An open letter to Han Solo and Warhorn Media

Recently, a very self-important fan of something resembling chauvinism wrote an open letter to Rey from Star Wars. I link to it only because it’s courtesy to include the opening narcissism of the (God, I hope) not so average fan of scifi. I very seldom do this, but I’m the mother of a twelve year old girl, and, today, I have a rebuttal.

Within a vast hail of Bible cherry picking, Nathan Alberson writes, “Look ladies, I’m not saying it’s all your fault. You’re just doing what you think you’re supposed to. The actresses who played you were just submitting to their industry and their directors and producers and agents. Which is what you’d expect. Everybody has to submit to somebody. For most women it’s going to be a man. These particular women choose the men who told them if they degraded themselves they’d be free. And they’d be inspiring others to be free.”

He refers here to the strong, female leads of scifi. Beginning with Alien’s Ripley, and I suppose ending up with poor Rey of Star Wars acclaim. Note: You’re just doing what you think you’re supposed to. Just let me get my mansplain to English translator. *Reaching under desk* I keep it handy.

What this translates to in Mansplain is…. Ahh, here it is. “Ladies, all you have to do is sit there and look pretty. Things like thinking and voting are beyond you. Even in the future. Even if you have force powers.”

Then, farther in we see, “So don’t be part of the conspiracy (led mostly by wicked men) to murder my motivation and crush out my will like a cigarette butt.”(sic)

Let’s check the old mansplanator. “But, I wanna shoot the gun!” Yep, just as I suspected. Penis envy.

Here’s my favorite, now, it’s almost untranslatable, but I’ll run it through the mansplanator and see what we get. “I don’t have to keep making this point because the feminists have complained about it plenty. Even movies that pay lip service to female empowerment with a superpowered heroine often end up, as the great Roger E. put it, remembering that she’s a woman and shuttling her into support mode. Roger was disappointed by that in The Matrix. But I wonder if they don’t do it simply because there are certain design elements that God placed in women which are difficult to escape, even for a then-soon-to -be-transgender Larry/Lana Wachowski or uber-feminist Joss Whedon.”

Beeeeeeeppppp. Alarms sounding. Oh boy. I might have broken it, but there are a few swear words…

Let me tell you how I really feel

This is no less than I expect from a fundamentalist thinker. Of course, you don’t understand scifi because it’s based in progressive thought and the search for improving society, not stagnating it and blaming God. Women aren’t your playthings. We aren’t your raison d’etre. God, who you of course like any radical, believe to be firmly rallying men to be chauvinists, gave us minds with which to think, and most of founders understood that. Frequently, seeking counsel from their wives and mothers, despite the standards of the day that women stay out of politics, these men, flawed though they were, valued freedom and liberty. For everyone they loved. Granted, life pretty much sucked if you weren’t in that magic number, and that’s the real problem isn’t it?

This isn’t an argument of how women “make you feel small” or have some grand, vague divine purpose that we’re failing in because we take care of ourselves and like sex now. It’s not that you’re disappointed with women, no, Mr. Alberson. It’s that you’re disappointed that you can’t control women now. The good old days for your kind, and right now in some parts of the world, (cough.. Iran, Saudi Arabia) ran using the gold standard that women are too weak to care for themselves and, therefore, must be cared for by men. Yet, that care is usually in the form of stealing liberty, controlling thought, and de-valuing the person reducing them to their relationship with you or an object you can use in every possible way.

And, of course, we have to fit in those adorable gender roles you made for us. Here’s the part where you mansplain that God made men a “certain way” so they could “carry the burden” and Bible and feminism bad.

Okay, NO. We’re not all Christians. We don’t all subscribe or even accept your version of femininity. It’s the past, not the future. You are the guy I won’t let my daughter date when she grows up. You are the one most likely to hurt her. The one so convinced of your God given superiority that she would be an afterthought and, eventually, your burden to be rid of.

So, Go ahead, try and win the internet with your ignorant Han Solo impression. Be in that number that thinks women were designed merely for your pleasure. You know what makes you not the hero and Han Solo, playboy and reckless man’s man, become the hero? He learned the value of an intelligent woman. You sir, Well, I don’t think you’d value any woman who didn’t bow to your gigantic ego. You are not the hero.