Paul Feig Says Female Ghostbusters Backlash Most “Vile, Misogynistic Sh** I’ve Ever Seen in My Life”


In a recent Variety interview for his new comedy Spy, director Paul Feig was asked how he felt about the tiny man-babies who claim his all-female Ghostbusters reboot will retroactively ruin their childhood:

The Internet is really funny – I love it, but I hate it at the same time [...] The first wave when you make an announcement like that is overwhelmingly positive. Everyone’s so happy and you’re like, This is great. Then comes the second wave and you’re like, Oh my God. Some of the most vile, misogynistic sh** I’ve ever seen in my life.
Feig talked in particular about the “vicious” remarks he saw on Twitter, saying “The biggest thing I’ve heard for the last four months is, ‘Thanks for ruining my childhood.’ It’s going to be on my tombstone when I die. It’s so dramatic. Honestly, the only way I could ruin your childhood is if I got into a time machine and went back and made you an orphan.”

The director says that after receiving a particularly hateful tweet (most of which would likely be even worse if Feig was a woman), he often checks out the offender’s profile: “I figure it’s some wacked out teenager. But almost constantly it’s someone whose bio says, ‘Proud father of two!’ And has some high end job. You’re raising children and yet you’re bashing me about putting women in my movie?”

Speaking with Dame Magazine, Crews spoke eloquently about gender and how we represent ourselves when talking about how much of himself he brings to his character on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. “Every man and every woman has both sexes in them [...] We have to embrace the duality that we are,” said Crews. “I’m an artist – I love painting and drawing, and I play the flute, and people go, ‘Man, that’s feminine!’ But why is that feminine? That’s just human. If you feel that is feminine, you’re judging yourself based on what other people’s reactions might be.”

The former NFL player, who is now married with five children (four of whom are girls) and one granddaughter, said that he has had to do some “serious thinking” about the world in which he’s raising his children, and that’s part of what made him want to actively speak out about feminism and the fight for equality. “When I see the world and the way people are treated, I see so many domination and control issues,” said Crews. “The truth is, everyone is equal and valuable, and everyone is necessary, but there tends to be a dismissal of certain groups.”

But, Crews clarifies, he’s not trying to speak for women, but rather to be the best ally he can. “Women are more than capable of handling themselves, and have been doing so wonderfully for years,” explained Crews. “What I am saying is, as one man to another man, examine your own mind-set. Examine what makes you tick. Because if you feel that you are more valuable than your wife and kids, that’s a problem.” In his book Manhood, Crews cites male pride as something that stops men from changing their outlook on how they treat women.

Crews also spoke at length about rape culture and its prevalence in the world of sports and football, noting that he’s known many men who believed women were responsible for their own sexual assaults because of how they were dressed. “Once I realized that I was part of that culture, I knew that I had to change it,” Crews said, citing 50 Shades of Grey as an example of pop culture projecting abuse as romance, and said that it’s simple in our society for men to use lies, guilt, and shame to control women – something he’s seen at length in his work with the Polaris Project to stop human trafficking.

Late last summer, the internet was suddenly abuzz with the controversy known as Gamergate. The crux of the heated public debate was sexism in video game culture, but it quickly spiraled into dangerous territory. While the public was being inundated with news and Twitter wars and stories of women being harassed, a subsequent storm was brewing in plain sight on one of the world’s most popular websites.

Disturbing content was being plastered on the Wikipedia biography pages for female game developers, critics, and their spouses. Media and gaming culture critic Anita Sarkeesian was called a “lying whore,” and game developer Zoe Quinn was labeled a prostitute. Fellow developer Brianna Wu’s page claimed she gave her husband AIDS because she was raped by her father who first infected her. The bio page for her science fiction artist husband, Frank Wu, reflected the same thing.
Records of the libelous remarks have since been removed from the site, but they were seemingly added by anonymous Wikipedia accounts, many of which only showed up after Gamergate first made headlines.
To get the situation under control, Wikipedia community members quickly asked for other editors to pitch in and help bring on the site’s notice board. Little did they know they would soon be sucked into their own controversy, one that revealed how the site’s commitment to neutrality would trump harassment concerns for Wikipedia editors being threatened on and off its pages.

