Vic Mignogna

[Zeon_Grunt]

If I'm being honest, yes there is a male power fantasy aspect to showing someone as ripped as Hemsworth. It's partly as female eyecandy but part of it is putting forth the idea of "if you look like this, you could get a girl as hot as Natalie Portman as well." Admittedly this is all beside the point but I was just putting in my 2 cents.

By promoting the same unrealistic and unhealthy (given they have to generally do the same kind of bullshit dietary things like gaining as much muscle mass as possible, over-saturating their diet with protein, and then starving yourself for a days before shooting the topless scene to get that pitch perfect muscle tone) standards and practices. While it encourages some men to chase after that body type, it can also fuel feelings of inadequacy in many other men. Especially those with medical disorders that prohibit them from achieving it. Is that not the same inherit problem sexualizing women in the media has been argued for years? But I digress, yes, it is a bit of both to a degree.

As a queer woman, I'm very familiar with the strawmen that bigots use to paint GSRM folks as evil. I'm getting ahead of the cart to prevent any issues here.

I guess at this point I should further clarify that line of thought never remotely occurred to me until you said it.

Cishet white men aren't afraid to leave their houses for fear of being beaten to death. They don't have to travel the country incognito if they don't pass for cisgender.

Making a 'straight' character fuck their best friend in a fan fic is not cishet erasure because cishet people do not have to struggle for representation in media.

Likewise, doing the opposite in a fan fic is not GSRM (if this is a more accurate term, I assume you wouldn't mind if I adopt it's use) erasure. Fanfictions have no bearing on anything whatsoever other than what some people think of the author depending on what's in said fanfiction.

The one trans character in the DCTVU is barely involved with the story and will go entire episodes without being seen. Her superpowers are chalked up to her being an alien. She's basically an after-thought. Worse yet, she's still one of only two or three half-way decent representations of who trans people are in US media. Minority representation in media is important because it normalizes us and helps fight bigotry.

I gotta admit that I stopped giving a crap about the Arrowverse with the Havenrock incident in Arrow and the constant "No, we are the Flash," in the Flash. I don't keep up with them outside having checked in on the Crisis on Infinite Earths easter eggs. That said, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they did a character dirty like that.

I agree that you guys do deserve more representation in media and that you deserve much better representation (quality wise), I just don't think changing an established character's personality and lore is the best way to do it. Bringing in and properly building up and supporting new characters objectively is.

How many children of bigots grew up at odds with their parents because media taught them that all sorts of minorities are no different from them?

Chiming in as one of them, though I assume someone is going to take issue with that because they immediately categorized me as a racist.

For example, I (a woman-loving-woman) don't find the 'sexy' scenes in Marvel films to be actually 'sexy'. Scarlett Johansson in a tight dress for a scene in The Avengers? I sleep. Boring as hell. Surface-layer gawking from cishet men with poor taste and no sense of eroticism.

To be fair, outside that dress looking stellar, like would wear it if I were another gender that didn't feel a little silly wearing a dress like that, I never really found any of the images of her being all that sexually appealing either (partially because the fake red head thing is a turn off), but complaints about her sexualization in posters and such have been levied against Marvel.

-stuff-

Outside my stance that I like guns and would love to own some (though I support gun control and thus respect why I can't own real ones), I'm pretty left leaning up to and including being willing to give anyone who doesn't actively have a penis a romantic shot if they're cute (by my standards, which are different from the social norms; short, chubby, with round cheeks is my thing), funny, and share common interests.

I'm sorry you don't agree that it shouldn't be controversial to acknowledge that every race and gender gets shit on by nearly, if not, every other different group for factually racist or sexist shit (or otherwise put; discriminated against) and that it should all be abolished, but by way of proper education education not through censorship by screaming "NAZI!" at every discourse you disagree with or conflicts with your world view.

