The Social Network, Where Women Never Have Ideas

...and they do a disservice to humanists and women everywhere. I can find no more appropriate analogy than the "boy who cried wolf". When all people see are logically unsound articles based on the forced, manufactured "offense" of the author, the more likely people will be to dismiss genuine issues of gender discrimination. Everybody loses except those that make their careers drumming up "discrimination" where none exists.

It's not that Sorkin didn't "manufacture a prominent female character." It's that he manufactured lots of other things about the founding of Facebook, Harvard culture, and Zuckerberg's motivations that all lead to a movie in which women are, across the board, portrayed as stupid slutty airheads who exist solely to serve as prizes for the awesome hackers.

To choose some examples at random: much of Zuckerberg's motivation in the movie come from his bitterness over being dumped by a girlfriend (...a fabricated girlfriend), which led him to make a site to let male students compare the hotness of female students (...modified from real life: facemash compared both men and women; the objectification overtones were far less substantial), which led to blow jobs from personality-less groupies in bathrooms (I can't speak to that, but it would surprise me), while being jealous he couldn't get into to final clubs that featured naked girls dancing on tables, having been bussed in by those final clubs for that purpose (I don't know if Zuckerberg wanted to be in a final club, but I can tell you that the rest of that clause is pretty much entirely fabricated, except for maybe the existence of the bus, which is probably referring to the shuttle that runs between Wellesley college and Harvard square).

I don't have a problem with movies being fiction, I'm just a little confused as to why this story had to be fictionalized in such a glaringly misogynistic way, especially given that A) there's no evidence that Zuckerberg hates women and B) the story is pretty interesting on its own.

i'm speculating that what they're mad at isn't the fact that there are all-male facilities, but it's how women are treated when they enter said facilities (i.e., like pieces of meat). i think you can fairly call them hypocritical if they attend female-only gyms where every male that enters is only viewed as a sex object

As far as depicting successful, prominent, men as more likely to attract women, I'd have to say that's pretty analogous with reality. I have a girlfriend, but when my company has local events, my business partner has significantly better luck than he would otherwise. I went boating with, then to a bunch of bars with the Real World DC cast last year, and people were throwing themselves at them, and that's pretty C list. If you don't think women are more likely to perform sex acts with men with money, or who are famous, or both, I think you are either a liar or delusional. Power is sexy.

Besides, as pgbovine points out, she didn't say she minded the fact that the clubs are male-only, just the attitudes therein.

This is jezebel.com, and thus must be expected. Not that all content on the site is bad, but I usually don't like the site any more than I like male-centric misogynist blogs.

But you could probably object to the fact that that explanation is even needed.

We need to keep questioning things and be ever vigilant to make sure we don't loose the liberties that we have gained, particularly for minorities. The healthy way to do that is to have an open and honest discussion about the subject when is relevant.

You always have the right to free speech and to spend your money on whatever you want (within reason, no hit-men). You never earn the right to be above criticism.