Major Post #3

Feminist Frequency 

The Feminist Frequency blog is run by Anita Sarkeesian, a media and pop culture critic who takes a feminist standpoint to point out her views and perspectives; she utilizes video blog posts to share these views on a range of feminist topics mainly pertaining to discrepancies in the media that lead to misconceptions among females. In her blog, Anita Sarkeesian takes typical media movies, music, TV shows, etc. to point out these misconceptions the media tries to make against females and sheds light on these truths so the audience would be informed and think differently than what society tries to portray as “normal” with females.

One of The Feminist Frequency’s blog posts includes Tropes vs. Women: #5 The Mystical Pregnancy, which is a video post where Sarkeesian informs how the media is using TV shows to degrade women through sci-fi shows where women are “reduced to their biological functions,” mainly pertaining to  pregnancy.  Through these science fiction TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Stargate SG-1. women are looked upon as characters that simply get tortured through pregnancy and giving birth to aliens; throughout these shows, the process is simply made to look painful and unappealing for a woman who did not know much about pregnancy. Women should be known in society to be the bearers of children who bring life into the world, but the media and Hollywood directors keep bringing a bad name to the process. Politics are also imposing against women and their freedoms with pregnancy where laws are being passed against miscarriages and abortion, where women as individuals are not allowed to do what they want with their bodies. All in all, Anita Sarkeesian is pointing out the misconceptions the media is working to make: that women are only good for pregnancy and pregnancy is a bad thing; she points these out so her audience does not believe these things and that they should get Hollywood producers and directors to portray women as more valuable characters with more to them than just pregnancy, and that pregnancy is not a bad thing after all. This view on the topic is important because the typical audience of these TV shows does not catch these misconceptions that the media is trying to make while Sarkeesian proves how wrong they are along with proof of how prosperous they are. This thinking goes against conventional thinking because it is against how the media portrays these women; the media tries to display “normal” thinking and going against this typically goes against conventional thinking that the media creates.

Another post on the blog is Tropes vs. Women: #4 The Evil Demon Seductress; in this post, Anita Sarkeesian shows how the media is utilizing TV shows and movies such as X-Men and Batman to show that a woman’s only power against men is her sexuality. Throughout these movies, vampires, mermaids, and alien women are shown as overpowering and dangerous only due to their sexuality where men fall as victims to their clutches. These movies and TV shows are getting people to believe that women are powerful only due to this, while Sarkeesian goes against this trope and asks producers to show women as more than dangerous and overpowering only because of their “sexual powers.” Hollywood needs to incorporate more with women in movies than having these ideas and misconceptions only for the purpose of attracting the male demographics. Having this in popular movies and shows makes the ideas expand to reality where women are prone to being degraded because of their apparent power the media has given them. This feminist view is important because not many people realize what the media is doing to women; Sarkeesian’s view brings about a fair result that there could be female villans in these movies but not only revolving around their power being their sexuality, since that expands to bring about misconceptions against women in reality.