
The Social Network, Where Women Never Have Ideas - devmonk
http://jezebel.com/5654633/the-social-network-where-women-never-have-ideas
======
Towle_
If you got bored reading this, it may be because you've read this same article
a dozen times before. The only difference was the name of the movie.

Whether it's The Social Network or, say, any Judd Apatow film of the last few
years, there's been no shortage of oblivious feminista blogger-types dying to
tell you how offended they were by...(what are actually) figments of their own
imagination/ the selection errors of their own narrow perception.

The Social Network is an exposé on Mark Zuckerberg. It is NOT a commentary on
the state of gender relations in the social areas of either college or the
tech community at large. As an exposé on Mark Zuckerberg, its main focus will
be, you guessed it, Mark Zuckerberg. If you, _Jezebel columnist Irin Carmon_ ,
happen to place your focus anywhere other than Zuckerberg, you are bound to
find inconsistencies with the real world (movies, as portrayals of the real
world, are inherently fake and inconsistent). Women never have ideas. Also, a
disproportionate number of the lampshades are forest green; in FY 2004 forest
green accounted for a mere 3.3% of lampshade sales in the United States,
whereas in the movie, no fewer than 4 of 9 lampshades is forest green-- WHAT
THE FUCK.

Maybe the roles women fill in the movie isn't some sort of perverse commentary
on everyone with two X chromosomes. Maybe those roles are just the only ones
available for women to fill in a movie about a Harvard computer hacker, his
Harvard computer hacker buddies, and the tech company they founded together.
Or does Sorkin need to manufacture a prominent female character who's smart,
comes up with lots of fantastic ideas, actually happens to be the best
computer hacker on campus, would never stoop to wearing slutty clothing to
attract men, sometimes wears slutty clothing but lambasts every man who
compliments her attire by asking why you don't compliment Joey on his rugby
shirt because you're a sexist that's why, would never have an abortion because
of her earth-shattering instinct for motherhood no matter what society says
about the appropriate time and place to have a family, would definitely have
an abortion if she wanted to because it's her choice anyway not that dumb
jock's and who cares what her dad says anyway he's just a cog in the
Patriarchy.

~~~
FlemishBeeCycle
_... there's been no shortage of oblivious feminista blogger-types dying to
tell you how offended they were by...(what are actually) figments of their own
imagination/ the selection errors of their own narrow perception._

...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.

------
jcnnghm
_The final clubs that the movie presents as the driving forces of social life
at Harvard were and are fundamentally and functionally misogynistic, relics of
a time when women couldn't own property and gained access to elite spaces
based on either pedigree or sex appeal. At Harvard a year ahead of Zuckerberg,
I stopped attending parties at the clubs my sophomore year out of disgust
(with a rant at one club's president that I was tired of either being
invisible or hit on in his club, which essentially ended with him hitting on
me and me telling him to fuck off)._

She seems kind of bitter. I wonder what her thoughts are on the female-only
clubs at Harvard. It has always struck me as highly hypocritical that the same
women that scream loudly about any sort of all-male social club have no
problem whatsoever with female-only gyms and the like.

~~~
pgbovine
_have no problem whatsoever with female-only gyms and the like_

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

~~~
bpodgursky
I don't actually think that would be a problem for most men.

~~~
pgbovine
uh, ok without this thread devolving into 4chan ... i doubt that you (or most
men) would want to be demeaned and treated like a sex object by a bunch of
women whom you find utterly repulsive. maybe a better way to think about this
is: replace 'women' with 'massive prisoners', and 'gym' with 'prison'. how
many men do you know would appreciate that?

~~~
jcnnghm
I've gone to the gym an average of over 200 times a year for the last seven
years, and I have yet to see a woman demeaned in some kind of prison-esque
situation. The plural of anecdote isn't data, but thats a lot of anecdotes
from lots of people and places. In fact, the only awkward gender situation
I've encountered was a time when a woman asked me to stop using the leg press
I was using, and remove the weight, so she could use it. On it's face this
seems simple enough, but I had 600lbs on the machine at the time, and taking
it off and getting it back on is a workout in itself. I started moving the
weights after I explained that I only had one more set, when a trainer came
over and told me to finish up, and explained to her it was too much to move,
just impractical when I would be done in a minute. I'm sure she views that as
some kind of demeaning situation, but the trainer and I both saw it as her
being unreasonably demanding, probably without realizing it herself.

