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Is Battlestar Galactica Anti-Feminist?

Posted March 10th, 2009 by Corey deVos in The Daily VOS
In Reference to:
The Art of Liberation

This is an active discussion taking place on Facebook right now, which i thought i would "transplant" into the Integral Community.  Of course, you need to be familiar with Battlestar Galactica to really make sense of the reference points (which i highly, highly recommend) but the general discussion is broad enough for just about anyone interested enough to slog through all this.

It began with a simple post on twitter, pointing to a recent Slate article titled "Chauvinist Pigs in Space: Why Battlestar Galactica Is Not So Frakking Feminist After All" as well as a response from io9, titled "The Men Who Make Battlestar Galactica Feminist."  Both have important contributions to offer the discussion, yet both end up missing the mark entirely, from my P.O.V.

(My quick and dirty synopsis:
The Slate article: "BSG is anti-feminist. Stage 1 sucks!"
The io9 article: "yuh-huh, BSG is so way totally feminist--Stage 2 rules!"
This discussion: "you are both so right, and yet so wrong. Stage 3 or bust, bitches!")

Why Battlestar Galactica?  That is, why make this particular show the focus of a discussion of feminism in today's world?  Surely there are a million other cultural touchstones to reflect upon and criticize, the vast majority of which would be much easier to pin accusations of anti-feminism.  Personally i think they are taking a close look at BSG precisely because it is so "high-minded"--it more closely resembles an actual snapshot of the human condition than any other show i am aware of--as all good science fiction always aspires to do.  Therefore, it invites criticism as to how it represents humanity itself--all the good, all the bad, and all the ugly.

The post quickly turned into a fascinating discussion on Facebook.

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Corey: Is Battlestar Galactica anti-feminist? http://bit.ly/Ik52p    and io9 responds: http://bit.ly/TIK6W.

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Brad Adams: Since Starbuck and President Roslin are both strong female characters, I don't think so.

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Liz Stevenson: Oh, dear. I wish I could comment or look at that link, but since I'm only at the beginning of the second season, I don't want to spoil it. I will say I find the gratuitous female nudity a bit much. I watch it in spite of being triggered pretty much every single time! It's getting more complex than it seemed to be as it started, with multiple vMemes represented, which is really interesting. The pilot was SO hideous, I couldn't figure out why you liked it, Corey. But on your recommendation, I kept at it.

I will also say that strong female characters don't mean anything. They can be exploited just as easily as weak ones. In particular, I'm picturing the female cylon bent over a table with her skirt up. Totally gratuitous. She's strong. And often scantily clad for no apparent reason.

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Leah Kiki Hutton Blumenfeld: Having the main female character display the same characteristics of the previous male character isn't exactly feminist (ie: acting like a man is not really empowerment). So as for the rebuttal, turnabout might be fair play but I wouldn't say is treating men like sex objects either feminist or progress.

P.S. Watch Firefly instead

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Corey: I think BSG has it all. Here's my breakdown:

Stage 1 sexuality (embedment) = Sexy Cylon Sixes in skimpy garb (stereotypical, objectification of female form, etc.) [balanced with objectification of men on the show--i think i've seen Apollo and Helo's rippling musculature almost as much as i've seen naked 8's or 6's. Almost.)

Stage 2 sexuality (transvaluation) = Starbuck as ass-kicking masculine woman obsessed with her own destiny (transvaluation of masculine and feminine) [balanced by Baltar's feminization and sexual domination by female cylons]

Stage 3 sexuality (integration) = Roslin as empowered feminine leader, open to intuition and compassion in decision making, but also integrates masculine direction and warriorship (empowered and integrated masc/fem dynamics, while staying true to her particular "type") [balanced by Admiral Adama, who achieves similar integration, but orients more toward masculine polarity)

I think all three stages are represented here (though some more than others, perhaps.) But a more useful critique might be that, although all three stages are shown, they are expressed from a masculine writer's point of view. That would be valid, i think, but in no way makes it "anti-feminist." Men, after all, have as much stake in the "feminist" dialogue as women.

Personally, i am glad all three stages are found in the show. I love the stage-1 sex appeal (like, really really love it ^_^), the stage-2 transvaluation of gender roles, and the stage-3 experiments with authenticity. And i like that they are all thrown together in such a messy, sticky way--"probability fields," KW might say--and it is up to the plot-arcs and various twisty-turny developments of character to allow some of these patterns to surface, and to deepen.

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Corey: @ leah - i LOVE Firefly, and became extremely unnerved at this ridiculous Feminist interpretation i found (which, i believe, really amounts to an unintentional parody of the more pathological aspects of feminism, which actually stand in the way of both women's and men's mutual liberation.)

