[Libertas]

https://archive.is/gHWZs

Some words of wisdom from a run of the mill typist reviewing a show whose existence I was blissfully unaware of.

First, the headline:

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Strong in the Real Way: ‘Steven Universe’ and the Shape of Masculinity to Come

Hmmm...I wonder.

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This guest post by Ashley Gallagher appears as part of our theme week on Masculinity.

I wonder what this could mean? Femsplaining masculinity? Surely such a thing is unacceptable.

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I wasn’t very fond of boys growing up. Boys were agents of terror on my young life: my very first memory of body shame is from a summer school sprinkler day, when a 7-year-old boy chased me relentlessly around the courtyard trying to pull my bikini. (Next week, and every week thereafter that summer, I wore a one-piece to sprinkler day.) Even worse, the adults in my life – particularly men – often excused behavior like this as something natural and intrinsic to boyhood. When I’d complain of a boy at school teasing me, they’d tease me back, insisting that not only was this a boy’s way of expressing affection for me, but also that I must be crushing back, if I was so fixated on it. After that, I was far less likely to tell the adults in my life when, say, another group of boys chased me around my neighborhood on bikes, demanding that I admit to liking one of their friends, and scaring me so badly that I hid in a neighbor’s yard until they went away, instinctively feeling that I didn’t want them to know where I really lived. Boyhood as it’s commonly understood and treated is toxic: on the theater of the playground where children are trying on identities to see what fits, many boys are already skilled at assuming the sexist behaviors that will seem so harmless to them as adult men, because that’s how they were treated when they were children.

So immediately we have our precious typist approaching the question from a place of fear. Obviously these horrifying childhood experiences must have done a number on her. If this was written about any privileged victim group, surely the calls would be "bigotry!"

We can thus see her psychology and the psychology of the social justice warrior in general - reality must conform to my damaged mind. You see, only her way of expressing masculinity is acceptable. We will see this soon enough.

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That’s a big part of the reason why I fell in love with Steven Universe almost as soon as I started watching it. Steven, the title character, isn’t the troublemaking, reckless, pain-in-the-butt Boy-with-a-capital-B I feared I’d have to watch around to get to the powerful women and loving queer folk I really wanted to see. He’s unreserved, adventurous, and confident – all good traits that are fairly typical for boy leads in kids’ shows – but he is also affectionate, selfless, very prone to crying, and just plain effin’ adorable. I mean, look at this clip from the first episode–how could I resist the charm of that plump little kid reciting the bizarrely detailed hip-hop ad jingle for his favorite novelty ice cream treat, all without an ounce of self-consciousness? I smiled and laughed like he and the Crystal Gems do in that moment, refreshed and entertained by the genuine joy that Steven seems to radiate.

Our precious typist seems to believe that these things can't be expressed in a masculine way, they must instead only be expressed in a decidedly anti-masculine one - that being an oversensitive weakling. Selflessness can't be expressed say, by trying to build something for the benefit of a better world than you left behind. It's instead better to express it by crying about things passively. Maybe our typist is trapped in a gender binary?

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Steven is truly the beating heart of the show, but it’s not because he’s a boy. In fact, many of his defining characteristics are distinctly un-boyish, as far as popular media tropes are concerned. Empathy and kindness, for example, are often depicted as especially feminine, and therefore less powerful traits than traditionally masculine ones like ambition or courage, but in the world of Steven Universe, not only are they not at all treated as weaknesses or internal conflicts, they are also frequently the source of his greatest powers.

Now gentlemen, I don't know about you guys, but I draw a strong correlation between our "kind, empathetic" society, where we accept delusions and degenerate behavior of all kinds, and weakness. After all, we seem to be continuously weakening our military in favor of "kindness and empathy." Meanwhile, ISIS continues to tear up the Middle East despite our valiant efforts, Putin makes his moves, and the US is increasingly regarded as a joke.

Kindness and empathy has a place in society, but it must be tempered by the masculine virtue of strength, discipline, and overcoming obstacles. But that might imply a healthy relationship between the sexes instead of a dictation - not a world our typist wants.

