DecoDame
One of the Regulars
- Messages
- 215
FF, I’m not taking your comments personally, so no worries there. But let me give you some context before giving my reply to your thoughts. I’m very much an advocate for looking at history with clear eyes and an open mind. Quite frequently what has been handed down to us as fact can be quite simplified or sanitized. Or sold to us to sell us something else. I’m generally careful not to look at history as very black/white, good/bad, but not with rose colored glasses, either. I don’t buy spin. Humans are ever complicated beings, then and now. So I get that. I don’t want to slander previous generations with generalizations or caricatures either. I don’t think the Golden Age was some cave man period and oh, aren’t we so evolved now. No period of history is completely good or bad. Your grandmother’s experience is impressive and I applaud her. But I don't believe that it’s something that can be accurately extrapolated to all golden age women’s experiences. Especially, as you concede, in a military setting. For every “It wasn’t a problem for her”, it was a crippling difficulty for someone else. Neither experience is the whole picture by itself. As is often the case, life can be very different for someone during the same period and the same time, just depending on where you lived and what status you started with. And with no snide-ness intended whatsoever, your own life experience was not as a women living in the era.
I can only say as a girl growing up in a military family in the 60s and 70s (and I admire much about the military, but the treatment of women is not always one of them) surrounded by Golden Age adults, there was much of this attitude to be seen – I didn’t have to hunt for it. It was a given. Condescension was rampant and casual.
My mother was discouraged to drive and couldn’t handle the bank account – it was in her husband’s name and only he handled the money. This was not a situation she wanted, but she felt trapped by these circumstances. She had to forge my father’s name to pay for groceries when he would disappear with his paycheck.
When I tried out for Little League during the first wave of girls being allowed to, (and while the volume on Agent Carter is certainly turned up), there was not a single thing that Peggy Carter experienced (the casual humiliations, the dismissal, the subservient errands, the lack of credit, the open sneering) that I didn’t experience. From male adults to a child. (To acknowledge the ever real gray area, the boys themselves were largely accepting, and I had a few who came up to me to tell me it wasn’t fair that I got cut, because I played so much better than xxx or xxx, other boys).
My objection to how the show has dealt with it is purely a narrative consideration. Even the most blustery bigot or sexist person is not actually a cartoon. I agree it’s simply better storytelling to depict 3-dimensional characters. I’m just leery of not swinging from one end saying “Yes, the chauvinism shown was heavy-handed and not nuanced” to a downplaying of the pervasive existence of it during the period, and many decades to follow. Neither sits well with me. Because it was real and often insidiously institutional, even though not everyone experienced it the same way, and I’m okay with it being depicted. Could have been done better, yes, but still.
Yes, knuckle-headed sexism can be tedious to watch. But not as tedious as it is to live through, I promise.
I cede my own soapbox. I really don’t want to turn the Agent Carter thread into a sexism thread, however, so maybe we should just throw in a YMMV towel and shake.
And in that spirit, I'll say to Frunobulax, YES to showing some backstory on the Black Widow program. I know only the sketchings of that, not having been a Marvel geek as a kid (dorry, DC, here) so I'm looking forward to some fleshing out of that. It will add to my understanding of Natasha just in time for Avengers 2.
I can only say as a girl growing up in a military family in the 60s and 70s (and I admire much about the military, but the treatment of women is not always one of them) surrounded by Golden Age adults, there was much of this attitude to be seen – I didn’t have to hunt for it. It was a given. Condescension was rampant and casual.
My mother was discouraged to drive and couldn’t handle the bank account – it was in her husband’s name and only he handled the money. This was not a situation she wanted, but she felt trapped by these circumstances. She had to forge my father’s name to pay for groceries when he would disappear with his paycheck.
When I tried out for Little League during the first wave of girls being allowed to, (and while the volume on Agent Carter is certainly turned up), there was not a single thing that Peggy Carter experienced (the casual humiliations, the dismissal, the subservient errands, the lack of credit, the open sneering) that I didn’t experience. From male adults to a child. (To acknowledge the ever real gray area, the boys themselves were largely accepting, and I had a few who came up to me to tell me it wasn’t fair that I got cut, because I played so much better than xxx or xxx, other boys).
My objection to how the show has dealt with it is purely a narrative consideration. Even the most blustery bigot or sexist person is not actually a cartoon. I agree it’s simply better storytelling to depict 3-dimensional characters. I’m just leery of not swinging from one end saying “Yes, the chauvinism shown was heavy-handed and not nuanced” to a downplaying of the pervasive existence of it during the period, and many decades to follow. Neither sits well with me. Because it was real and often insidiously institutional, even though not everyone experienced it the same way, and I’m okay with it being depicted. Could have been done better, yes, but still.
Yes, knuckle-headed sexism can be tedious to watch. But not as tedious as it is to live through, I promise.
I cede my own soapbox. I really don’t want to turn the Agent Carter thread into a sexism thread, however, so maybe we should just throw in a YMMV towel and shake.
And in that spirit, I'll say to Frunobulax, YES to showing some backstory on the Black Widow program. I know only the sketchings of that, not having been a Marvel geek as a kid (dorry, DC, here) so I'm looking forward to some fleshing out of that. It will add to my understanding of Natasha just in time for Avengers 2.
