Digimon Tamers: It’s stated that Digimon don’t have gender, yet both time Renamon was said to be “a girl”. This is reflected in the anime as her needing to be saved and not getting to do any heavy lifting like Terriermon or Guilmon. They have been cast into “The Girl” role. Also, there are a number of digimon that are “Women with some bits of armor and a mask” that are definately being forced into the female gender. Large breasts, skimpy clothes. Simply to give the human MEN watching this CHILDREN’S show boners.
Ultimately this show is about “saving the damsel in distress”. In the end it’s the girls that have to be “powered down” in order for the boys to be “powered up”.

This show didn’t age well at all, however compared to the later Digimon anime, it at least didn’t have as much sexualization going on.

I really hate how pink is being used as a cage for women and girls, especially girls. Examining toys at how every freaking toy for girls is pink in some way is very heart breaking. While boys get the plethora of colors. It’s a cage because at one time it was used to empower women as it was a masculine color. Then it was used to DEFINE women.

It also sucks in anime that to be the hero of a shoujo anime, you need to LOVE PINK. If you like any other color, too bad, you are the second stringer.
It didn’t start off that way. Going back to Sailor Moon, her colors were red, white, blue and if you include hair, yellow. If you didn’t like those four colors, then yeah you were out of luck, but there was nothing bad associated with those colors. Nothing bad like the associations with pink. After Sailor Moon there’s Wedding Peach, with the main girl’s hair… IS PINK. After that in Futari wa Pretty Cure with back with pink highlights, then more pink, then Splash Star and Oooohhhh fucking… pink it all out!!

So if you want to be a modern day shoujo hero, you have to conform to femininity. You have to love pink, because your outfit will be pink, all the items will be pink, the small creature following you is probably going to be pink in some way. Your room will be pink, it will be your favorite color. If you don’t believe that pink define femininity, they just go to a hard ware store and you’ll find the pink this and that “for women” of course. Pink you see is this color that will melt the flesh off men.
Pink is also associated with babies, and nurturing, and weakness, submission, and helplessness. Despite it being just a color. Funny how all those things are what men (and brainwashed women) use to define women as. Weak, helpless, infantile… One one hand men want us to conform to those traits and on the other find it annoying when we do. Pink is no exception. Guys will kill themselves (yes sometimes literally) if they have to do anything related to the feminine. Pink is no expectation. The guys wearing pink is a parody a joke. They are gay one because that is also associated with being feminine.
And here we have a position that has all this crap behind it, that if you don’t want to deal with, too bad, you can’t have the empowering female fantasy you want because blue and black aren’t colors a proper shoujo hero wears. You want to wear pink!! It’s every girls dream!! That’s they way they sell it to girls and brainwash them into thinking they want the color in the first place. The hero is pink so I must like pink to be the hero. I must CONFORM. it’s shitty where there is exactly ONE anime targeted at you where you don’t have to wear pink. ONE!
Thus we have the cage. That cage girls can’t escape because there is nothing out there that telling them they can also like other colors and be other colors and also feel the ultimate empowerment in being a hero. You can only watch Sailor Moon so many times. You either conform to pink or you get to be a side character.

Yeah you can tell I hate the color pink. I’m not a feminine person and having likes I want to be into and not having a deep selection makes one hate the color, it makes me hate being a woman in the first place. You can’t deny pink is currently a feminine color. So of course you have people that will lash out against the color, it’s currently being used as a weapon to beat women into submission.
So really people, lay off the damn pink already.

Karneval [Josei]
I’ve only seen the first episode, but I’m not sure I’m going to keep with it. I’m not big into secret societies, secrets and mysterious people, and that has this right from the start. Who is Circus, who is Karoku, what is going on? Yeah, not my cup of tea.

Shingeki no Kyojin [Shounen]
I don’t normally read or watch shounen because REALLY, it’s all the same. However I gave this a glace because it looked like it might be a more serious manga and it was. It still has it’s shounen roots with the main character having a super power that none of his friends have and being the center of attention, and while he is awesome, he’s not polished awesome and thus needs training.
What kept me reading however is the fact that the female characters aren’t drawn to look any different. No skirt uniforms or pendulous breasts here. They are drawn such that they often sometimes look like the men and I like that, because that is more realistic of how the world work that boob armor and boob socks. Also it is said that the best person on the team is Mikasa.
While it does it’s typical shounen, “The main hero must be better!”, it hasn’t really put down any of the main female characters. Mikasa is awesome, Annie is awesome and Ymir is awesome.
The anime started recently and so far seems to be following the manga in terms of story, the art style is different and I’ll have to see if they decide to take it in a wild different direction. The manga artwork isn’t what you usually expect. It has a lot of motion line and sketchiness which sets it apart from the straight edge usual shounen. I’m also hoping the manga-ka doesn’t get trained into “Boobs = better!” for manga, as this seems to be their first work and I’d like them to keep a fairly consistent style.