“I came into this and I had no idea who Zoe Quinn was or what a social justice warrior was six months ago,” said Travis Mason-Bushman, who has been editing Wikipedia for 10 years under the name NorthbySouthBaronof. He became part of a group of “feminist” Wikipedia editors, later dubbed the Five Horsemen, who were eventually banned for seeking to fight off harassment on the Gamergate-related pages by Wikipedia’s high court, called the Arbitration Committee.

As one of only a handful of animals on the planet to live many years after menopause, killer whales have just provided new insight into the benefits of this seemingly strange reproductive strategy. Females that are past their child-bearing years go on to become group leaders with valuable survival skills, scientists report today in the journal Current Biology.

Theoretically, menopause should not exist. If the purpose of survival is reproduction, then there is no reason for an animal to stay alive when it can no longer have offspring. For killer whales, females stop reproducing at around 50 years old, which is also the age when most male killer whales are nearing the ends of their lives. Typically, though, post-menopausal females still have another 40 years to go.


Scientists from the University of Exeter, the University of York and the Center for Whale Research examined 35 years’ worth of observational data from an endangered population of southern resident killer whales in the Pacific Northwest. They poured over decades' worth of photographs capturing whales on the move and noticed a pattern: Post-menopausal females, the oldest in the group, typically swam at the front and directed their pods’ movements in a variety of scenarios. To explain this behavior, the team focused their dataset to years when killer whales’ primary food supply, salmon, was critically low.

"One way post-reproductive females may boost the survival of their kin is through the transfer of ecological knowledge,” says Lauren Brent of the University of Exeter. “The value gained from the wisdom of elders can help explain why female killer whales and humans continue to live long after they have stopped reproducing."


Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/after-menopause-killer-whale-moms-become-pod-leaders-180954480/#rH13m7u0RIW43ZI4.99

The basic gist of Lady Killer is this: a housewife and mother named Josie superficially seems just that, but in reality is a trained assassin. She has a boss, she has regular jobs, and she is ruthless and efficient. She also has a husband, an overbearing mother-in-law, and two daughters.
By issue #2, while Josie hasn’t exactly cracked, she does seem to be showing the stress of maintaining the façade of perfection. In the world of the early 1960s, being a wife and mother came with a great many expectations, and unsurprisingly, so does being a trained assassin. Still, Josie is a consummate professional who has been at this job for years and years. The story follows Josie as she struggles with increased demands from work and problems at home.

Jones’ art really soars in this book, and it’s clear this is a project from her heart. As we discussed a few weeks ago, she took inspiration from places as varied as ads from the era and Milt Kahl. Her Josie is all knowing smirks, perfect winged eyeliner, and elegant clothes. She’s sexy, but not ever, ever objectified. Jones has taken pains to keep Josie in period-appropriate clothing, and all of the backgrounds are also perfectly in place according to the era. As I said, while it’s possible to enjoy this book with no knowledge of the era, if you are familiar with the lifestyles and designs of the 1960s, you will be especially rewarded.

The art really emphasizes and perfects the story, which is engrossing and full of solid characterization, particularly for Josie. While many of the characters have a cartoony edge and wouldn’t be out of place in animation from this era, there’s a grit to the art that gives it depth. Every page has ink splatter and rich shadows that keep it from ever feeling too light.