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Unlike most boy “chosen ones,” Steven’s magical abilities are distinctly defensive: the very first weapon that Steven is able to summon in the first episode, “Gem Glow,” is not an offensive weapon at all, but an impenetrable shield – bright pink and adorned with a rose emblem, no less. (Which gendered toy aisle would an action figure like that end up in, I wonder?) He can form a pink glassy bubble to protect himself and others around him. And, perhaps most subversively of all, he has healing abilities. While that is obviously a very handy power to have, folks well-acquainted with fantasy genres in a number of forms, particularly video game RPGs, will also probably be aware of the ubiquitous idea that healing is for support characters, usually women, and therefore has the reputation of being a relatively uncool, even “useless” power. Not only is Steven – the only boy Gem that exists, as far as we know – the first Gem since his mother, Rose Quartz, to have these healing powers, the show treats this frequently feminized ability as the extremely vital asset that it is. Several of the first season’s episodes center on Steven’s healing abilities, including a very important two-parter, “Mirror Gem” and “Ocean Gem,” in which Steven heals a character named Lapis Lazuli who has been deeply injured both physically and emotionally, even though the Crystal Gems initially insist that he should fear and reject her. Partially due to this kindness, Lapis is later in a position to help Steven and the Crystal Gems in some very unexpected ways. In another episode, “Monster Buddies,” Steven attempts to befriend a baby monster that the Crystal Gems would normally destroy. In fact, it’s the infant form of a monster that once attacked Steven himself and his home – but despite that history, Steven is still determined to heal it, not with his powers (which he actually doesn’t discover until an episode or two later), but with his caring, a feat that even his legendary mother could never accomplish.

As our typist waxes Sarkeesian, we should remember what I said above.

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Steven’s kind personality is just as powerful in regular human contexts as it is in magical ones. Indeed, Steven reminds me of no other fictional character more than Usagi Tsukino, aka Sailor Moon, whose ultra-famous superpower is her ability to befriend literally anyone, and heal the world with the power of that love. (Even some of Steven’s poses are strongly reminiscent of magical girl moves.)

Here, gentlemen, is our first visual confirmation that this show seems to be an SJW's wet dream. The main character, while white (and that will be addressed below!), is a fat, effeminate boy that serves the female imperative without building his own strong sense of masculine identity. More on our hero's background to come.

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Case in point: no one seems to notice the quiet, solitary Connie, but after Steven becomes best friends with her, she reveals herself to be a whip-smart, multi-talented, delightfully nerdy, wonderful kid. They clearly have more-than-friendship feelings for each other, but those feelings are allowed to comfortably coexist with their close friendship, and the show gracefully resists treating their crush as a source of conflict.

Honestly, Steven and Connie’s relationship is one of the best things about the show, because it is such a breath of fresh air. The twisted narratives of young love, whether in fiction or real-life, are so gut-wrenchingly familiar: they hate each other, but they’re secretly drawn to one another; or, he’s cruel to her because he doesn’t know how to express how he really feels. Not so in Steven Universe. From the very start, Steven treats Connie as a person who is interesting and dear to him as an individual, and whose well-being is vitally important to him, rather than as some sort of ideal love interest that he needs to maintain distance from to attain. There’s mystery and miscommunication, sure, but no fear, no hatred of oneself or the other, and lots of joy and discovery. In one of my favorite episodes, “Alone Together,” Connie tells Steven that she can’t dance around other people because she’s afraid of them staring at her. Steven invites Connie to dance with him, doing his best to help her feel comfortable: he holds out his hand to her, but steps back to give her space to make the decision, and even covers his eyes so that she doesn’t feel him staring. When they start dancing, they coordinate naturally and easily, resulting in some very special magic that makes them fuse into one beautiful, confident, genderqueer and very dance-y being: Stevonnie, the physical manifestation of Steven and Connie’s mutual affection and, most importantly, trust.

I find it interesting that something like "ghosting" is described, which as we all know, gentlemen, is an atmosphere by and large created by our unregulated women. The emasculation of our precious hero also takes place - it's wrong for him to stare, to be attracted, it's wrong for him to take the lead, he must instead treat the object of his affections like a precious snowflake from the start. That, gentlemen, is how we all know you attract women in the first place.

To add the icing on the cake, we have another shot of our hero in action:



Let's see what SJW tropes we can spot.

- Interracial relationship? Check.
- Emasculated fat (white) beta being led along by the mighty female (who is also a POC?) Check.

Our typist now discusses of all things, fatherhood! But this, gentlemen, is not a healthy masculine fatherhood promoted by men like Homer, as seen in his Odyssey. It's 2015 now, our conceptions need to change.

