Talent, Skill, Popularity, and Misogyny: A Feminist Critique

[AMVGuide]

@Kionon: Sexual dimorphism is only one way science attempts to describe the biological world.

Consider this:

Everyone has Testosterone and Estrogen.

The balance of T and E results in male/female traits being more pronounced:
If the balance is more towards T, male traits become more pronounced.
If the balance is more towards E, female traits become more pronounced.

This doesn't mean that everyone is going to be exaggerated towards one pole.
Although, generally speaking, one does wind up on one side of the balance-- it's just a matter of how much.
If we're talking about from birth, starting from that slight unbalanced point, a chain reaction is set off:

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members ... hp?v=56572
( I like to imagine the starting would look something like this )

Then, environmental factors tend to tip the hormone balance towards that direction more and more; often toppling over onto one side completely; giving rise to the genotypic traits typical of male and female; but not always.

Now, out of convenience, most people correlate gender with their genotypic traits.
Unfortunately, sometimes that convenience isn't there.
But here's the thing: Gender can be whatever you make it to be.

Now back to the point:
Hormones like Testosterone affect who you are. And --whether you think about it or not-- it can come through in an AMV.

[Castor Troy]

This is probably the stupidest thread I've ever read on the .org and I'm probably not even going to bother reading anything past the 3rd page.

Despite the number of outstanding, amazing, veteran women editors we have, these spaces are still overwhelmingly male dominated. And that is a problem.

When the hell was there ever an apparent problem with men dominating over women in the amv community? Kionon, you've been around longer than the time EK was dominating the scene with her "Failed Experiments in Video Editing" video, so why has this suddenly become a problem for you?

This is a call to get out of our comfort zones. To challenge misogyny where and when we see it. To not participate in it in order to deflect it away from ourselves. To question our assumptions about what we may or may not have internalised. And to ultimately be nicer to each other.

No. This type of discussion does not belong on the .org. This is a place to talk about videos, not your desire to be every woman's knight in shining armor.

We were fine the way we were before. Thanks.

[Kionon]

AMVGuide, you said @Kionon, so I am going to presume that little primer was directed at me. Do you at all see the irony in lecturing me on hormone balances and their subsequent traits?



I probably know more about this stuff both in theory and in personal experience than most individuals here. Certainly most men. Although, in my experience, women in general have a far better understanding of hormonal balances affect moods, actions, and personalities (as well as physical traits) because of the menstrual cycle, use of hormonal birth control, hormone replacement therapy, menopause, etc.

If you were just making general comments and happened to tag me for some strange reason knowing that I was already well aware of this stuff, then please accept my apologies.

Gender is a social construction, but also a real one. Of course it comes through in art. And certainly a hormonal imbalance can given one different perspectives on art which might come through in creative endeavours, but hormone imbalances don't create gender. They just might dispose one towards a gender construction which is already in existence in a certain time, place, culture.

When the hell was there ever an apparent problem with men dominating over women in the amv community? Kionon, you've been around longer than the time EK was dominating the scene with her "Failed Experiments in Video Editing" video, so why has this suddenly become a problem for you?

You tell me. Is this suddenly a new issue? Did it just somehow develop in the time I've become aware of it? I'm well aware of EK's popularity, but I have a hard, hard time believing that EK managed to dominate the entire hobby by herself. This isn't about numbers, so I'd seriously consider any evidence you had of that. I am not planning to speak for EK, although I might send her a message asking if she has any particular thought on this and how it affected the early days.

Why has this suddenly become a problem for me? First, I quibble with the word suddenly. It's taken me a few years to go to this point and quite a few months of observations to finish and release the essay. Now, if you ask me why it has become a problem over the last few years, there are a few reasons, most notably the removal of my own privilege blinders. Your critique here is valid; where was I? As I look back at years old bullshit comments, I have to wonder where the hell I was, too. Well, I will be blunt, there is personal experience here as well. That's how privilege works. It blinds you until you yourself no longer have privilege, for one reason or another, and what I have experienced is part of a larger pervasive pattern.

What has been seen cannot be unseen.

No. This type of discussion does not belong on the .org. This is a place to talk about videos, not your desire to be every woman's knight in shining armor.

General AMV is also a place to talk about issues in the AMV communities. Unless you're suggesting we stop talking about how we treat outsiders or newbies or WMM users or, etc, etc. Why bother talking about the ways in which the hobby socialises at all if this is only a place to talk about videos?