A Rapist's View of the World: Joss Whedon and Firefly (gotta love that title, huh?)

http://users.livejournal.com/_allecto_/34718.html

Here's one of my favorite quotes from the author:

"Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Joss uses his own wife in this way. Expects her to clean up his emotional messes. Expects her to be there, eternally supportive, eternally subservient and grateful to him in all his manly glory. I hope the money is worth it, Mrs. Whedon."

She gracefully continues in the comment thread:

"I feel awful for Joss Whedon's wife. From what I've read about him and the interviews I've watched, I'm fairly certain that he rapes his wife and abuses her in various other ways."

Irresponsible.

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Stefano Mori: Firefly and Galactica do unexpected things, reformulate old categories. That makes the shows immensely enjoyable. But the "old" categories here are sorta both the stage-1 and stage-2 stuff, so if a feminist perspective comes at the shows and is critiquing FROM stage-2, it sorta does the pre-trans mistake. Maybe because that forces the stage-2 feminist into an extreme, coz they can't quite fit the whole picture of what they're tying to criticize into stage-1, but sure as hell they'll try because that's what they usually criticise.

I got wondering about Whedon's worldview/s when thinking about his story about the planet Miranda. He says that these efforts to "make people better" inevitably fail. The Alliance tried the additive to remove aggression, and half the population turned into blood-thirsty savages and the other half gave up the will to breathe. That's an amazing point to make at the end of a roller coaster sci-fi trip. But what's his worldview? Seems a bit Green in honoring people as they are, but tending towards Teal and beyond in recognizing complexity??

 

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The Night Battlestar Galactica Took Over the United Nations

Posted March 18th, 2009 by Corey deVos

Just to add to the sense of relevancy and legitimacy around BSG, here's a story from io9 describing the cast and crew's recent visit to the U.N.

http://io9.com/5173862/the-night-battlestar-galactica-took-over-the-un

 

--

Corey W deVos
(dj rekluse)

Writer, Content Producer, and Webmaster
Integral Life, Integral Naked
Managing Editor, KenWilber.com

"Include the Values, Negate the View!"

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Is BSG anti...?/ Feminism, truth and technology.

Posted March 21st, 2009 by Dylan Gillis

Hey Corey, love your input on Integral Life. Regarding your post about Battlestar Galactica and feminism I have some thoughts I would like to add to the discussion.
 
First, I think that science fiction, per se, is a weak format to address the human condition and that Battlestar Galactica does not seem to be an exception to this thought. Science fiction by definition is relatively focused on the upper right quadrant of the AQAL map. This does not mean that it does not include the other quadrants (take 2001: a Space Odyssey as one amazing example, or Dahlgren, one of my all time favorite books that delves extensively in the UL quadrant though it is technically science fiction written by the science fiction author Samuel R. Delaney). However it is this focus that separates science fiction from plain fiction and this point becomes important to what I have to say as will be shown later on in this post.
 
Second it seems to me that there is a significant and important difference between 'anti-feminism' and 'not feminism' or 'chauvinism' or 'anti-women'. Judith's post was distinctly aimed at the idea that BSG was not feminist in expression. " ...Battlestar Galactica is not so frakking feminist after all." being the title quote. As such I feel it is inappropriate to critique her argument on the basis of stage 2 or 3 feminism analysis. She is coming from stage 1 and is accurate to that level of perspective. All you have to do is ask the question: if BSG were written by feminists would it associate rape and women or sex and violence as much and in the way that it does? I don't think it would. That doesn't mean that it is anti-feminist, just that it's message is not a feminist one.
 
What Judith appears to be saying, and rightly so, is that our culture is still full of misogyny and sexual and gender stereotypes which is reflected in Battlestar Galactica. Although one may assume she is still in stage 1 and therefore assumes women to be the primary victims of sexism which is perpetrated by men, and one may say that a far more accurate and empowering perspective is a stage 3 view that both men and women suffer from and are responsible for the limiting and oppressive outcomes of sexism, she is not bringing that issue up. She merely points out that if Battlestar Galactica were intended to be a feminist (or empowering) expression it has failed to pass that test. It has improved, in much the same way that our culture overall has improved, and I think she gives due note to that. To disagree with her analysis would be similar to labeling you sexist for merely stating accurately the truth that "I love the stage-1 sex appeal [of battlestar Galactica]".
 
