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.
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
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?
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.
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 :)
Demanding single sex accommodations for your gender while being strongly opposed to single sex accommodations for the opposite gender is, bluntly, horseshit. If women have a problem with they way they're treated in gyms, they're free to start gyms where such behavior is against the rules. They're just shouldn't be free to ban you for being male.
Further, she doesn't seem to offer any actual evidence that Facebook was built by female ideas. It seems that everyone that was involved in Facebook in the early stages was male, and everyone that sued Facebook about those early stages was male. Of the two women she cites, one is his sister, and the other joined the company in 2008, long after the company was prominent.
As far as depicting successful, prominent, men as more likely to attract women, I'd have to say that's pretty analogous with reality. I have a girlfriend, but when my company has local events, my business partner has significantly better luck than he would otherwise. I went boating with, then to a bunch of bars with the Real World DC cast last year, and people were throwing themselves at them, and that's pretty C list. If you don't think women are more likely to perform sex acts with men with money, or who are famous, or both, I think you are either a liar or delusional. Power is sexy.
And the world portrayed in the movie is, as in real life, one in which the vast majority of new inventions, technology breakthroughs, and tech businesses, are started and led by men.
At Harvard at least people didn't like that the male final clubs (which are no longer affiliated with the university) predated all other clubs by many years and came to own prime real estate in Cambridge. It's near impossible for present-day female clubs to afford similar spaces. In part it's that imbalance that rankled, I think, though I'm not sure there's a good solution.
Besides, as pgbovine points out, she didn't say she minded the fact that the clubs are male-only, just the attitudes therein.
This is jezebel.com, and thus must be expected. Not that all content on the site is bad, but I usually don't like the site any more than I like male-centric misogynist blogs.
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.
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.
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.
Rather than "he earned the right," it might be more accurate to say "he's proved he's not a sexist pig, the movie is probably fairly accurate in regards to the gender of the protagonists."
But you could probably object to the fact that that explanation is even needed.
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.
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.
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.
... 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.
It's not that Sorkin didn't "manufacture a prominent female character." It's that he manufactured lots of other things about the founding of Facebook, Harvard culture, and Zuckerberg's motivations that all lead to a movie in which women are, across the board, portrayed as stupid slutty airheads who exist solely to serve as prizes for the awesome hackers.
To choose some examples at random: much of Zuckerberg's motivation in the movie come from his bitterness over being dumped by a girlfriend (...a fabricated girlfriend), which led him to make a site to let male students compare the hotness of female students (...modified from real life: facemash compared both men and women; the objectification overtones were far less substantial), which led to blow jobs from personality-less groupies in bathrooms (I can't speak to that, but it would surprise me), while being jealous he couldn't get into to final clubs that featured naked girls dancing on tables, having been bussed in by those final clubs for that purpose (I don't know if Zuckerberg wanted to be in a final club, but I can tell you that the rest of that clause is pretty much entirely fabricated, except for maybe the existence of the bus, which is probably referring to the shuttle that runs between Wellesley college and Harvard square).
I don't have a problem with movies being fiction, I'm just a little confused as to why this story had to be fictionalized in such a glaringly misogynistic way, especially given that A) there's no evidence that Zuckerberg hates women and B) the story is pretty interesting on its own.
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.
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.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 32.4 ms ] threadShe 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.
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
As far as depicting successful, prominent, men as more likely to attract women, I'd have to say that's pretty analogous with reality. I have a girlfriend, but when my company has local events, my business partner has significantly better luck than he would otherwise. I went boating with, then to a bunch of bars with the Real World DC cast last year, and people were throwing themselves at them, and that's pretty C list. If you don't think women are more likely to perform sex acts with men with money, or who are famous, or both, I think you are either a liar or delusional. Power is sexy.
Besides, as pgbovine points out, she didn't say she minded the fact that the clubs are male-only, just the attitudes therein.
This is jezebel.com, and thus must be expected. Not that all content on the site is bad, but I usually don't like the site any more than I like male-centric misogynist blogs.
Well, the Zuckerberg character does explicitly say Saverin got into the club because he was Brazilian.
But you could probably object to the fact that that explanation is even needed.
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.
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.
...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.
It's not that Sorkin didn't "manufacture a prominent female character." It's that he manufactured lots of other things about the founding of Facebook, Harvard culture, and Zuckerberg's motivations that all lead to a movie in which women are, across the board, portrayed as stupid slutty airheads who exist solely to serve as prizes for the awesome hackers.
To choose some examples at random: much of Zuckerberg's motivation in the movie come from his bitterness over being dumped by a girlfriend (...a fabricated girlfriend), which led him to make a site to let male students compare the hotness of female students (...modified from real life: facemash compared both men and women; the objectification overtones were far less substantial), which led to blow jobs from personality-less groupies in bathrooms (I can't speak to that, but it would surprise me), while being jealous he couldn't get into to final clubs that featured naked girls dancing on tables, having been bussed in by those final clubs for that purpose (I don't know if Zuckerberg wanted to be in a final club, but I can tell you that the rest of that clause is pretty much entirely fabricated, except for maybe the existence of the bus, which is probably referring to the shuttle that runs between Wellesley college and Harvard square).
I don't have a problem with movies being fiction, I'm just a little confused as to why this story had to be fictionalized in such a glaringly misogynistic way, especially given that A) there's no evidence that Zuckerberg hates women and B) the story is pretty interesting on its own.
In most of the country, rowing crew counts against you.
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.