I've already admitted that if Vic's initial response was factually homophobic (again, I've yet to see any footage or read any eye witness testimony), then the excuse doesn't apply to him. Not that it not applying would somehow not make him already a piece of shit. I digress, the argument presented (not wanting to endorse non-canon material, especially fanart/fiction that )isn't inherently a bad one. I still don't believe presenting that kind of content to anyone involved in the actual making of the show and asking them to sign it is in good taste. Much like many don't believe bringing up TFS to the Funimation or Japanese cast is in good taste.

While I get and agree with the argument that minorities and GSRM/LGBTQ+ are demonstratively underrepresented in media, I stand by my stance that it's always better to write in new characters than to retcon old beloved ones just to try appealing to a different market. If you're absolutely insistent that your new character take on the name and costume of a given hero then at the very least write a good story and flesh the character out a bit before officially handing over the reigns. Maybe make sure the character is actually likable so it appeals to more than just the demographic it's trying to represent.

For the record, I'm not against officially revealing that a character is bisexual (with some exceptions, like Captain America as a dude from the 40s with traditional American values just would not fly for that) or a character with ambiguous or unstated sexual orientation is gay or whatever else you want to have them identify as. Just don't change the characters who have established backgrounds as an attempt to satisfy everyone.

Honestly though, after all that, at this point, I don't give two shits if you still think I'm some super homophobic white supremacist. I know where I stand on the political spectrum and if you have to believe that everyone who dares have a different opinion than you on these topics is a right wing boogeyman, whatever.

[ABED]

By promoting the same unrealistic and unhealthy (given they have to generally do the same kind of bullshit dietary things like gaining as much muscle mass as possible, over-saturating their diet with protein, and then starving yourself for a days before shooting the topless scene to get that pitch perfect muscle tone) standards and practices. While it encourages some men to chase after that body type, it can also fuel feelings of inadequacy in many other men. Especially those with medical disorders that prohibit them from achieving it. Is that not the same inherit problem sexualizing women in the media has been argued for years? But I digress, yes, it is a bit of both to a degree.

Difference is characters like Thor, John Rambo, every male character in DB is that while they have damn near unattainable musculature, that isn't the only thing those characters have. They're fully fleshed out.

[Soppa Saia People]

Julie apologize if I am overstepping or interpreting this wrong and I do understand how hard life can be for Transwomen as my cousin is a transwoman as well but seeing some of your post your fear of leaving your home seems like one that perhaps you may one to talk to someone.

Once again I apologize if this isn't my place, it just seems like your fear of something happening to you is elevated.

i mean, yeah ? people are generally more afraid of situations that could lead to them being harmed. bathrooms can be legitimately dangerous for trans people, no matter how they identify, so of course in a area that you know queer people in general aren't very well treated, that fear is gonna be heightened. i've gotten the piss beating out of me for going into the men's bathroom before and i haven't even started medically transitioning
or anything (starting HRT some time this week though!!), i can just look fairly androgynous when i put the effort into it, so of course i'm gonna be wary of bathrooms, much like a lot of other trans people.

[JulieYBM]

I was at a commissary on a military base for two hours helping my mom shop and I completely forgot that I wouldn't be able to use the restroom for fear of being murdered or arrested. It was a fucking nightmare.

Welcome to life as a trans woman.

Julie apologize if I am overstepping or interpreting this wrong and I do understand how hard life can be for Transwomen as my cousin is a transwoman as well but seeing some of your post your fear of leaving your home seems like one that perhaps you may one to talk to someone.

Once again I apologize if this isn't my place, it just seems like your fear of something happening to you is elevated.

I have a therapist. I work at a college so I've been able to safely go into the restrooms but when I'm out in public elsewhere it's always a crap shoot. If I had been able to bring my purse and make-up along I might have felt different but everyone at the place is going to be 60-90 year old retire military. If I had been reported my parents could've lost their retiree benefits. It's really scary. I know that WA in general has bathroom laws to protect us but I'm not sure how those work on military bases. Either way, again, I've see how girls get harassed before and it's scary as hell.

i mean, yeah ? people are generally more afraid of situations that could lead to them being harmed. bathrooms can be legitimately dangerous for trans people, no matter how they identify, so of course in a area that you know queer people in general are very well treated, that fear is gonna be heightened. i've gotten the piss beating out of me for going into the men's bathroom before and i haven't even started medically transitioning
or anything (starting HRT some time this week though!!), i can just look fairly androgynous when i put the effort into it, so of course i'm gonna be wary of bathrooms, much like a lot of other trans people.

