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AccomplishedBasil700 t1_iy88rrt wrote

Reply to comment by Marril96 in Is Elinor Lipman a tad antifeminist? by WantToBelieveInMagic

I'm not saying depiction=endorsement—you're right that that would be nonsense. I'm saying writing positively about something bad might indicate a belief that that bad thing is not as bad as it is.

For example: take a writer who consistently portrays women as sexual objects for male MCs, and those women are not characterized in any way other than as sexual objects for masculine pleasure. I think it wouldn't be a stretch to suppose that that writer might be sexist.

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Marril96 t1_iy8afrp wrote

Or maybe they like to write about sexy women, or maybe they're a bad author. I don't know why malice is always attributed to these things. And yeah, saying it night indicate a bad belief is attributing malice because usually people use that as an excuse to accuse authors of being bad people.

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AccomplishedBasil700 t1_iy8ay6q wrote

Malice is an intentional desire to do something bad. Many beliefs like sexism are not intentional, but are a product of being socialized to think something is normal. We're not conscious of every one of our motivations for all of our actions, especially what we create. This is nothing new in feminist theory.

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Marril96 t1_iy8bvno wrote

Feminist theory tends to call everything under the sun sexist so it's not something I'd call a valid source. People often use it as an excuse to call people sexist just because they wrote something.

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