One Woman in the Justice League
Just one woman, maybe two, in a team or group of men.
Also watch Jimmy Kimmelās "Muscle Manā superhero skit - āIām the girly oneā
The Avengers:
In Marvel Comics:
āLabeled āEarthās Mightiest Heroes,ā the original Avengers consisted of Iron Man, Ant-Man, Hulk, Thor and the Wasp. Captain America was discovered trapped in ice in The Avengers issue #4, and joined the group after they revived him.ā
5 / 6 original members are male. Only one is female.
Modern films (MCU):
The original 6 Avengers were Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, and Black Widow.
Again, 5 / 6 original members are male. Only one is female.
Justice League
In DC comics:
āThe Justice League originally consisted of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, and Aquamanā
6 / 7 original members are male. Only one is female.
In modern films (DCEU):
The members were/are Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Cyborg. (+ introducing Martian Manhunter (in Zack Snyderās Justice League directorās cut))
5 / 6 main members in both versions of the Justice League film are male, with appearances by a 7th member in the directorās cut who is also male. Only one member is female.
The Umbrella Academy (comics and show)
7 members:
- Luther (Number One / Spaceboy)
- Diego (Number Two / The Kraken)
- Allison (Number Three / The Rumor)
- Klaus (Number Four / The SĆ©ance)
- Five (Number Five / The Boy)
- Ben (Number Six / The Horror)
- Vanya (Number Seven / The White Violin) Later becomes known as Viktor and nonbinary in the television adaptation after Elliot Pageās transition but thatās not really relevant to this.
Here, 5 / 7 original members are male. Only two are female. Only slightly better than the other more famous superhero teams, and they had to add another member (compared to Avengersā 6 members) to improve the ratio (maybe executives still demanded to have 5 males).
Now letās look at some sitcoms and other stories.
Itās Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
4 males, and 1 female slightly less prominent character who is abused constantly. The show claims to be politically aware and satirical but gets away with a lot of misogynistic comedy, tbh, that Iām willing to bet a lot of people are finding funny for the wrong reasons.
Community:
Jeff, Britta, Abed, Troy, Annie, Pierce, Shirley. This one is a little better, 3/7 are female. Notice itās always more males though, they never let it become more than 50% female, or else then itās a āchick flickā or a āfemale team upā or āgender flippedā story. And of course the main character, and the leading few characters, are almost always male or mostly male.
Stranger Things:
Main original group of kids consisted of: Mike, Will, Dustin, Lucas, and El (Eleven). 1 original female member, who is comparable to an alien and even plays the role of E.T. in direct homage. When they added Max, I saw people complaining that although they liked her, there should be only one female member. š¤¦
Why is it āiconicā to have only one female in a group of males? Does that just mean itās the tradition, the way itās always been? Canāt we change that? Is it so that all the men can have a chance with the one girl, or so the males can always dominate the discussion with their use of force and manliness? Or so that whenever the team saves the day, itās mostly a bunch of men doing it, but with āa little helpā from a female/a few females (at most), too!
Itās so fucked up and disgusting to me Iāve realised. And men donāt seem to care. Iām a male and this is really disturbing to me now that Iāve woken up to it. How do women feel about this? Am I overreacting?
I think, as with many things, it is about context. When doing a scientific reproductive study about ārats - 5 male, 5 femaleā it makes sense to use biological descriptors, and when paramedics do it in a biological emergency, etc. A good way to understand it is via other similar trajectories, like racism. Would you consider it reasonable to refer to a āwhite manā while referring to another āman whoās a blackā? For example only a few decades ago you might have heard a cop in the US (or South Africa, in Afrikaans) say e.g: āI saw 5 men leave, and 2 of them were blacksā vs what you would (hope to) hear now: āI saw 3 white men and 2 black men leaveā. Look at those 2 sentences substituting āwhite, blackā -> āmale, femaleā and āmenā -> āpeopleā, and that should highlight the point (in a slightly grammatically clunky way though because I donāt have time to come up with a more elegant example).
