Greetings! So I had intended this post to actually be a video, but, owing to not being able to edit the video in the manner I wanted (basically, I am not confident enough to put my face to the video just yet – it wouldn’t be fair to inflict that upon people), I’ve turned this into a blog entry instead.

Just look at my sad face! Ahem, moving on…

So Captain Marvel, the 21st instalment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was released on Friday. I haven’t seen it yet, so I won’t be reviewing it until next week, but curiously, failing to see the film hasn’t stopped a great many people from leaving some extremely negative reviews – not when you consider how many reviews cropped up before the film had even been released. Strange no?

I can think of only one reason – misogyny. Hatred of women. Perhaps even fear of women.

Fear you say? Well, I think it’s a distinct possibility. After all, we have a Marvel movie, with a female lead, for the first time. That’s obviously a great threat to the structure of the universe that places men in the brave, heroic, leadership roles, and women in their roles of subordinate. It doesn’t matter that out of the previous twenty MCU movies, nineteen of them were dominated by male leads (with Antman and the Wasp providing the first break in that chain, albeit not the first solo female lead). Because we now have a woman taking up a position of extreme importance within a fictional story still dominated by male characters, we suddenly have a huge outburst of fear.

Fear which, in this instance (as with many others), manifests itself as hate, hence the out-pouring of angry reviews before the film had even been released. Even after the movie’s release (and the genuine reviews point to a film that’s been reasonably received), haters gonna hate, so the push to drive down the film’s rating on sites like Rotten Tomatoes has continued. 

Now, I don’t doubt for a second that there are people out there who genuinely disliked the movie. No film will ever appeal to absolutely everyone. However, the hysteria from misogynistic, sexist pricks over the idea of a woman being in a position of importance in a fictional universe only goes to underscore the importance of fights for equality. This sort of thing should not matter in 2019, we should be far beyond this now, but we’re not, so the fight continues. After all, if these idiots can get so worked up over a movie, what must they think of women being managers of stores, offices and businesses? How do they handle the reality of women sitting on boards of major companies? 

I mean, I’m confused too – some of these lunatics ranting about Captain Marvel must have encountered women in positions of authority. How do they divorce themselves from the norm when it comes to movies? I just don’t get it.

Star Trek and Acronyms

Moving on the second part of my post, which in a way links into the above, by virtue of some crossover with certain YouTubers being involved in both, there’s been an interesting little burst of hypocrisy and disingenuous behaviour on the part of certain anti-Star Trek Discovery quarters, over the acronyms used for the shows. Generally (in fact, by far in the vast majority of cases) The Original Series is referred to as TOS, The Next Generation as TNG, Deep Space Nine as DS9, Voyager as VOY, and Enterprise as ENT. Discovery is typically referred to as DSC. For the little elitist mob of gatekeepers, DSC becomes STD. They refer to how they use ST:TOS and ST:TNG and so forth to refer to the other shows, yet in fact some of the people making the claim that they use these terms have often in the past not done so. In fact, some of these people have their own websites and extensive forum histories that show they hardly ever use such terms – and of course, the colon they use for the likes of ST:TOS is curiously missing when they refer to Discovery (why does it never look like ST:D I wonder?).

Whilst some proponents of an acronym that carries obviously nasty connotations might jump up and down with glee at how a CBS Twitter account recently used the term, claiming this makes the term official (though curiously not accepting any statements regarding canon from similar sources as official), the fact remains that the use of this term, which has been sustained for over a year, has always been purely about being derogatory and petty. The term ‘STD’ refers to sexually transmitted disease, which does of course carry various connotations of its own. People who have been affected by STDs may well not appreciate the manner in which a serious, painful and at times heart-breaking subject can be reduced to such a spiteful usage. The stigmas attached to such diseases will only be reinforced the manner in which these gatekeepers use them, a point I have raised with a few of them, but this falls on deaf ears. For people who consider themselves such bastions of the fandom, true fans as it were, they seem to really struggle with the basics of Star Trek and its ideals.