~~~
pgbovine
oh sorry i don't think i made my point clear. i didn't mean to say that
primarily-male gyms were misogynist. i was referencing the supposedly
misogynist frat parties portrayed in the movie and saying that an equivalent
form of sexism might be an all-women's gym (or social club) where men were
treated like sex objects. one of the parents said something to the effect of
"heh heh men would like being treated like that", to which i responded, "ummm,
not really". ok this is silly and off-topic by now :)

------
pigbucket
In The West Wing Sorkin created some of the smartest and interesting female
characters in the history of television. If he wants to create a fictional
universe in which quasi-historical figures inhabit a more sexist world, and in
particular if he wants to do that with a view to establishing an ironic
subtext for the film (social network as rooted in deeply problematic social
structure), then I think he's earned the right.

~~~
Periodic
I don't think this is some sort of game where you can gain some credit doing
one thing which lets you do the opposite and have others turn a blind eye.
People might still give you respect despite a misogynistic movie, a flop
company, or embarrassing outburst, but that doesn't give you a "right" to do
it and not be roasted for it.

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.

~~~
pigbucket
I agree more or less with everything you say, but don't think it's really
relevant to what I said. Perhaps it was not clear, but I don't think the movie
is misogynist, although it is in some obvious respects about misogyny. The
terrain of sexual politics is difficult to negotiate, and it is possible to
criticize intellectually-challenged unsympathetic writers even for trying to
aestheticize in film the negotiation of that terrain. The fact that Sorkin has
established his authority to write sensitively and intelligently about
complicated subjects about which everyone seems to have intensely entrenched
opinions means for me that we should avoid the knee-jerk response to the
appearance in his writing of unimpressive female characters and misogyny
towards them and at least consider that something more meaningful is going on
than the banal intrusion into the film of the author's own supposed sexism.

------
1053r
Although it's true that in the movie women were basically presented as sex
objects, and that in real life, Zuckerburg has a close and presumably non-
sexual object with his COO, it's also true that the startup world is insanely
male dominated. I've heard that VCs are sexist, and tend to want to fund young
single white men, and I've heard other reasons given. But attempting to
confine the gender imbalance entirely to the silver screen is disingenuous. We
as a community really need to be doing some soul searching about why women
aren't found in "man" Jose and silicon valley.

------
philwelch
_And by the way, you would never know from the movie that The Phoenix, the
club Eduardo Saverin belongs to, was the most racially and ethnically diverse
one of the lot._

Well, the Zuckerberg character _does_ explicitly say Saverin got into the club
because he was Brazilian.

------
jsm386
I won't repeat what others have already said (Towle_, jcnnghm) but I had a
long discussion about an article that made a similar argument over at Daily
Beast this morning. [http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-
stories/2010-10-03/th...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-
stories/2010-10-03/the-social-networks-women-arent-prizes-theyre-props/)

What I found most interesting about both of these critical pieces is how they
are so divorced from any sort of appropriate context (see below for more on
that). For the last couple of months there has been an interesting, important
debate about women in tech/Silicon Valley, in particular at TC, and other
spots. I don't see how you can come out with a piece like this one or the
Beast one w/o talking about that...especially when you are bringing up COO
Sheryl Sandberg's role in FB's current success (which is irrelevant to the
movie).

Perhaps this is the only context that matters to them - the writer at Jezebel
and the writer at Daily Beast both were students at Harvard in 2003.

------
ashleyreddy
I was just glad that they made a movie about a successful startup. All the
boring dramatic crap was lost on me after he said Emacs. :)

------
mattmaroon
"specifically, and more or less exclusively, men who want to have sex with
women, who usually won't let them unless they're rich or row crew"

In most of the country, rowing crew counts against you.

------
baddox
I'm pretty sure the black guy said "Is there a problem?"

------
mkramlich
This is the second criticism/rant I've seen along these lines since the movie
came out. But each time they fail to point out, or emphasize, that 3 of the
females with the most on-screen time in the movie (2 lawyers, and Mark's early
GF) are portrayed as decent and/or intelligent and professional people with
brains. Yes there were several "gold diggers" and party girls, groupies, at
least one psycho-girl, etc. And you know what? Those exist in real life too.
But it's incorrect to say that the movie portrays all women with a bad brush.
As in real life, some are good, some are bad, and many are shades of grey.

