Episode 30 — Shockingly Sexist Messages in the Modern World

[JulyDiaz 2797]

Why is Hollywood allergic to female protagonists? It's not a conspiracy -- men and women alike tend to prefer films with male heroes getting the girl. Even Disney's most progressive princesses still wind up with huge eyes, tiny hands and every other indicator they can dream up to make the girl look vulnerable. Cracked editors Jack O'Brien, Jason Pargin and Kristi Harrison look into how pop culture's subtle sexism leads to people calling Sandra Fluke a whore for testifying to congress.

[ShuksanDawn 3]

Great episode. It highlighted all the reasons I quit Reddit.

[tsdcs 15]

On the female comedian front, I had a weird moment of realization about the horrible YouTube comments that people leave.

 

I was watching a video of Nikki Glaser on Conan O'Brien's show a year or so back, and I of course scrolled down to the comments section, like a sucker. And I see comments I always see in these kinds of videos- they're always "this chick isn't funny" and/or "I'd have sex with this chick, but she isn't funny". And it was weirder than normal, because I happened to be a big fan of Glaser's, so it's weird to me how someone could not appreciate her jokes, just based on how clever and well-written they tend to be.

 

But here is the twist: as I scroll down into the comments, I notice that Nikki Glaser is getting funnier. And it hits me: she's too pretty. Her being an attractive woman is distracting to some part of my brain, so when I scrolled down into the comment section and was only hearing her words, I enjoyed her a little more.

 

I would never leave that kind of douchebag comment about how X[X] female comedian isn't funny but I'd sure like to cut me off a slice, because I'm not a cretin. But it did make me take pause and consider the that the dynamic exists, and that there's a reason that those two ideas so often run in tandem. It'd never occurred to me before that women in that position might be slighted, without the offending party even being aware- not to mention any weird female vs female dynamics that also may be going on. This is, after all, not one-way male/female thing.

 

---

 

Nikki Glaser set question is no longer on YT, but you can catch it on Conan's site, and she regularly appears on @midnight on Comedy Central and says hilarious things.

 

(Random song suggestions

and

. Some really good beats on the first album in particular.)

[JanaCarol 0]

I feel that a persons demeanor and attitude often reflect on weather we perceive that they are pretty or not. An example is in the Little Mermaid. Ursula in disguise looks almost identical to Ariel except she has brown hair, but be cause she is mean to the animals is self centered, and often sneers she comes across as ugly.

On a personal note; many consider Paris Hilton as beautiful woman, but because of her behavior in public and how she treated people during her tv show, I have a hard time thinking of her as beautiful or even as a woman. She just seems a bratty little kid whom daddy never said no to.

[yoo 3]

I am sorry to say this because I enjoy your podcast, but that was more than a little embarrassing. You had 3 panellists talking about sexism, and the two males in the group almost nearly drowned out the female voice. It was like there was some kind of ironic radio play happening that was meant teach some sort of lesson, but all it did was reinforce the stereotypes that men are domineering and women are passive. Good job, and/or shame on you...

[JonathanB.Reid 34]

@Ben E Atkins

Thank you, I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that. I did notice several times when Kristi's voice would pipe up to make a point and Jason would just keep steamrolling ahead. It felt very Meta after a point. However, I might offer a less condemnatory explanation for why that happened. Both Jason and Kristi were both speaking remotely via phone tie-in, and it's possible, due to the latency in their connections, that Jason just literally couldn't hear that Kristi was trying to interject, and Kristi was too polite to cut in forcefully. There was still an interesting dynamic there, indicative of how our genders communicate (for example, it didn't happen the other way around), but I suspect that it was not quite as "Quiet dear, the men are talking" as it appeared on the surface.

[denimgremlin 1179]

@Ben E Atkins

Thank you, I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that. I did notice several times when Kristi's voice would pipe up to make a point and Jason would just keep steamrolling ahead. It felt very Meta after a point. However, I might offer a less condemnatory explanation for why that happened. Both Jason and Kristi were both speaking remotely via phone tie-in, and it's possible, due to the latency in their connections, that Jason just literally couldn't hear that Kristi was trying to interject, and Kristi was too polite to cut in forcefully. There was still an interesting dynamic there, indicative of how our genders communicate (for example, it didn't happen the other way around), but I suspect that it was not quite as "Quiet dear, the men are talking" as it appeared on the surface.

 

Jason is always steamrolling over everyone else whenever he's on the show.

[Lando 2019]

I am sorry to say this because I enjoy your podcast, but that was more than a little embarrassing. You had 3 panellists talking about sexism, and the two males in the group almost nearly drowned out the female voice. It was like there was some kind of ironic radio play happening that was meant teach some sort of lesson, but all it did was reinforce the stereotypes that men are domineering and women are passive. Good job, and/or shame on you...

 

I noticed this too. I also noticed that there would be times that the two men would decide that something was sexist, but that the woman on the panel gave a different interpretation that in some way empowered the woman and made it not necessarily sexist (for example in the "guy gets the hot girl" scenario she said it could be that the "girl gets the best guy") but was sort of out-voted on whether or not it was sexist.

 

I think that this is a difficult subject to evaluate because it's hard to quantify. That's the appeal of the Bechtel test, although not perfect it gives some sort of measurable criteria for sexism. There is a danger in looking for sexism like this in that we might be able to read sexism into anything to fit our preconceived notions. Think about Ancient Aliens, the "experts" on the show have decided that aliens made contact with ancient people and in looking for evidence to support their idea they find evidence of extraterrestrials in just about every piece of ancient art. I think that is a very real danger of the same thing happening in any form of attempted interpretation of people's intent. None of this is to say that sexism doesn't exist in modern society, just it's hard to objectively measure and as a result our conversation on the subject is doomed to be sloppy.

 

There is also the issue of trolling, which I won't get into.