Fox Apologizes for Casting Strong Female Lead in X-Men; Emory Tells Female Athletes They're Worth Half As Much as Men

Feminists demand that more women and people of color receive significant roles in movies - then freak out when a villain is violent against one.

Last week, someone named Rose McGowan (apparently she is an actress?) complained about a billboard that depicts "casual violence against women."

She proceeded to write, 

Imagine if it were a black man being strangled by a white man, or a gay male being strangled by a hetero?

Yes, Rose. It would be truly horrible if Hollywood cast a member of a marginalized group in a lead role, only to have things happen to them.

This is exactly the kind of regressive feminism that gives reasonable, factual feminists a bad rap.

How can you demand that Hollywood be more diverse... but also that gay characters can never die and male villains can never be violent against female heroes?

In the name of diversity, should certain kinds of movies not exist anymore?

Or maybe I missed the point. Maybe the point is that "casual" black-on-black, gay-on-gay, or woman-on-woman violence is okay, but male-against-female, straight-on-gay, or white-on-black is not?

Don't you think that sends a harmful message to boys and men? That violence against women is never okay... and violence against men is? 

What about men who are in abusive relationships with a female partner? What about boys who are bullied by girls, but don't feel like they're "allowed" to defend themselves?

What about the girls and women who want to feel powerful and independent -- perhaps like a mutant superhero might feel -- but are constantly told by benevolent sexists like Rose McGowan that they aren't?

Let me give an example that infuriated me recently. 

I'm a woman who plays basketball. And pretty much the only other people who play basketball are men. When I consciously step back and think about it, I do think, "Wow, look, I'm the only woman in a gym full of thirty dudes, how weird." But then I also think, "I'm better than most of the people I play with, even though I'm the only girl."

I don't let my gender get in the way of my performance or confidence -- I'm a good player, so why should it matter? 

In fact, 99% of the time, I don't think of myself as an outsider, as a woman among men, or as anything less than part of the group. What a burden it would be to constantly think of myself as an "other." What a horrible life I would life if I were so self-focused and stuck in my own head that I couldn't even play my favorite sport without obsessing over whether and how I fit in with this group of people.

So imagine how pissed I was when, during a conversation about co-ed basketball leagues, a buddy of mine told me how it works at Emory.

"Girls' shots count as double -- so a three-point shot counts as six points, and a two-point shot counts as four. And guys aren't allowed to block them."

What. The. Actual.

I was shocked at how utterly appalling and sexist those rules are. 

To have someone tell me that I'm soooo much worse at basketball as men that my shots have to count as double -- that's offensive! To tell me that all my years of hard work and experience, all my speed and strength and determination, is worth half that of some random dude who walked in off the street... it's actually degrading. 

It's so degrading that I didn't believe him. I mean, he's a nice guy, so why would he say something so incredibly sexist if it's not true? But... he did graduate a long time ago. Maybe someone woke up and realized it's 2016. Maybe he remembered wrong.

So I looked it up. And there it was, right there in the rule book:

Even my free throws -- shots that are completely uncontested -- count as double!

Emory, you are pathetic. 

And Rose McGowan, so are you.

You think there should be a different set of rules for female, black, and gay characters? You think we are all so weak and pathetic that we can only be depicted in certain ways, lest our existence be erased?

It is your brand of "feminism" that kept women from voluntarily serving in combat roles for so long. The thought of violence against powerful, armed, trained women is so frightening that 220,000 jobs -- roughly 10% of all military positions -- were unavailable to women until December 2015.

You've heard of Deshauna Barber, right?

She was just named Miss USA. While the other contestants struggled to answer basic questions about the economy, Barber, who is an IT analyst and Army officer, was asked a question about the Pentagon's decision to open all military combat positions to women.

​Her response?

As a woman in the United States Army, I think it was an amazing job by our government to allow women to integrate to every branch of the military. We are just as tough as men. As a commander of my unit, I am powerful. I am dedicated. And it is important that we recognize that gender does not limit us in the United States Army.

Gender does not limit us in the U.S. Army. So why does it have to limit us on the Emory co-rec basketball courts? Why does it have to limit us in Hollywood?

Quit being a bad feminist. Obviously domestic violence (or whatever parallel you were trying to make) is bad...

But no one sees that rocky-looking monster guy choking a mutant with blue skin and thinks, "Oh, yeah -- casual violence against women is totally normal and okay now!"

Women are warriors and superheroes, not delicate butterflies. Please, 20th Century Fox, keep giving us the respect we deserve.