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Lest you think that maybe all of Steven’s goodness, all of his sweetness and caring, is made possible solely by the naiveté of his youth, consider his family. Aside from the three ancient feminine aliens who raise him full time, Steven also has a great dad, Greg Universe, who is just as responsible for Steven’s strength of character. At first blush, Greg – kind of a Homer Simpson lookalike, in my opinion – seems to fit solidly into the “bad dad” type: not only does he not live with Steven as a primary caregiver, he’s also a pretty unambitious, aging, small-time ex-musician who lives in his van. However, Greg is very present in Steven’s life, offering unconditional support and love even when Steven is going through experiences that Greg both fears and doesn’t fully understand. In “Catfingers,” Greg watches over Steven through a scary incident of shape-shifting magic gone horribly wrong, and manages to help him get his son’s powers under control, despite his aversion to magic in general and shape-shifting magic particularly. On a couple of other occasions, Greg gives Steven the space (albeit reluctantly), to take on magical missions that only Steven can accomplish, but always makes sure to stay as close by as possible to offer help, or even just to welcome him home when he returns.

So in other words, our hero is going through something painfully familiar to many modern men - being raised without a full-time father, and his own father, while there, can't even provide a counter-example, feeding his son to the female buzzsaw hook line and sinker. I suppose, ironically, this is a case of "like father, like son."

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Greg isn’t perfect; even his possibly-soon-to-be-tattooed-on-my-body catchphrase says so. (“If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have hot dogs.”) But he loves himself, and he loves Steven, and he’s absolutely uninterested in making Steven or anyone else feel bad for his own flaws, for the absence of Steven’s mom, or for any of the personality traits and abilities that make Steven uniquely him. As a gentle, nurturing father who does his best despite often pretty crummy circumstances – including being homeless, a widower (for all intents and purposes), and having a hoarding problem – Greg Universe not only provides an excellent role model for his son, but also an interesting complement to the equally trope-bucking Crystal Gems.

So in other words, you have a father who is not trying to get his son to recognize his flaws and improve himself as a man. That's a Bronze Age construct I guess. It is better, instead, to delve into feels and recognize your special snowflake-ness, even if the suitors are eating you out of house and home. It is better, instead, to heal and befriend them.

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Rebecca Sugar has said that her inspiration for the character of Steven is her own brother, which sheds a little light on the loving care that is put into creating him. (Steven Sugar is, notably, a background artist on the show, and boy, are those intimately detailed, fantastically colored backgrounds a delight to behold.) It’s easier to witness how bad people can be to each other in real life than ever before, and to be personally on the receiving end of much of it; sometimes it can feel like I’m barely surviving in a world full of suffering and ugliness. I admit that, at those times, I frequently expect to find fault in everything around me. I was concerned, before watching Steven Universe, that it would disappoint me – that a show about a little boy at the center of his own universe would end up following the familiar frightening paths and byways toward a narrow and troubling version of masculinity. Instead, I’ve found that Steven Universe is a show dedicated to showing that our lives don’t have to be ruled by rigid hetero- and cis-normative gender roles. Steven reminds me that not only can people in general, and men specifically, be good and kind and powerfully loving, and not only should expect I that from them, but that goodness is also right in front of me and all around me. I’m extremely fortunate to have many people in my life, including men, who are as caring and supportive and gentle as any of the literal light beings from space in this cartoon.

The apple really doesn't fall far from the tree. Our typist has unresolved issues from her childhood and other places, and so, does it seem, the creators of this show. Degenerates attempting to raise degenerates, under the guise of ideological gobbeldy-gook.

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In “Lion 3 Straight to Video,” Steven finds an old VHS tape that his mom leaves for him to find, knowing that she will have to give up her physical form once he’s born. In it, she tells him that he is loved, that he is extraordinary, and that his planet and his people are special to her because of how full of possibilities they are. To me, Steven Universe is a boy who embodies the possibilities for masculinities that are rooted in love and pride rather than domination, and for a way of life where all gender expressions can be freed, little by little, from the oppressive baggage that so often tie them down.

See, gentlemen, it is simply not acceptable for you to be a man who wants to be an actual man. You must instead become like your new hero - passive, indecisive, weak, accepting of any degeneracy, and completely deferential to women.

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In the past, this kind of shit used to make me mad, but it's gotten to the point where it's too exhausting. This was hilarious to me. I also view it as an opportunity - there is a clamoring out there for real, meaningful art that is not rooted in SJW weakness, and I intend to create such art. My book will promote toxic masculinity galore and feminine women, and I know with the success of Protein World based on SJW anger, I should try the same strategy. Take advantage of the degeneracy, guys.