In your examples, I would definitely think we shouldnāt use differential/non-equivalent language between different groups of people/members of society, including races or genders. So that includes not saying āwhite manā and āman whoās a blackā -> I would think this should probably be āwhite manā and āblack manā or āman whoās whiteā and āman whoās blackā. I think being consistent with our language used to refer to people is important to not promote or uphold discrimination. There could be other problems even if itās consistent, Iām not denying that, but I think lack of consistency of treatment (linguistic or otherwise) is a key issue. I believe in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity to a degree, that language shapes/influences how we view the world & informs a lot of actions & behaviors in society. So linguistic discrimination is a real thing that can lead to or perpetuate more overt (physical/social) forms of discrimination. For the same reason, it should be consistent between genders (and as a side note, I donāt view male and female to be strictly biological terms to refer to biological sex, but rather that they can be used for gender identity too, as in MtF / FtM [male to female or female to male], which other sociology institutions seem to agree with as well, in case you thought I was being a āsex absolutistā or transphobic).
The case of using āmale and femaleā for rats in an experiment is interesting because to me it represents a double standard where we are okay with using those more kind of basic fundamental terms for non-human animals, even if weāre not okay with using them for humans (and itās not like we have terms like men and women for other animals, so itās somewhat understandable in working within the language). But it also shows that if we only reserve those terms for other animals, it can uphold harmful differential treatment of them (such as conducting experiments/testing on them that they canāt consent toāand wouldnāt since theyāre typically cruel in ways we would never do to humansāwhich could be seen as exploitation/taking advantage of sentient beings), as tied to a belief that humans are superior and are not animals, which is used to rationalize these actions & arguably discrimination (speciesism) of another kind. Thatās partly why I question if itās really valid for us to be opposed to using terms like male and female for humans, or if it reveals something deeper about how we think of ourselves in relation to other animals- as well as just curiosity about if there is really a problem there, and what/why that might be.
If Iāve read your comment correctly I think we actually agree on all points, but my hurriedly written comment didnāt communicate two of them as clearly as I wouldāve liked.
We concur that consistency of terms matters, words are the skeletons of thought-processes and therefore biases, etc.
I realise my emphasising the phrase ābiological descriptorsā was a bit misleading and strictly speaking actually wrong, but in my partial defence I was trying to avoid more scientific words when not necessary (not wanting to drift into pretentiousness). In light of your observation about biology vs gender identity (which I agree with), probably my point would be more correct if Iād used a phrase like āreductionist differentiation descriptorsā. Even if accurate that sounds a little pretentious so Iād love any domain-expert to chime in with a more accurate-yet-concise phrase.
I used the rat example purely as an example of a research context divorced from social/political connotations, not as a human-animal vs non-human-animal differentiator (not implying any double-standard there), hence why I followed it with the example of how paramedics also use it. My point could equally have used a ā10 humansā¦ā example.
Also, pondering again your comment which spawned this slightly lengthy subthread, namely:
I am not a linguistics expert so Iām probably not using exactly the right terminology here, but I think the bit that matters is using:
adjectives as reductionist/caricaturing pseudo-nouns
when any such words are used merely as labels vs as signifiers for emphasis
Namely:
A. Calling someone a āhumanā or āpersonā is using a less common noun as ambiguous label
B. Calling someone a āwomanā or āgirlā or āmanā or āboyā is using a common noun as general label
C. Calling someone a āfemale humanā or āmale humanā or āfemale personā or āmale personā is using an uncommon adjective-noun combination as explicit signifier
D. Calling someone a āfemaleā or āmaleā is using a usually unwelcome adjective-as-pseudo-noun as reductionist signifier
In this context āreductionist signifierā means āreducing the value, worth, and significance of a person to only that defined by a single abused adjectiveā. So a line in a book which says āThe bar full of people fell silent when a female entered the roomā is implying that the āpeopleā (probably primarily/entirely male, by inference) are āwhole peopleā (with hopes, dreams, struggles, character arcs), while the āfemaleā is as far as the writer cares merely a one-dimensional representation of a (different) gender, and not āa whole person, who happens to be femaleā. I remember reading long ago (but canāt remember attribution): āNever trust an author who shows you they donāt care about their charactersā. I think the application of that can be extended from authors to people in general, based on how they speak.