016 Ready for an All-Female Ghostbusters?
Excerpts
- A tentpole action movie starring women is remarkably forward-thinking given that so many films still fail the Bechdel test.
- by S. Gilbert
- It’s highly possible that, decades from now, advanced human beings will look back at the summer of 2016 and wonder how a supernatural comedy starring four women became one of the biggest cultural flashpoints of the year.
- Sony’s Ghostbusters reboot, which opened on Friday, was divisive long before it hit multiplexes, with an outspoken (largely male) faction of the internet (Link): swearing off the movie back in March after the trailer was released. Now that it’s actually here, having debuted to (Link): generally positive reviews and middling-to-solid box office, the question remains: Was a tentpole remake of a beloved classic starring an all-female cast too progressive for its time?
- ….Almost all of the commenters indicting the movie online insisted that it wasn’t about gender—they were simply upset that such a cherished property needed to be remade at all. And after the trailer was released, yet more disgruntled fans maintained that they were boycotting the movie not because it starred women, but because it simply looked awful.
- Still, the tenor of most (Link): fan reviews posted on IMDB seems to point to a larger discomfort with the film’s premise, and with the many ways in which it slyly pushes back against the sexism that permeates both internet culture and Hollywood history.
- ….Some of the funniest moments in Ghostbusters certainly come at the expense of men—the group’s assistant (Chris Hemsworth) is absurdly vacuous eye candy, the Mayor of New York (Andy Garcia) is a pompous and incompetent buffoon, and the primary antagonist is a disaffected loser who lashes out at the world because it refuses to validate him.
- In that, Feig seems to be signaling a refusal to make nice to the hardcore fans of the original franchise who’d almost certainly object to anything he tried to do in the movie. But he’s also subverting the most tired tropes of film history, which paint women as bimbos who need rescuing, power-crazed harridans, or obsessive stalkers.
-
Women have long been under-served by Hollywood in myriad ways, despite the fact that they made up (Link): 51 percent of moviegoers in 2015, and tend to see blockbusters almost as much as men do.
At the end of last year, Fusion (Link): reported that 45 percent of the year’s movies failed to pass the Bechdel test, meaning that almost half didn’t have a single conversation between two female characters that wasn’t about men. Among (Link): those that failed were Oscar-winners and box-office hits alike: The Big Short, Creed, Ex Machina, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, The Revenant, Spectre, Spotlight, Straight Outta Compton, Terminator: Genisys.
With this in mind, any big-budget action movie that stars an all-female cast is going to be political whether it wants to be or not, simply by virtue of being a rarity. …
—————————-
Related posts:
(Link): Who Are “Incels”? Behind the Misogynistic Ideology That Inspired The Toronto Suspect
(Link): An Example of Mocking Adult Virginity Via Twitter (Virginity Used As Insult)
(Link): When Adult Virginity and Adult Celibacy Are Viewed As Inconvenient or As Impediments
(Link): The Christian and Non Christian Phenomenon of Virgin Shaming and Celibate Shaming
(Link): Editorial about Celibacy by Ed Shaw
(Link): Sex, Love & Celibacy by Christian Author Dan Navin
(Link): Chris Harper Mercer (Oregon Gunman) Angry Over Being Single and A Virgin
(Link): Singles Shaming at The Vintage church in Raleigh – Singlehood Shaming / Celibate Shaming
(Link): Are You Ashamed of Biblical [Sexual] Purity? by J. Slattery
(Link): No, Christians and Churches Do Not Idolize Virginity and Sexual Purity
(Link): Slut-Shaming Is Bad—But The Overreaction Against It Also Hurts Women by J. Doverspike
(Link): Stop Pretending Sex Never Hurts, By D.C. McAllister
(Link): How Pre-Martial Sex Negatively Impacts People: The Incest Letter
(Link): Christians Assume All Adult Singles Are Porn Addicted Fornicating Horn Dogs
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