Fandom Sexism

[shipperx]

Almost without fail, when I read through the Mad Men thread on TWOP I come away astonished with the sexism. I'm not talking about the sexism within the show. The period-appropriate sexism within the show is done for deliberate effect. We're supposed to be bothered and outraged by it. It's fandom's more nuanced sexism that really gets me. It's like the poster I saw today who pretty much posted "I knew it!" saying that they knew they'd come online and see people thinking that Peggy was overreacting and blaming and/or putting her down for it. And it's not just Peggy. It's any woman, because it has been darn near any woman.

Any woman who dares be unimpressed or angry with Don is, to some fans, overreacting. It's "Don's trying to tell Peggy to toughen up" rather than "Don is ignoring that PEGGY WORKS DAMN HARD." Or "Allison is overreacting. She got herself in that position. How dare she be upset at the way he reacted." "No, Don was perfectly in line yelling at the baby sitter because he knew that Betty would bitch at him." "Betty is so darn selfish for thinking about her brunch when yelling at Don for forgetting his kids!!"

Any woman who calls Don on his shit is out of line according to fandom.

With Betty it's almost understandable. Betty is a cold and prickly character, and given how screwed-up and horrible she is as a mother, she's frequently not easy to root for or to like. That said, as often as I take offense at Betty on her daughter's behalf, I'm just about always on Betty's side regarding Don (BTW how darn cute was the little girl who plays Sally all dressed up for the Emmys? TV Mom on the other hand was in desperate need of a Mad Men stylist). Unsurprisingly, there are fans who even call out Betty on her behavior this ep which... what?! He forgot to pick up his kids because he was black-out drunk for two freaking days!, but Betty was the problem... Seriously, people? Seriously?! There were people complaining about Allison being furious with him a few weeks ago, too. In fandom, for a lot of people, women aren't allowed to call Don out on his shit. Even as he treats women like shit. Women are always supposed to fall for it, because if they don't, it's not 'fun.'

The show 'gets' that his behavior is very often apalling, why don't fans? As Allison said, he is not a good person.

I don't understand fandom sometimes.

I've actually seen posts saying that Peggy should be thankful because she's just lucky to be in the position she's in. After all she doesn't have a college degree (but neither does Don!) And there are folks saying that she's wrong to want the recognition for her work, that she is almost certainly exaggerating her work, because clearly Don was primarily responsible... even though she's the character we always see working and its an episode highlighting his taking 'credit' (such as it is) for someone else's work. Yet a chunk of fandom assumes that Peggy is exaggerating. (And another poster was complaining about the 'one-note' 'unrealistic' douche-bag that Peggy was bothered by. Saying they were being hit over the head with the sexism and it was 'unrealistic'. Now, granted Peggy's mode of confrontation was rather unrealistic (though I think somewhat in character) what with her stripping to confront him, calling his bluff, and exposing his bullshit then topping it off by several oblique small penis references But the fact that she's faced with so much in-your-face sexism? Totally realistic. Hell, women today face it far more often than they should. I have twice had male co-workers self-name themselves the boss of me through nothing more than their sense of entitlement. And one of them actually had the balls to say to both myself and an intern "Women were created to serve men" (Yeah, I quit that job). And that's in the 21st century. That the female characters are faced with constant, in-your-face sexism in the workplace in 1964-5 is realistic (which is the show's point).

What really bothers me about the fandom is that it doesn't matter who the woman is. It can be Peggy, Betty, Allison, or the blonde woman in marketing research whose name I don't think I've learned. If the woman poses a problem for Don, people are irritated with the female character. There were fans even blaming the next door neighbor/nurse/babysitter last week.

Again, it's not about the incidents of sexism in the show. On Mad Men that's the point. We're supposed to recognize the toxic sexism that someone like Peggy, Joan, etc face. It's that if fandom was a person, it would be a Don enabler and woman hater. The women are wrong sometimes (goodness knows Betty is wrong often enough. In relation to her kids she's really, really difficult to take) no one on Mad Men is all good or all bad. But, come on, the female characters are allowed to recognize and/or call Don on his massive amounts of shit sometimes. I don't care how dapper and handsome he can be, the guy can be truly horrible a fair amount of the time.

Comments

[powerofthebook.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Some of the comments on that board really unnerve me, especially when quite a few stepped forward to say that Sally's masturbation in the last episode was proof positive that she'd been sexually abused by her grandfather before he died. Lord.

I think a lot of people have problems separating the idea of a protagonist and a hero. Even Matthew Weiner stepped forward and noted that Don Draper is not a hero - we root for him in some cases when he can show leadership at work, but the things he does in his private life are abhorrent. Either that, or people are giving him a pass on his charm and good looks, which, let's face it, happens a lot.

I loved that Peggy called Don on his crap at the end of the episode and refused to fix it for him. As much as I wish she went to the awards ceremony as was her right, when Duck started drunkenly heckling the presenter, I was relieved she wasn't there, so that he couldn't heckle her in front of all those NYC ad agencies. Agencies that might hire her and treat her with a bit more respect than SCDP currently is.

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

Anyone could find Peggy not awesome this episode? I loved how she called Don on hid bullshit. To me one of Don's redeeming qualities is that he can deal with that.

Pretty revealing that people can watch this written out so blatantly and still blame the women for both their own and the mens failures.

[wee-warrior.livejournal.com]

Hi, I normally kind of lurk/read your Mad Men reviews, since I find your views interesting, but I wanted to come out and say "thank you" for this post. I hate Don Draper, and have from the beginning of the show. He's an interesting character - in fact, I do have a thing for characters with alternative identities - but as a person he is poisonous. Yes, Allison may have been naive in expecting decency from him, but that doesn't excuse how he treated her, and frankly, he would have deserved her throwing the paperweight(?) at his head. I'm not surprised at Betty getting flak for reacting in a perfectly sound way to him forgetting the kids, fandom hates her, anyway, but people are calling out Peggy for criticizing him? What rubbish.

(Oh, btw, the researcher is named Faye.)