F06 :: Feminist Film Studies

I went into this class not knowing what to expect and I learned a lot about feminist media. To me, feminist media is anything (which may or may not claim to be feminist) that shows women in a good light and does not use them merely as sexual objects or fill-in roles with no lines. Feminist media is not necessarily media created by women. There is a lot of media out there created by women that show their sex in a degrading way. Women can be just as bad as men when it comes to unfair treatment of women. Just like in the short documentary "I Was a Teenage Feminist", women also think that feminists are just a bunch of lesbian man haters. I once told one of my male friends that I was a feminist and he rolled his eyes and made some negative comment even though he knows me and he knows that I am not like the stereotype that people see feminists as. People who support HUMAN rights are not looked upon as bad people, only the ones who support rights for the female half of the human population.
People who make media that shows women as strong, independent, worthy people are, in my opinion, making feminist media. I think that some people who make media do not want to claim the feminist viewpoint because they are afraid of what others will say about them and their media if they did. Being a feminist is a "bad" thing to be labeled today. That does not make sense because feminists are people trying to help people to all have the same rights. I will never be able to watch a movie and be blind to the stereotypes of women and minorities again. I considered myself a feminist before I took this class and I now consider myself an even stronger feminist than before.