Aww gosh, that is horrible. You do look really andro but I didn't think you were getting beaten up. Ugh.

[Polyphase Avatron]

When it comes to the argument of 'making new characters vs. changing old ones', I think we need to imply some context.

Someone before mentioned Marvel's Captain Marvel, but the thing about that name is that it isn't the name of an individual - it's a title. Probably more than half a dozen different characters have had that title in Marvel history. So it really doesn't matter if 'Captain Marvel' is black, white, male, female, or whatever - as long as they have the powers, skills, and correct attitude, they can do the job.

That even applies to characters like Thor - when the female Thor appeared a few years ago, that wasn't the male character Thor Odinson becoming a woman - it was a different, female character (Jane Foster) being chosen to wield Mjolnir and have the powers of Thor. (I've heard that her solo series was really badly written though, but that's neither here nor there).

Even when they do change something about an established character, they usually do it in a reboot or alternate continuity, like when DC made Green Lantern Alan Scott a gay man. They weren't taking the previously established Alan Scott in continuity and saying he was gay, but creating a new version of him in a new continuity with many new versions of other characters. Considering the way superhero comics are, pretty much every character has a thousand alternate reality versions of themselves running around anyway.

If you want to reveal that a character is gay and had been all along, that can be done too (take Marvel's Northstar... the writers had always hinted at him being gay but didn't explicitly state it until many years later).

If a male character has been repeatedly shown to be sexually interested in women, you could say that they are in fact bisexual. That has happened a few times. Often times there are a lot of hints beforehand.

I think the major complaint is about the hypothetical situation where you have an established character that has shown to be attracted to the same sex, and not interested at all in the opposite sex, and then they just retcon the character and suddenly say that they are gay (not an alternate version but the same version in continuity, blatantly contradicting that character's past history). I can't actually think of any examples where this has happened. Although it's possible that it has.

[Planetnamek]

When it comes to the argument of 'making new characters vs. changing old ones', I think we need to imply some context.

Someone before mentioned Marvel's Captain Marvel, but the thing about that name is that it isn't the name of an individual - it's a title. Probably more than half a dozen different characters have had that title in Marvel history. So it really doesn't matter if 'Captain Marvel' is black, white, male, female, or whatever - as long as they have the powers, skills, and correct attitude, they can do the job.

That even applies to characters like Thor - when the female Thor appeared a few years ago, that wasn't the male character Thor Odinson becoming a woman - it was a different, female character (Jane Foster) being chosen to wield Mjolnir and have the powers of Thor. (I've heard that her solo series was really badly written though, but that's neither here nor there).

Even when they do change something about an established character, they usually do it in a reboot or alternate continuity, like when DC made Green Lantern Alan Scott a gay man. They weren't taking the previously established Alan Scott in continuity and saying he was gay, but creating a new version of him in a new continuity with many new versions of other characters. Considering the way superhero comics are, pretty much every character has a thousand alternate reality versions of themselves running around anyway.

If you want to reveal that a character is gay and had been all along, that can be done too (take Marvel's Northstar... the writers had always hinted at him being gay but didn't explicitly state it until many years later).

If a male character has been repeatedly shown to be sexually interested in women, you could say that they are in fact bisexual. That has happened a few times. Often times there are a lot of hints beforehand.

I think the major complaint is about the hypothetical situation where you have an established character that has shown to be attracted to the same sex, and not interested at all in the opposite sex, and then they just retcon the character and suddenly say that they are gay (not an alternate version but the same version in continuity, blatantly contradicting that character's past history). I can't actually think of any examples where this has happened. Although it's possible that it has.