Ginga Kikoutai Majestic Prince [Shounen – Mecha]
This is about as shounen as you can get. It seems to have crammed three (or more) anime and types of anime into itself. It’s got the Macross (F), the aliens look human and have that war thing going on – time for a rival!, with the sentai Red, Blue, Yellow, Pink and Purple! Even so much the leader (red) actually is writing a sentai story and his literal reason for doing MJP is “I want to be a (sentai) hero!”. It’s also got the feel of Sousei no Aquarion with Gatou as a Fudou Gen type COMPLETE with scar! That and the fact the guy let’s on more than he knows. That and the downtime with the character has a similarity with Sousei. it does contain impossible boobs and I don’t really like that one of the female characters is a complete ditz and an airhead AND support AND the pink one. However I haven’t seen them focus on the breasts and how they jiggle (yet) so I haven’t been too put off by it. That and when they were talking about all their dreams… the women didn’t get a chance to voice there like “Nope the men are more important!”. It’s probably not going to get high marks, but I do kinda want to see what the story with the enemy is.

Suisei no Gargantia [Seinen – Mecha]
This is another mecha show, though it takes a different approach by shoving out mecha hero back to Earth that has been forgotten. I like the take on the future pilot back to basics. But much of the episode is of him kidnapping the girl and running around with her. That really didn’t need to happen. However he ends up with a bunch of guns in his face. I also don’t like the “magic translation” that happens. I’d rather like to see him bumble around trying to figure out what they are saying rather than “Computer translates everything magically!” I don’t even think future computers will be able to automatically translate a completely foreign language. I’ll watch another one of this one and if the feeling isn’t right, I’ll probably dump it.

Posted to my Tumblr, saving here.

The term Mary Sue comes from a parody fan fic that basically mocks, dismisses, degrades and otherwise tears down women’s fantasies. The character was gendered for that very reason. The fact that women having self insert power fantasies is something to be mocked and trashed.

Then the term started being applied to female characters from other fiction. The term is used to discredit, dismiss, degrade, mock, and otherwise tear down those stories too. It’s basically saying “Hey, women shouldn’t be strong and you women shouldn’t have any kinds of fantasies of power of any kind’ MARY SUE! Feel bad about that!”

Then people started forcing male characters into Mary Sue, they equated them to being a women, to being female and then shaming the character for it. They called male characters Mary Sue, just so they wouldn’t look sexist, despite the fact that pretty much every male character out there is a self insert power fantasy. Hey boys get to be Goku and Naruto and women get to be…. uh…. nothing. Women don’t get a fantasy that is just simply accepted without being torn to shreds in some form or fashion.
(example of the Avatar creators mocking Katara/Zuko pairing fans at a convention.)

Which s why using the term Mary Sue for any character is sexist and misogynistic. You are saying women’s fantasies are something to be shamed and they are inherently bad thanks to the character. Then trying to apply it to male characters just o justify you using it. (like how some people will call men whores just to feel good about calling women whores, and say “I use it for everybody”)

So if you want to keep using that term, you are not being feminist, you re being a misogynist and I don’t really want to know you’

The first part of my post on Liking Problematic Stuff was from mostly the oppressed point of view. Liking something you know is actively oppressing you.

Now i want to focus on the “allies”, the oppressor (also known as the people with privilege) because I’ve heard a lot more shit from them. Namely “I like what I like!”.

First of all, why does YOUR comfort trump my right to be a human being. Yes, you as the oppressor are actively oppressing me if you say something similar to that as you consume the oppressive shit. Being a good ally is about changing your likes (and possibly your dislikes) in order to be less oppressing. Keeping the status quo does nothing. If you’ve ever said that, take your badge off now and burn your “I am a good ally” t-shirt.

Why? Because you are the target audience! If you buy that problematic show/game/book you are telling the companies “Hey I’m your target audience and I like this stuff!” They can ignore the parts where you said it was sexist as all hell or the racism was ramped up to 11. They made a sale to their target audience and they an count that on their marketing sheet as “It’s working!” It’s only when something ISN’T selling that they might actually look at the response and go “Oh! Our target audience doesn’t like this problematic shit :X!”

“But if I stop liking this stuff I won’t have anything to watch/play/read!” There are plenty of other things to watch/play/read. Saying this just means you want to be lazy and continue to be an oppressive douche. Remember what I said about changing your likes. Yes you have to change them! You have to actively go outside of that little box and find something new.

You like Dead or Alive? Try a different fighting game that isn’t a pile of misogynistic shit.
You like ecchi/harem? Try something that isn’t labeled as ecchi, dump anything ecchi from your likes and focus on the shows that want to tell a story over degrading women. They are out there.
You like Family Guy? Try one of the other less oppressive adult cartoons out there. Look into the ones that have come before. I hear “King of the Hill” is far better than Family Guy. (Not saying it’s the best mind you.)
You like Dresden Files? There is a ton more books out there in that genre that isn’t oppressive as all hell. Try looking for books from people not white, possibly not male, and possibly not straight too.

Being a complicit target audience is the worst thing you as an oppressor. You are telling the creators of these things that “YES! Keep making them and ignore the non-target audience. I’ll keep buying them!”