TV networks announced their fall programming schedules last week and the slate of new shows is both (kind of) good and bad news for portrayals of people people with disabilities.
The good news is that there is a meager improvement in the representation of disabled characters in starring roles. By “meager” I mean out of seventeen new shows debuting on NBC, (only) three main characters have physical disabilities.
Well, gang, there’s some good news and some bad news. The good news is that feminist comedians and feminist critiques of comedy have been all over the news lately! Woo! Yay!
The bad news is that this is, in large part, because there are a bunch of people who think that they have a constitutionally enshrined right to tell rape jokes and then never have to hear any criticism about them. Boo! Blerg!
There have been a lot of great recent critiques of this sadly evergreeen controversy (you can find some here, here, here and here) and also some awesome round-ups of rape jokes that don’t undermine or disempower assault survivors (some examples can be found here, here, and here).
But while challenging rape jokes specifically is an important way to show that comedy belongs to everyone, we can also draw attention to comedians who tell jokes that embrace women’s lives and experiences--rather than reducing them to blank canvasses for punchlines--showcasing the fact that comedy embraces women far more often than it acts shitty and hostile to us.
Star Trek: Into Darkness came out this weekend, and like any good Trekkie, I was eager to see the film. And although I came away from doing so feeling satisfied, there was one thing that stuck in my craw.
If you subscribe to Bitch magazine, your copy should be in your mailbox or swiftly making its way there. For everyone else, our new issue Micro/Macro is available to buy online today. We chose five articles from the issue to post online for free—check them out and feel free to buy the whole issue!
FROM MICRO/MACRO:
• All Hail the Queen: Writer Tamara Winfrey Harris digs into race, womanhood, and perceptions of Beyonce's feminism in article that friend-of-Bitch Cheryl Strayed called, "So wise, perceptive, deep and dead on it made my heart thump." It features the great portrait of Beyonce seen above by artist Irana Douer.
• Sized Up: Anna Mollow—the co-editor of Sex and Disability—explains why fatness is a queer and feminist issue.
• Gaming the System:Fans have pushed for better and more female characters in video games, but some of the most promising game ideas are dead on arrival.
•Written Off: Black female screenwriters have penned some amazing films, but are routinely ignored by the Academy Awards.
Welcome back to another week in the wonderful world of Mad Men. One of the strangest episodes on record, "The Crash" was all about altered states, false identities, and hidden talents (we see you tap dancing, Ken Cosgrove!). Load up a "vitamin shot" and join us, won't you?
This picture is worth a thousand words about how nuts this episode was.
A few weeks ago, I was at a party, talking to a guy I'd never met. I told him I work for a feminist magazine. He got very sincere.
"You're a feminist," he said. "Does that mean you hate men?"
This is a persistent myth. There are plenty of things in the world that hate men, but I'm not one of them. Instead of fearing feminism, dudes should fret over the genuine maneaters: Sharks. Tigers. Godzilla.
For this Friday's BitchTapes, I put together this playlist of songs about maneaters. Now, instead of having to counter the man-hating question with a reasoned response, I'll just press play.
Welcome to the latest installment of Ms. Opinionated, in which readers have questions about the pesky day-to-day choices we all face, and I give advice about how to make ones that (hopefully) best reflect our shared commitment to feminist values—as well as advice on what to do when they don't.
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