Well said, that's what these comicsgate trolls utterly fail to comprehend.

That Thor series is actually really good, most of the criticisms came from alt-right nutjobs like "Diversity in Comics" so it's frankly not worth paying any real serious attention to.

[Polyphase Avatron]

Also, just because I would be remiss not to mention it, the 13th Doctor in Doctor Who is great because the plot device of Time Lord regeneration (which was established way back in the 60s) provides the perfect vehicle to change the character this way. Despite looking human, the Doctor is decidedly not a human being, and doesn't view race and sex the same way humans do. We already knew that Time Lords can regenerate from male to female and vice-versa, that was established years before Jodie Whittaker took the role. To them, changing both biological sex and gender is a normal thing that they think nothing of.

[Polyphase Avatron]

When it comes to the argument of 'making new characters vs. changing old ones', I think we need to imply some context.

Someone before mentioned Marvel's Captain Marvel, but the thing about that name is that it isn't the name of an individual - it's a title. Probably more than half a dozen different characters have had that title in Marvel history. So it really doesn't matter if 'Captain Marvel' is black, white, male, female, or whatever - as long as they have the powers, skills, and correct attitude, they can do the job.

That even applies to characters like Thor - when the female Thor appeared a few years ago, that wasn't the male character Thor Odinson becoming a woman - it was a different, female character (Jane Foster) being chosen to wield Mjolnir and have the powers of Thor. (I've heard that her solo series was really badly written though, but that's neither here nor there).

Even when they do change something about an established character, they usually do it in a reboot or alternate continuity, like when DC made Green Lantern Alan Scott a gay man. They weren't taking the previously established Alan Scott in continuity and saying he was gay, but creating a new version of him in a new continuity with many new versions of other characters. Considering the way superhero comics are, pretty much every character has a thousand alternate reality versions of themselves running around anyway.

If you want to reveal that a character is gay and had been all along, that can be done too (take Marvel's Northstar... the writers had always hinted at him being gay but didn't explicitly state it until many years later).

If a male character has been repeatedly shown to be sexually interested in women, you could say that they are in fact bisexual. That has happened a few times. Often times there are a lot of hints beforehand.

I think the major complaint is about the hypothetical situation where you have an established character that has shown to be attracted to the same sex, and not interested at all in the opposite sex, and then they just retcon the character and suddenly say that they are gay (not an alternate version but the same version in continuity, blatantly contradicting that character's past history). I can't actually think of any examples where this has happened. Although it's possible that it has.

Well said, that's what these comicsgate trolls utterly fail to comprehend.

That Thor series is actually really good, most of the criticisms came from alt-right nutjobs like "Diversity in Comics" so it's frankly not worth paying any real serious attention to.

I'm not sure, because I heard some serious complaints about a lot of the plot lines, and I also heard that Jane-Thor was well written in crossover titles like the Avengers, it was just her first solo series that was bad.

[JulieYBM]

Good queer representation is letting us do all the crazy self-insert shenanigans cishets are allowed to do with their media. Sometimes an early transition woman wants to be captain of a starship or a Kamen Rider or madame of a house full of legally sanctioned and full unionized prostitutes.

[Zeon_Grunt]

They did a csi white guy as Spawn before and it was awful. A lot of people in the Spawn fandom hated it and it took over 50 issues for Al Simmons to come back.

Yes, but did he suck because he was badly written and featured in poorly written storylines or because he was just white? From what I've heard, Spawn is pretty notorious for drastic drops in quality at times. That said, I only have a passing experience with Spawn (saw the movie, which I like on a schlock level, played him in SC2 and some PS1 game) so maybe I've heard wrong about that.

[Scsigs]

Oh I agree he's a homophobe for sure.

I actually like Big Bang Theory and to be fair the writers did clarify that they never specifically wrote Sheldon as being autistic, I always saw him as kind of a live-action version of Fry from Futurama.