You're accusing me of white knighting? Are you serious? Do you even know what that means? You act as though just because it was crap directed at others that prompted me to post this that I'm somehow exempt from it myself. This was a feminist critique by a feminist who has had her own personal fill of misogynistic bullshit thrown her way in AMV spaces. Don't put me in some kind of category as an unaffected third party riding in to save the day. Seriously, cut that out.

We were fine the way we were before. Thanks.

Yeah, because these are experiences you don't have to deal with so they must not exist and must not be a problem for anyone ever.

[Castor Troy]

holy shit wtf does any of this have to do with amvs.

x2

[AMVGuide]

@Kionon: My comment about Sexual dimorphism was directed at you since there were a lot of other comments in between; and I wasn't quite sure what you meant when you said: "Put that in your pipe and smoke it." Comments like that are very open to interpretation, so I directed my comment towards you; partially to check for agreement; and partially to air some ideas for everyone else.

@Castor Troy: If it makes you uncomfortable, you can always choose to ignore the thread; but I think you'd be ignoring some valuable insights since things like AMVs --or any creation for that matter-- are a reflection of yourself and who you are. And when you see things in this way, it's remarkable to notice how something like Gender (or more recently discussed, things like Testosterone & Estrogen) can have an influence in your work.

[Kionon]

AMVGuide, the whole "put it in your pipe and smoke it" was just a generic idiom. It didn't mean you specifically. I was really addressing everyone who believes that human biology is entirely dimorphic and that differences in chromosomes and sexual characteristics are exceedingly rare. They're not exceedingly rare. They're not even that uncommon.

Each individual chromosomal difference or hormonal development difference is, in and of itself, a small percentage of the population, but if you look at all possible differences together, you actually find a fairly significant portion of people who are better seen not as 100% male or 100% female, but some mix of the two, even if it's something like 10%/90% or 70%/30%. In many cases the genes don't even have the final say; there are men walking around right now with two X chromosomes, and they don't even know it. On the other hand, some genes can cause serious, serious physical differences which are obvious to everyone. And a great many people are somewhere in between with "hints" or "evidence" of some non-dimorphic development.

As I recently discussed with another editor in a private conversation: hormones are not to be trifled with. If they are out of balance, bad things can happen. Not just mentally, but physically as well. But hormones don't change one's gender. Children usually know their gender, regardless of which gender that happens to be, by about five or six years old, and this is long before they get the flush of hormones that accompanies puberty. It's also known that intentionally unbalancing someone's hormones will make them feel much worse, while balancing someone's hormones will make them feel better. Trying to change someone's gender by messing around with hormones is BAD JUJU. You can only try to bring hormones into balance vis a vis the already constructed gender.

I definitely believe (in fact, I have empirical proof) that hormone balances affect our moods, our actions, our thought patterns, and our perceptions, but it doesn't seem to affect our gender. You can't induce "female identity" by tossing in more estrogen, and you can't induce "male identity" by tossing in more testosterone. All you'll do, if you give the wrong person the wrong hormones is cause to feel really, really, really terrible. That said, I am in agreement that hormone balances can indeed (and I think I said this) affect how we create art.

[AMVGuide]

Oh for sure. I don't want to give the wrong impression that people should take Testosterone or Estrogen supplements; but rather to be aware of it's influence on feelings of aggression, shyness, dominance, submission, etc...

Not to say there are defined links between emotions and certain hormone balances; yet I think most people are aware that there are correlations. Now, the neat thing is people can achieve better hormone balance through natural means like: exercise, sleep, diet, recreational sports-- even a massage can do wonders to work stagnant hormones out of various lymph nodes in the body.

After these type of activities, hormone balance is all shook up; and it can shake up your ideas too --for any creative work-- like writing, music, or... even AMVs

[Kionon]

Not to say there are defined links between emotions and certain hormone balances; yet I think most people are aware that there are correlations.

We can (and do) have empirical evidence of direct causation for specific individuals. There are quite a few individuals in the various AMV communities (most of them probably women) who have seen relief from both mental and physical issues by bringing their hormones into balance. I'm one of them, of course, but I'd bet I'm not the only in this thread, let alone on the forums or on the Org in general.

But now we're sort of talking in circles, as fascinating as this stuff is to me personally; your point stands in direct contrast to both Beo and Castor: hormone differences do affect creativity, and that means AMVs. It isn't where I was going with the original essay, of course, but it's a valid observation for General AMV, no matter what the naysayers say.

Naysayers gonna nay.

[AMVGuide]

hmm... I wouldn't quite say my view is in contrast to anyone's viewpoint:
After all, what is balance for one person, is imbalance for another.

[Otohiko]

After some consideration, I'm moving the thread to general discussion, since it's not directly about AMV-making but rather about community/social issues that are more appropriate here.