Gangster rap, anyone? How much of that is genuine misogyny and how much is “look at my giant cock” posturing? Dr. Dre’s “Bitches Ain’t Shit” has been running through my head reading this thread.
Etc.
Surprisingly for how even-handed toward women he generally is considering the genre and age, Tolkein’s explanation of elf rape is crueler than the most misogynistic elements of most fantasy. Granted, it is not referenced in the primary fiction, but his hypothesis that an elf that were raped would die doesn’t speak well in regards to his attitude of what the primary function of a woman is.
He was just trying to present a bleak and violent view of a post-apocalypse society. I don’t think Ellison was trying to imply that the conditions of living in the world of A Boy and His Dog are the way that life should ideally be or something. It’s a dystopian story. It’s going to contain elements that are upsetting.
And the dog is not just “his dog,” like a pet or something. The dog had human-level intelligence and was able to talk to Albert (Don Johnson) telepathically; the dog was his closest companion, his best friend and his only source of comfort in a dangerous wasteland. Of course he would choose the dog over a woman that he just met. And they ate her because they would have starved otherwise. That’s the kind of stuff that happens in dystopian fiction.
Either you get this or you don’t. But even so, on the basis of that story alone you cannot say that Ellison hates women; that story is like 1 percent of his entire body of work.
To be fair with the good ol’ doc, the “bitch” referred in the lyrics is sometimes a guy. I don’t really get it either.
The thread title says “musician.”
That would disqualify gangsta rap.
Are you thinking of Helen? Jenny cheating on Garp has…creepy implications.
I’m always surprised and delighted by how human Kurt Vonnegut made his female characters. Which I guess says something about many of the books I’ve read, especially the detective ones… As with rap, sometimes you’ve just got to decide if the melody outweighs the misogyny.
There’s definitely a trend in the movies and TV shows I like the most – Freaks and Geeks, Larry Sanders, Arrested Development, Firefly. The women and girls are just as important and funny as the boys, if not more. Or if they’re definitely secondary, they’re mor than walking T&A and clichés. I don’t usually notice it at the outset, but it’s definitely something I’ve observed in hindsight.
I would say that the Sopranos is just plain nuanced period. Next to anything.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea of “Joss Whedon, mysogynist.”
I mean, seriously? Joss Whedon?
No, no: Dick Wolf hates rich people (at least in L&O original) because they commit a disproportionate amount of the crimes on the show. 
It’s possible, if not common. I recall reading a newspaper article about a guy whose female neighbor drugged him and had some sort of sex with him. He woke up and called rape.
I don’t think he’s being a misogynist. I think he’s promoting his favorite fantasy all over his various works. Sexy ass-kicking martial arts/magic girl, bonus points if she has a stripper name and/or is really fucked-up mentally.
I found Dune to be rather misogynist in tone. There’s a vast organization of women who use special powers to further their hidden agenda. They use sex to manipulate men and can even control the gender of their offspring. The heroic woman, Jessica, is the protagonist because she defies her sisters out of love for her man. And despite all their power, the women are ultimately inferior because they must rely on a man, the kwisatz haderach, to do what they cannot. The book reveals a great distrust of women and their perceived power by Frank Herbert.
I don’t know if he hates women, but Henry Rollins sure has some serious issues with them. For example, one of his books includes a poem he wrote in which someone rips out a woman’s uterus and shakes it in her face, screaming, “WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS?”
Yeeeah. That, along with the way he usually deals with women in his writing (they’re usually shallow and backstabbing or unattainably perfect) and the hyper-masculine image he’s created for himself, spells i-s-s-u-e-s.
Dick Wolf may not be a misogynist, but whoever casts the ADAs sure does have a thing for painfully thin women.
David E. Kelley is two for two.
I can’t comment on his fantasies - other than to say I must share at least a couple of them! - but I can comment on his profession: he is a creator and writer of plot-driven narratives. His characters have to be screwed up and redeemed, etc. because that is what moves the plot along. A better question would be how multi-layered are the characters and how adult are they in how they try to process through the challenges required by the plot?
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Ayn Rand sets up black/white scenarios populated by two-dimensional archetypes. They don’t come at problems in a mature, adult way, they react as if they are programmed in the way dictated by their archetype…
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Whedon, on the other hand, presents multi-layered scenarios, where a character like Buffy needs to process through all the gray - good people do bad things, bad people do good things, balancing individual goals with relationship and the demands of Destiny. To me, this demonstrates that Whedon respects the challenges women have to face and he can illustrate that complexity metaphorically by introducing magic, demons, legendary obligations etc.
The fact that he cloaks it in an entertaining way with hot martial arts action - well, that’s just bonus.
YMMV
I don’t really think there’s much more to it than the fact that he likes science fiction/fantasy adventures, and he likes writing strong women as protagonists. A protagonist (of any gender) in a fantasy milieu is, almost by definition, going to have to be an ass kicking martial artist/magic user.
As for being “fucked up mentally,” he’s only done that once by my count, in Firefly. Maybe twice, if you count Fred, but only for about half a season when she was first introduced. If you meant something else by “fucked up mentally,” well, I think it’s interesting that, in this thread, we have been given as examples of people who have issues with women, both artists who create one dimensional, personality-free female characters, and artists who create complex, layered characters driven by internal conflicts. Can’t win for losing on that one, can you?
And, of course, the stripper names thing was from one show, which included as a minor theme a parody on Southern Californian culture. It’s not something that’s shown up in any of his other work.
No, there’s more than one, but all of them have a perfectly logical reason for why they’re fucked up mentally.
Buffy gets a little depressed after she dies and is yanked out of the eternal peacefulness of heaven.
Willow goes a little crazy after her girlfriend and love of her life is gunned down right in front of her. Hours after they reconciled from a painful breakup.
River goes a little crazy after scientists cut up her brain and subject her to months of torture while trying to create a supersoldier.
Fred goes a little crazy after being whisked away to an alternate dimension and living as a slave for years.
I think that’s it.
Just for clarification: Jenny is Garp’s mother; Helen is his wife.
I’m not getting the misogynistic claim against The World According to Garp. Jenny became a reluctant feminist leader because she refused to let men define her; her “autobiography” began, “In this dirty-minded world, you are either somebody’s wife or somebody’s whore or fast on your way to becoming one or the other.”
The transexual, Roberta, explores gender, personifying the questions “What makes a men? What makes a woman?” To make her the ‘only good woman’ in the book I think is a simplistic look at the great pains this book goes to in examining the roles of men and women. I think John Irving is far from being a misogynist; I think he’s someone who’s spent a LOT of time imagining just what it might be like to BE a woman.
He also seems to hate people named Webster and people from Litchfield. This bugs me, being descended from the Websters of Litchfield.