Some people with autism have spoken positively about him, and I personally never once felt like that show was taking aim at me personally

https://researchautism.org/why-i-relate ... tic-adult/

It's true that Sheldon was never intentionally written as an Aspie, but when he exhibits enough traits a case for undiagnosed Asperger's, & the writers just blatantly ignore the unfortunate implications for 12 years without addressing it in the show itself or change how they write the character to come off less like one, that's a problem in my eyes. I know it's just a stupid sitcom that was unjustifiably popular to the degree it was, but, let's be honest here, usually shows try to shake up things or address things over their runs, but the writers didn't care about that because "insensitive people are funny!" or some shit. These are mostly the same writers & producers of Two and a Half Men after all, so I'm not surprised with the constant bad writing, but at least THEY tried for 5 seasons, then the quality dipped off. Looking bad, BBT didn't really try too often. It has more problems than Sheldon, but we're not discussing those right now.

As for him being like Fry. Like, what? Fry was dumb & couldn't always pick up on emotions because of it, but he's also a genuinely good person the rest of the time. Sheldon has no real explanation for why he's like how he is outside of undiagnosed Asperger's. I actually like Fry. Sheldon gets on my nerves. Like, if we apply real world logic, no one would like Sheldon, which is semi-acknowledged int he show itself with very few people actually liking him.

I fucking hate that show. Not just because Sheldon is handled with insensitivity, but because it's insanely transphobic, homophobic and it hates women in general. It murders me every time my folks watch it.

I don't really see how it was transphobic (outside of the old neighbor Sheldon had, which was only for a few episodes), since it never really dealt with those topics or kinds of people, but those other 2, I can definitely see. Homophobic in how they make fun of Raj for being more in touch with his feminine side & how they make fun of his & Howard's close friendship basically nonstop & misogynistic in that the women on the show aren't written that well most of the time. I would say this mostly comes off from the toxic masculinity the writers injected into the scripts more than anything, though, considering it was written by Gen Xers who grew up in the 70s & 80s where that was more commonplace. Still is in some places.

For me if there is any show that comes off as genuinely hateful (particularly towards trans people) and ignorant it's South Park, I gave up on that show years ago because of Matt and Trey's tiresome "you're stupid for caring about anything!" attitude.

South Park has only devolved from that in the last several years. In its prime years, South Park didn't make fun of people for caring about things, it just made fun of shit the writers found incredibly stupid. In terms of the trans stuff, they NEED to learn how to portray that shit right. They've never handled that stuff with any real care. That goes back to making Mr. Garrison trans out of nowhere for some reason, which, I guess, is how gay people work (which at least was heavily foreshadowed for a while before he came out as gay & not really treated that badly) .
The creators clearly stopped giving a fuck, even though they still preach for certain things. It's hypocritical. The Family Guy writers, though clearly worse in many areas, at least clearly don't give a fuck & don't do research or think through their implications. South Park has always been smarter than that.

The first few episodes weren't great i'll admit and that did turn me off the show for a while, but once I saw some episodes in later seasons it improved considerably. Penny, Amy and Bernadette certainly got a lot better about being more open-minded.

That most certainly depended on the writers & seasons. However, I would say season 6 is where the show changed for the worst. A show about nerds, & later their girlfriends, in their everyday lives with their hobbies & interests suddenly became all about the relationships for some reason, yet the relationships were really toxic, so it made the show worse.

The entire point of South Park is they make fun and attack everyone. South Park is for a audience that doesn't mind seeing all people getting attacked.

I mean, yes, & no. Usually, South Park makes fun of the stupider things about everything, not just taking the piss out of everything because they can, but not usually for no reason. They usually do a great job of showing exactly why they shit on something & do a good amount of research & thinking about it, which is impressive considering they only produce an episode in 6 days. In the last several seasons, they just haven't made an overly great episode, like the creative spark isn't there anymore, which is sad, since it was the best example of biting social satire I could think of.

Except they don't always, I remember Matt and Trey's lame-ass excuses for not covering Trump a few years ago. So I never bought into that line of reasoning that SP fans keep telling me.