It is, however, telling, that this is the kind of show that's running on Cartoon Network now. Back when I was a kid growing up in the ancient 1990's watching Cartoon Network, I used to watch Loony Tunes, Dexter's Laboratory, Johnny Quest, SWAT Kats, etc. I feel really bad for the kids watching drivel like this. Not only are they missing out on amazing fun due to the need for ideological purity, they are going to be raised as directionless automatons and special snowflakes, completely incapable of dealing with the real world to come and the vast challenges of the 21st century.

If we thought Millennials were bad, we haven't seen anything yet.

[Socrates]

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Steven reminds me that not only can people in general, and men specifically, be good and kind and powerfully loving, and not only should expect I that from them, but that goodness is also right in front of me and all around me.

This part bothers me. Essentially she is stating that prior to watching this cartoon, her default opinion of men is that they are incapable of displaying goodness, kindness and love. That being a masculine man (which shouldn't even need to be a phrase as it is redundant) somehow means being and displaying the opposite of those qualities. Yet, there is a passage in the Bible that states (Ephesians 5:28-32):

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In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. A man who loves his wife loves himself, for no man ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cherishes it, just as the Christ does the congregation, because we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and he will stick to his wife, and the two will be one flesh.” This sacred secret is great. Now I am speaking about Christ and the congregation. Nevertheless, each one of you must love his wife as he does himself; on the other hand, the wife should have deep respect for her husband.

This was written approximately 2,000 years ago by the apostle Paul. God's word would not instruct men to behave this way if they were incapable of it. Rather, this is the proper state of a relationship between men and women, yet people today completely disregard it. Marriage today is a sham. One flesh? Yeah right. Many don't even share a bank account. Love for the woman, and respect for the man? I'd wager women get a lot more love from men than men get respect from women today.

But to get back to my original point, men are fully capable of kindness and goodness and love. Yet none of those things have anything to do with the word salad du jour regarding gender norms. Many men would love nothing more than to bestow love and kindness and goodness upon a woman and have it returned to the via deep respect. To truly be one flesh with a woman and build a life and family together, completely united and committed. Yet this woman's whole worldview revolves around her inability to even conceive that men are capable of such things. Men are bad. Men are to be feared. And masculinity is to be eradicated / evolved into something acceptable to SJW's and their warped society. It's disgusting.

[Phoenix]

I feel like I'm trying to read TV static.

[Bear Hands]

The men she seems to so desperately crave existed when she was a teenager. By assuming all boys are bad because of a few experiences, she ignored the type of boys that she claims to prefer. None of them got laid, and have either turned into MGTOWs or players. The typists can never see cause and effect from their own preferences. Any poor boy taking this kind of advice is dooming himself to celibacy or worse.

[Mekorig]

Surprised that the SWJ took such long time to writte a piece about that garbage tv-show. Saw a few episodes, and only after reading its wikipedia entry i figured the protagonist was male.

[Ocelot]

(07-01-2015 12:12 PM)Bear Hands Wrote:  

The men she seems to so desperately crave existed when she was a teenager. By assuming all boys are bad because of a few experiences, she ignored the type of boys that she claims to prefer. None of them got laid, and have either turned into MGTOWs or players. The typists can never see cause and effect from their own preferences. Any poor boy taking this kind of advice is dooming himself to celibacy or worse.

It's been said many times before, but one way of looking at feminism is as the greatest shit test in history. It is essentially the collective voice of the privileged western woman screaming "men need to start behaving in ways that make them invisible to me". Whoever's left is who's worth their time.

Unfortunately for civilisation, over a long timespan, this has massive dysgenic effects.

As for the show, it's another one by Pendleton Ward, who looks exactly like you'd expect him to:



Clearly the kind of high-T pussy-magnet young boys should be taking their lead from.

His flagship show is Adventure Time, which when it first started was a kid's program with a large surrealist/trippy streak. After a couple of seasons the fan base was more adult hipsters than children, so they changed direction to cater.

Even from the early days the show neatly packaged distilled anti-game as profound wisdom to children, but it became more noticeably SJW after season 3. I'd say that Pendleton Ward is like a subtler version of Joss Whedon - since he is ostensibly producing programmes for children, any agit-prop has to be more covert than a teen-action series like Buffy, but it's unmistakable.

[Galahad]

Is this a women writing about a fictional character that she chose as her perfect role model for men because she feel so hyper insecure?
What does she do for a living? Is she a blogger?

