Comment by antonyrn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by antonyrn | Hacker News Reader

It blows my mind that even The Simpsons has become a target of gender bias accusations.

The Simpsons is probably one of the tamest, least hostile television shows I can imagine at this point. Comparing The Simpsons to the rest of TV, without bringing the broader premium cable, internet and subscriber systems into the mix, The Simpsons displays fairly mild jabs at so many tropes, and usually does so in ways that are at least a little more interesting than the rest of TV.

Beyond all of this, Matt Groening is fairly progressive in his humor. And even though, he's long since had much direct influence on the content of the show, his initial creativity still brought forward more unique themes in the 90's than what was previously common at that time. So many topics found a voice in The Simpsons' animation than ever before, and previously simply had no voice at all.

At this point, I'm pretty fatigued at this endless death march of character assassination wherever character may be found.

People who constantly look for a fight in anything at this point instantly lose my respect.

It's fair to point out that Simpsons dialogue is 75% male and 9 out of 10 of their most prolific writers are male. That's a significant data finding.

There is a gender imbalance in The Simpsons. There's also a gender imbalance in film (1). That doesn't indicate ill-intent but it may be reflective of society and media as a whole.

1. http://polygraph.cool/films/

Servere fallacies detected in your argument.

1. The Simpsons, as a microcosm (an individual show among a broad selection of shows) is not required to adhere to distributions and averages or promote any particular reality. To point out that it deviates from a pre-supposed preference for "normal" represents a needling criticism of an invalid detail.

2. As a property of a larger organization, and indeed The World At Large, the show is an individual offering available within a selection of many other offerings that cater to a broad array of tastes and preferences. That it's being attacked for "not being average and normalized" seems to be part of an effort silence anything which is not gruel.

3. In what way does the enduring popularity of a single show, one that has outlasted so many others, reflect poorly on society? Shows like The Simpsons do well, not because of artificial constraints preserved by some gender bias conspiracy. That the authors are male for THIS show, and that males write male characters well, is not a symbol of malevolence, when there were thousands of other shows which had just as much budget and opportunity, and have aged even worse than The Simpsons, despite having perhaps more preferable themes that cater to a different audience.

4. Why not shine a light on the horrific gender bias of other shows? If we're picking out targets, I have my own. Are those also perfectly fair, valid and sensible? Want to hear them?

pyronite didn't criticize the simpsons for it and as you say, an individual show should not be criticized for this.

It is fair to say though, that there are more movies that fail the bechdel test¹ than there should be. If you compare it to the reverse of the bechdel test you can see there is a bias so large, it can't be founded in the preference of movie viewers alone.

I believe very much that everyone falls prey to biases, stereotypes or even outside factors like a possible gender imbalance in voice acting. I would not criticize anyone for this, because if you fall prey to something it is never ill intend. I do however also believe that these biases are harmful to society at large and in many cases could be easily avoided by more awareness of content creators.

I'm not against stereotypes, they are even valuable to get a story across, but you should be aware of how you are utilizing them.

¹ https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bechdel_test

Why is the Bechdel test morally important?

The Bechdel test can be failed by a movie which simply only had one woman in it, or was about a genderless robot, or was mostly about a heterosexual romance, or any number of other possibilities that have nothing to do with misogyny or any other form of gender bias.

As said, no individual movie should be criticized based on it.

It is however very relevant when half of all movies have no real female characters in it, while something like 95% do have strong male characters in them. It's really sad when disneys "Frozen" becomes the positive outlier.

Where do you read "character assassination"? I see only statistics, totally provable.

And citing it (in my other post) doesn't mean that I consider that some specific series "must" be male or female dominated, it's just an interesting tidbit. Its meaning would be even clearer if the similar statistics would be made on other works too.

I personally see it as an explanation as why I more responded to the Simpsons than my girlfriends, who were less interested. At least I remember more stories where Lisa turned out to be much smarter than anybody else there, so that statistics is not everything, but it's interesting nevertheless.

There are so many charged buzzwords in the article in which anyone who can read between the lines would detect as a nod toward negative opinions.

> There are so many charged buzzwords

Such as? Can you please share your observations, for us other readers to see if we can agree that they actually exist, and if they do, if they are actually as "charged" as you seem to experience them?

"a pattern of patriarchy" non-sensical weasly fuzzy buzzword, yet with clear divisive connotations.

Not exactly sure why the author chose it, true "belief" or just provocation, tho.

Google tells me that patriarchy is

"a system of society or government in which the father or eldest male is head of the family" and also

"a society or community organized on patriarchal lines."

and Homer really has the most words in the series, and that fact can be summarized with that word. The word was used in the lede, which is good to be short. Why is that a "provocation" to anybody? And how is it "non-sensical" and why and by whom is it considered a "buzzword"?

Sure, and Google will tell you that by the dictionary definition racism isn't about positions of privilege or power.

These words have acquired specific meanings in contexts like these that carry other connotations than the mere dictionary definition.

In feminism patriarchy is not just about familial structures, it's about power and privilege. It's not about dominance in the metaphorical sense (Homer dominates the show by having more lines) but about social struggle (men dominate the show by minoritizing women).

Yes, this is nonsense, but that's the context in which pop-sociology articles (anywhere from universities to popular websites) exist these days. Whether the author intended the article to be understood that way is another question, but I think it's fair to think that the article might be intended to be read this way.

I find your reasoning wrong, sorry. Actually, not less absurd than those of Muslims who started the worldwide violence after the publication of the caricature of Muhammad with the bomb on his head in the Danish paper.

> It blows my mind that even The Simpsons has become a target of gender bias accusations.

Yes, that is the point of these sorts of conversations: to blow your mind. That's where bias lives.

Oh, how I anticipated this pithy retort. Did it ever occur to anyone that fomenting polarization might be a bad thing?

Isolation on all sides is really all that's derived from exercises like this. Pointless braying on and on. Have fun with that.

The whole point of studies like this is to show that this not a new issue, it's been happening all along. The only reason it feels like "fomenting" to you is that you didn't notice it, and now that you do, you realize you liked it that way.

> Isolation on all sides is really all that's derived from exercises like this.

Helping fellow humans participate more fully in society is the opposite of isolation.

"Two! Four! Six! Eight! Homer's crime was very great!"

"Great, meaning large or immense!"

"We use it in the pejorative sense!"

Not only has it been happening for years, Simpsons writers have already mined the comic self-seriousness of self-appointed "helpers" who think it's a problem...

I demand now an analysis of the gender bias in Gilmore girls, Gossip girl and Pretty litte liars.

And Orange is the new Black

I don't the author is trying to "look for a fight". It's hardly the worst offender as far as these issues go either, it's just a lot more lopsided than a lot of us realized and is interesting to point out.

I think it says more about our society at large than it does about the Simpsons, anyway.

When all you have is victimhood, everything looks like an oppressor.

> The Simpsons is probably one of the tamest, least hostile television shows I can imagine at this point.

Interesting to read this. I agree, but I do remember when The Simpsons was first shown on local Australian TV 25+ years ago, there was a massive backlash from conservative groups that the show was a den of iniquity. Bart for example, was touted as coercing kids to talk back to their parents and even (gasp) responsible for a new generation of kids calling their fathers by their first name. Homer was castigated for being a bad role model parent/human being.

If memory serves me correctly, it was even discussed in parliament here when they considered banning it from local TV stations. How times have changed.

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