They turned Mr. Garrison into a full on parody of Trump though. What are you talking about?

Unfortunately, that resulted in the worst season of the show that holds up extremely poorly, but started out very promising. I really wish they hadn't done that season the way they did. Hinging on Hilary winning the election to make all of the plot threads, messages, & themes (some of which, like the member berries, being absolutely awful) of a season of your show was BEGGING for disaster. It was the ultimate gamble. Not a lot of people liked either candidate for various reasons, so it's no surprise when Trump won that everything crumbled from under them.

Also, just because I would be remiss not to mention it, the 13th Doctor in Doctor Who is great because the plot device of Time Lord regeneration (which was established way back in the 60s) provides the perfect vehicle to change the character this way. Despite looking human, the Doctor is decidedly not a human being, and doesn't view race and sex the same way humans do. We already knew that Time Lords can regenerate from male to female and vice-versa, that was established years before Jodie Whittaker took the role. To them, changing both biological sex and gender is a normal thing that they think nothing of.

And yet, we have the horrible joke from Series 9 of the General from Day of the Doctor regenerating into a woman who then says, "Back to normal, am I? First time I've been a man that last one. How do you cope with all that ego?" I know it was meant to be played as a joke, but you have an alien race that is established to be gender fluid & beyond insults like that because they have total equality as a result, yet have some people that are that sexist? That doesn't add up, especially since she was just a man & was a man for hundreds of years at least, knowing how long Time Lords live for in a single incarnation & how long the Time War was a thing in-universe.

They did a csi white guy as Spawn before and it was awful. A lot of people in the Spawn fandom hated it and it took over 50 issues for Al Simmons to come back.

Yes, but did he suck because he was badly written and featured in poorly written storylines or because he was just white? From what I've heard, Spawn is pretty notorious for drastic drops in quality at times. That said, I only have a passing experience with Spawn (saw the movie, which I like on a schlock level, played him in SC2 and some PS1 game) so maybe I've heard wrong about that.

Comic book movies for a while were extremely touch & go for a long time until Marvel showed how you can do them right, since they were usually either super serious, or super silly. Any in-between was, sadly, missing or barely existed for a while. Probably the only country to have that was Japan, since they at least gave the medium some respect, even if most of it's meant for kids or families.

[JulieYBM]

I don't really see how it was transphobic (outside of the old neighbor Sheldon had, which was only for a few episodes), since it never really dealt with those topics or kinds of people, but those other 2, I can definitely see. Homophobic in how they make fun of Raj for being more in touch with his feminine side & how they make fun of his & Howard's close friendship basically nonstop & misogynistic in that the women on the show aren't written that well most of the time. I would say this mostly comes off from the toxic masculinity the writers injected into the scripts more than anything, though, considering it was written by Gen Xers who grew up in the 70s & 80s where that was more commonplace. Still is in some places.

Let's break down the second scene of the first episode¹ of the series.

Deadnaming and misgendering a trans person is transphobia. Referring to a trans person as a 'transvestite' is offensive and outdated. Fat joke? Also offensive. Skin disorder joke? Offensive? Leonard stumbling over his words because "Oops, I don't want the hot chick thinking I'm gay" is not only offensive to gay people, it's offensive to bisexual and pansexual people.

Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady can take their well-off asses and go fuck themselves and shame on the actors for not refusing to perform that atrocious dialogue.

¹Other examples of transphobia exist in the series. Google them if you like.

[Scsigs]

Let's break down the second scene of the first episode¹ of the series.

Deadnaming and misgendering a trans person is transphobia. Referring to a trans person as a 'transvestite' is offensive and outdated. Fat joke? Also offensive. Skin disorder joke? Offensive? Leonard stumbling over his words because "Oops, I don't want the hot chick thinking I'm gay" is not only offensive to gay people, it's offensive to bisexual and pansexual people.

Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady can take their well-off asses and go fuck themselves and shame on the actors for not refusing to perform that atrocious dialogue.

¹Other examples of transphobia exist in the series. Google them if you like.