Read More: 'Lady Killer' Brings Feminist History to Life | http://comicsalliance.com/lady-killer-review-jones-rich-dark-horse/?trackback=tsmclip

Intro:Are You Man Enough for the Men's Rights Movement?
Probably not, at least according to a growing army of pissed-off activists who are convinced that the male species is profoundly endangered by our feminized society. They say it's a woman's world now—that women have the upper hand in sex, in universities, in custody battles. And don't even get them started on all those bogus rape cases. It's enough to make a certain kind of man join a revolution. Jeff Sharlet reports from the movement's first national gathering and meets the true believers who want you to fight for your right to patriarchy


A Voice for Men's first International Conference on Men's Issues convened a month after the killing. The issues were as varied as the manosphere: fathers' rights, suicide, and circumcision (a.k.a. male genital mutilation), and also false accusations of rape, male victims of rape, and unfaithful wives "cuckoo for cocoa penis puffs," as one speaker would put it, plus "mangina" journalists who "cherry-pick" quotes such as "cuckoo for cocoa penis puffs" out of context. 1. It was supposed to be at the Detroit DoubleTree, a swank downtown hotel, but the feminists protested, and since the elite hospitality industry is pretty much in the thrall of feminism, or because the feminists floated death threats, or because a member of the men's movement floated death threats so people would understand that the feminists are floating death threats even if they did not, in this instance, float any death threats—for one of these disturbing reasons, A Voice for Men was told by the DoubleTree to "go elsewhere."

Elsewhere is a town called St. Clair Shores, and in it a VFW, Post 1146, known as "the Bruce." As in the sign out front that declares, cruising at the bruce / every friday night / 5–9 P.M. (By "cruising" they mean muscle cars, a fact I mention because A Voice for Men is surprisingly pro-gay, or at least anti-anti-gay.) There's artillery on the lawn and a faded sign on a fence around a parking lot: warning, of what, to whom, it is not clear. The blacktop beyond, where conference attendees line up to go through "security," is broken with weeds, but the men don't notice the decline in the conference's circumstances. They're too excited about "security." They keep saying, "No feminist better try coming here!" Local police have dispatched four officers, and the conference attendees have deputized even more security from their own ranks. "Security" wears black polo shirts, and there are a lot of black polo shirts, but since the line is slow, security decides to sweep us all in with a request to return for a "check." Nobody does. Only one feminist later attempts entry, an activist who goes by the handle "Dark Horse Swore." The black shirts eighty-six her. She sets up at a nearby bar, orders pizza, opens a tab, and invites any conference attendee who cares to talk. No takers. Feminist pizza? Not a chance. These men, they're hip to feminine wiles. They've taken the red pill, they like to say.

The red-pill moment, explains one men's rights activist (MRA), "is the day you decide nothing looks the same." It's what the movement calls the born-again experience of opening your eyes to women's Matrix-like control of the modern world. For a young MRA named Max von Holtzendorff, the red-pill moment was being accused of sexual harrassment by a co-worker to whom he proposed sex, "being blunt and forthright, because that seemed the best way to ensure consent." For Dan Perrins, one of the security black shirts, it was the day he ended up in jail, after he says he lodged a complaint against his ex, the beginning of a legal battle that led him to a hunger strike. "I should have killed the bitch five years ago," he tells me. "I'd be out by now." For Gunther Schadow, an M.D.-Ph.D., it was a "meta-study" on domestic violence that inspired him to seed a foundation with about half a million dollars, with which he now hopes to overturn the Violence Against Women Act. For Dan Moore, whose MRA name is Factory, the red pill was a revelation in stages. First, he says, his wife cheated on him. Then she wanted him to know it. "She'd laugh at me." His low point: lying on the floor in a fetal curl while she stood over him mocking him. He says she had a butcher knife in her hand. (She denies this. All of it.)

"Women gone insane with the power of the pussy pass" is how Elam describes the movement's raison d'être in an essay called "When Is It OK to Punch Your Wife?" Another one of his provocations. Elam's white, but he identifies with Malcolm X; he believes he needs to shock society to be heard. He says his talk of "the business end of a right hook" and women who are "freaking begging" to be raped is simply his version of Malcolm's "by any means necessary." To wit: Elam's proposal to make October "Bash a Violent Bitch Month," in which men should take the women who abuse them "by the hair and smack their face against the wall till the smugness of beating on someone because you know they won't fight back drains from their nose with a few million red corpuscles."
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201503/mens-rights-activism-the-red-pill