On the other hand I find Annalee's response for io9 to be far more questionable and limited in perspective. In her view to be truly feminist we would have to be 'gender-blind' and even less demensionalistically that we will never be able to be gender-blind until we have artificial uteruses. In other words, first she does bring up the issue of who are the victims and perpetrators of sexism (and in true 2nd stage fashion she considers the answer to lie in renouncing all differences between the sexes), but she reduces the gender difference, in true science fiction and UR fashion to the fact that women must be viewed differently than men as long as they are the only means by which we can propagate. Without going into a long discussion of all the ways men are different than women I would like to at least assert that the UL quadrant experience of being a man or a woman (and the differences between those) is at least as important and relevant to the discussion as the physical reproductive differences we have. Annalee apparently fails to acknowledge this perspective in her analysis.
 
Which brings me back to my first point. In dialogues I have experienced on this site (Integral Life) such as between Ken Wilber and Kevin Kelly, or KW and Michael Chrichton, I find a certain model of evolution which I am confused by: namely that the development of technology is an extension and expression of evolution itself. This seems to me to be comparable to stacking state experiences of conciousness on top of stage experiences of consciousness. In other words though it makes a simpler and more staightforward map it seems to gloss over major and significant distinctions that a more complex and multi-dimensional design does not. Evolution seems to me to be a process that involves DNA expressed or shaped by natural selection. Technology moves us away from that process in two major ways: first by interfering with natural selection and second by making DNA irrelevant to what we consider to be human or within the realm of possibility for human expression. One of the concerns I have for this seeming lack of distinction (between technological progress and evolution) is that it seems to propose that technological progress is both inevitable and desireable regardless of form.
 
This goes back to a seeming logical conclusion about what it is that we want or consider desireable as progress (or evolution): that ultimately there is some fundamental property of what it means to be a human being that must be referenced to say what is or is not desireable. Otherwise, if we are left with no frame of reference at all then we could just as easily say that "greeness" is our goal, or "sevenness" or "metal-like" or "plastic bottle" or "A Hard Day's Night". But what is this essential human perspective? Well by definition it is something in our DNA. Because it is our DNA which makes us humans. And this is a function of evolution.
 
To put it into other words Annalee seems to share a common perspective of leading thinkers of technology (and seemingly shared by Integral thinkers) that whatever aspect of being human we find problematic we can simply remove or replace through technological means with little or no down-side. If we want to be 'gender-blind' we simply create artificial uteruses; if we want to reduce obesity and diabetes why not take out our 'sweet tooth'; to solve the population problem and eliminate birth defects why don't we remove sexual desires from the human psyche?; and on and on. The problem is where does it stop (and does it)?; or, looked at from a different angle who or what is deciding what to eliminate, change or replace? If it isn't our own human nature, on what basis is that call made?
 
Personally I don't see how it can't be a function of our nature, but if it is not acknowledged as such then it would seem likely that 'shadow' aspects of our nature could end up at play. It seems to me that true evolution of humankind, true development needs to happen more along the 'spiritual' lines of acknowledging, accepting and embracing our own humanity than advancing technological solutions. This seems to me to be what Vanessa Fisher was talking about in her inquiry of what feminism meant to her and particularly the way feminism and art opened up a whole new perspective for her and her relationship to beauty as a woman.
 
Let me make one final point: although I do see distinct differences between the process of evolution and the process of technological progress, I do have a sense of the development of conciousness that has been and is occurring both within and outside of evolution as I have narrowly defined it. Within evolution it has been perhaps a process of increasingly able physical structures to support conciousness and thenceforth technology may be picking up that ball, so that conciousness can develop beyond where evolution has taken us; but outside of evolution, and to my sensibility, outside of technology, there has been a spiritual development of consciousness that needs to be acknowledged and possibly given the leadership role. 
 
Respectfully,
Dylan.

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ass size

Posted March 12th, 2010 by stefano

 

I think your thoughts are interesting, and there's a lot of aspects to consider.

But I want it simple. It comes down to ass size.

Number Six is feminist because her ass is just the right size and she decides where to stick it.

Starbuck's ass is the shape of a Viper pilot seat. She is not feminist. She was just supposed to be a man.

William Adama is feminist. He has to do much manly army stuff, but he knows his small ass is owned by Laura, the President.

Gaius Baltar is feminist. When he can't find his balls he hides behind women's asses. The more the better.

I think the point I'm trying to make here, is that it is not about roles, it is about women being power. But not a driven obsessed grunt power like Starbuck on a quest (that's why Starbuck doesn't count). It is the power for women to look at their own gorgeous asses and say, "I am gorgeous and I am full and I am worthy of worship."

Let no man say otherwise.

So say we all.