I think that might be reading too much into it, or thinking there was something there the writers didn't intend. I'm pretty sure they meant the character to be a crossdresser who did it for sexual purposes or something similar. "Transvestite" literally means someone who does that. Though an older term & offensive to trans people who are legitimately going through transition, or have done so, it's technically accurate. Considering they literally show a man, in a later episode that showed flashbacks to when that person was living in Penny's apartment, who was dressing in a pink dress & earrings, I'm very certain that's what they meant, or else they would've dressed said person in more casual clothes & probably wouldn't have casted a tall, muscly black man in the role. I'm very certain they meant something entirely different from what you think, or else they would've written & casted differently.

Fat jokes are awful, I agree that they're stupid.

Skin disorder, meh. We don't know what kind of condition & it was clearly there to have a third thing to make the studio audience laugh.

I mean, there are people in real life who have to clarify if they're gay. Considering Penny got the wrong idea (which, that's more the problem than anything) when he said they lived together, that was needed. Leonard's written to be socially awkward, particularly in the earlier seasons, so it fits his character to stumble over his words when he feels awkward & needs to make something clear.

The episode was from 2007, written by the people who made Two and a Half Men (although, weirdly enough, that had an episode in one of the first few seasons that had an actually good example of a trans person), so I wouldn't expect good writing on any level, especially when it comes to insensitivity to people, considering this show takes the piss out of basically everything, just not making the majority of the jokes legitimately funny. The show has a LOT of different problems than just this, especially since there are way more instances of homophobia than transphobia in the show since they literally never dealt with that topic as far as I know. If this was Family Guy, which legitimately confused being camp gay with being trans, as well as not dealing with the seriousness of transition, I would understand more the frustration considering they live to offend people with their constant legit bad episodes & tasteless "jokes" that legitimately are made to offend trans & gay people.

[XanatosVanBadass]

Yeah, South Park was always kinda problematic and it goes beyond the show’s awful take on trans people. The show has also promoted climate change denial and advocated that bigoted organizations should be allowed to keep their bigoted views. SP may not have created the “alt right” (no one thing can be blamed), but they ABSOLUTELY helped to create the “both sides are bad” argument that the right uses to trick people with in discussions.

[Scsigs]

Yeah, South Park was always kinda problematic and it goes beyond the show’s awful take on trans people. The show has also promoted climate change denial and advocated that bigoted organizations should be allowed to keep their bigoted views. SP may not have created the “alt right” (no one thing can be blamed), but they ABSOLUTELY helped to create the “both sides are bad” argument that the right uses to trick people with in discussions.

Which, I always took that episode to just be making fun of Al Gore, not climate change in general. There were people who made fun of Al Gore for An Inconvenient Truth, so I always thought that they were just making fun of him as a presenter of the facts. At the very least they apologized a few years ago for that episode once they saw the facts & results come in. That's the least I can ask for a denier.
I think the "enlightened centrism" from South Park mainly stems from the fact that, while they take hard left-leaning stances, they're not afraid to shit on more liberal ideologies. Which, let's face facts here, neither side has it entirely right, but lefties have a better idea of how shit works politically & economically than righties most of the time. I always saw the show as left-leaning, which always confused me that righties champion the show as being for them, even though the show's more like if George Carlin wrote a political cartoon than anything & he was incredibly left-leaning if you listen to his political bits, yet he's had the same problem in recent years.

[JulieYBM]

I think that might be reading too much into it, or thinking there was something there the writers didn't intend. I'm pretty sure they meant the character to be a crossdresser who did it for sexual purposes or something similar. "Transvestite" literally means someone who does that. Though an older term & offensive to trans people who are legitimately going through transition, or have done so, it's technically accurate. Considering they literally show a man, in a later episode that showed flashbacks to when that person was living in Penny's apartment, who was dressing in a pink dress & earrings, I'm very certain that's what they meant, or else they would've dressed said person in more casual clothes & probably wouldn't have casted a tall, muscly black man in the role. I'm very certain they meant something entirely different from what you think, or else they would've written & casted differently.