[2Wycked]

A few points:

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[O]n the theater of the playground where children are trying on identities to see what fits, many boys are already skilled at assuming the sexist behaviors that will seem so harmless to them as adult men, because that’s how they were treated when they were children.

If by sexist she means boys treating girls differently, then yeah. Boys know they are boys, they can't un-know that. And -- as usual -- she's asking that boys be raised to treat girls and boys equally by treating girls differently than they treat boys. I don't know how this differs substantially from previous generations of boys, but boy equality sure is hard.

More on point, notice how she so casually assumes that if lessons are not dispensed to boys, right in from on her, boys don't get the life lessons they should. Not only is she wrong about childhood development -- the trying on of identities happens more in adolescence -- but she is making everybody else in "her story " a supporting character in the narrative as told by her. Narrators are unreliable as it is, but this woman? What should have that one, terrible future anti-feminist have done instead of trying to tug on her bikini? Rip off some boys trunks? That would have been hilarious and gay-friendly. #LoveWins, right?

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Steven, the title character, isn’t the troublemaking, reckless, pain-in-the-butt Boy-with-a-capital-B I feared I’d have to watch around to get to the powerful women and loving queer folk I really wanted to see.

She just described the sort of man that drives her wild. And, why is this a dichotomy? Fearless, impish, brash males v. powerful and loving women and gays? She can't get offended at that interpretation: that is literally her assertion.

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He’s unreserved, adventurous, and confident – all good traits that are fairly typical for boy leads in kids’ shows – but he is also affectionate, selfless, very prone to crying, and just plain effin’ adorable.

Does this woman actually know any boys or men? Boys -- like any other child that is actually loved -- are incredibly affectionate, spontaneous and often prone to crying if they feel sad or hurt.

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I mean, look at this clip from the first episode–how could I resist the charm of that plump little kid reciting the bizarrely detailed hip-hop ad jingle for his favorite novelty ice cream treat, all without an ounce of self-consciousness?

Yo, it's a cartoon, Hannah Montana. Also, this woman -- like most women, nothing new here -- she framing her views of others passively: How could I not like him? Her default for viewing males might be through the lens of haughty disdain and gender superiority, but what she is really telling us is that is she a narcissist without the grandiosity: people need to prove their worth to her by how they make her feel. She feels this as "discovering" others, as if they were little more than shadowy objects before she dusted them off and discovered their true worth.

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Empathy and kindness, for example, are often depicted as especially feminine, and therefore less powerful traits than traditionally masculine ones like ambition or courage

Empathy and kindness are incredibly important values for people to have. However, they rarely lead to power or are "seen as powerful." That's not why people have those particular positive traits, but when you want to be "seen as powerful" for all your emotional depth and powers of caring it seems very reasonable one would get the whys mixed up. And, for the last time, the dichotomy between male indifference v. female empathy/kindness is a false one. Does she watch BRAVO or MTV? Quite the wellspring of feminine decency and kindness.

A couple more quick notes:

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Steven Sugar is, notably, a background artist

Right where men should be, right?

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To me, Steven Universe is a boy who embodies the possibilities for masculinities that are rooted in love and pride rather than domination, and for a way of life where all gender expressions can be freed, little by little, from the oppressive baggage that so often tie them down.

Notice, its never girls that need to be freed from the oppressive constraints of femininity in this country. Is that because of all the Xanax? Where are all these terrifying and domineering men she complains of? I don't where these feminists find their men, but the Dominican sounds nice this time of year.

These feminists need these narratives told about TV shows and movies. Imagine if they had to live a year without TV, movies or the Internet. She said nothing new whatsoever about feminist "theory" and spent most of her piece talking about herself, which isn't bad in and of itself, of course -- but it's that she reinterprets everything in her life with the typical feminist knife of "gender oppression." In other words, she would finally be recognized by "others" -- some other omnipotent entity -- as being powerful for feminine traits if our society wasn't set up to worship boys for being masculine.

[TheWastelander]

Female + autism = feminism

I can't claim credit for this brilliant equation and I forget who came up with it, but after a few seconds of reading this drivel it was the first thing that came to mind.

[Aenigmarius]

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To me, Steven Universe is a boy who embodies the possibilities for masculinities that are rooted in love and pride rather than domination, and for a way of life where all gender expressions can be freed, little by little, from the oppressive baggage that so often tie them down.

He is also a eunich, so he has that going for him.