- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Gender conflict is real and the smart shows understand how to deal with it. Men are not neutered when women are put in positions of power. They learn how to deal. Shows like the Shield or Battlestar Galactica or the Wire understand how to introduce powerful women and powerful men and how to create interesting plots showing the tension and showing how sometimes the sexes learn to work together and how sometimes they resent each other. Yet gender and race conflicts are wrapped up in stories about gangs or robots or drugs. This new network season promises veiled sexism showing that when women finally attain positions of power, there is no room for men. Men either become neutered lapdogs or revert to cavemen. This is not reality.
It's unfortunate that our television networks seem to believe that powerful women are so distasteful and awful that men must be demasculated in the process. And it's even worse that these patriarchal values are hidden in shows obstensibly presenting themselves as feminist.