Fat jokes are awful, I agree that they're stupid.

Skin disorder, meh. We don't know what kind of condition & it was clearly there to have a third thing to make the studio audience laugh.

I mean, there are people in real life who have to clarify if they're gay. Considering Penny got the wrong idea (which, that's more the problem than anything) when he said they lived together, that was needed. Leonard's written to be socially awkward, particularly in the earlier seasons, so it fits his character to stumble over his words when he feels awkward & needs to make something clear.

The episode was from 2007, written by the people who made Two and a Half Men (although, weirdly enough, that had an episode in one of the first few seasons that had an actually good example of a trans person), so I wouldn't expect good writing on any level, especially when it comes to insensitivity to people, considering this show takes the piss out of basically everything, just not making the majority of the jokes legitimately funny. The show has a LOT of different problems than just this, especially since there are way more instances of homophobia than transphobia in the show since they literally never dealt with that topic as far as I know. If this was Family Guy, which legitimately confused being camp gay with being trans, as well as not dealing with the seriousness of transition, I would understand more the frustration considering they live to offend people with their constant legit bad episodes & tasteless "jokes" that legitimately are made to offend trans & gay people.

The 'man in a dress' joke is a Hollywood go-to for making fun of trans people. Sit coms and films have done it for years. The Big Bang Theory is written and produced by bigots. Trans people get to hold them accountable for the wide-reaching effect of their negative influence. Being produced in 2007 is not an excuse for shit. At the bare minimum they can be held accountable on a forum and told to go fuck themselves.

[kemuri07]

Yeah, South Park was always kinda problematic and it goes beyond the show’s awful take on trans people. The show has also promoted climate change denial and advocated that bigoted organizations should be allowed to keep their bigoted views. SP may not have created the “alt right” (no one thing can be blamed), but they ABSOLUTELY helped to create the “both sides are bad” argument that the right uses to trick people with in discussions.

To be fair, South Park has softened its views on some of that stuff like Principle PC and devoting an entire episode that's one long apology to Al Gore. So while it's too little too late, I think both Stone and Parker both recognize their place in the current culture wars and that they can't really ignore anymore.

But you're absolutely right about the both sides argument. It just created a bunch of lazy edge-lords who think snarking and trolling everything is some sort of hidden power.

[XanatosVanBadass]

Yeah, South Park was always kinda problematic and it goes beyond the show’s awful take on trans people. The show has also promoted climate change denial and advocated that bigoted organizations should be allowed to keep their bigoted views. SP may not have created the “alt right” (no one thing can be blamed), but they ABSOLUTELY helped to create the “both sides are bad” argument that the right uses to trick people with in discussions.

Which, I always took that episode to just be making fun of Al Gore, not climate change in general. There were people who made fun of Al Gore for An Inconvenient Truth, so I always thought that they were just making fun of him as a presenter of the facts. At the very least they apologized a few years ago for that episode once they saw the facts & results come in. That's the least I can ask for a denier.
I think the "enlightened centrism" from South Park mainly stems from the fact that, while they take hard left-leaning stances, they're not afraid to shit on more liberal ideologies. Which, let's face facts here, neither side has it entirely right, but lefties have a better idea of how shit works politically & economically than righties most of the time. I always saw the show as left-leaning, which always confused me that righties champion the show as being for them, even though the show's more like if George Carlin wrote a political cartoon than anything & he was incredibly left-leaning if you listen to his political bits, yet he's had the same problem in recent years.

I mean, that’s not the only episode where they’ve made fun of people who worry about climate change. There were at least two more I believe. There was even one very early in the series’ run. My point is there’s a pattern in what they mock that’s hard to ignore. The show’s political stance seems to be more libertarian than anything.

[kemuri07]

I'm pretty sure both Parker and Stone are noted Libertarians...which of course they are.

[JulieYBM]

You have to be pretty stupid to think Climate Change is not real. It's really sad to see that they have any reach with an audience.