Board Thread:Arrow discussions/@comment-807326-20170202010018/@comment-807326-20170212030214

JQuake101 wrote:

Ridiculous? I can list all the ways the show's writing has been misogynistic.

- Laurel/Katie Cassidy was denied the Black Canary mantel for nearly three seasons, with most of her character traits being given to Sara as The Canary.

- Yeah, Sara was meant to be an extension of Laurel's orgin story as the Black Canary, but in order for it to happen, Sara was fridged.

-  When Laurel finally gets to take on the Black Canary mantel, she is disrespected, belittled, and dismissed by every single character.

- Laurel's death was not even the result of her own actions, but the actions of men (her father, Oliver). That is misogynistic and bad.

- Felicity Smoak as a character is misogynistic and bad. Season 2, for example. When Sara showed up, they had Felicity acting insecure and territorial about her place on the team. Diggle and Oliver were never threatened by/insecure over each other. Roy wasn’t insecure/threatened by anyone when he joined the team later, however the very second that the team introduced a second woman, the writers decided to have Felicity express openly that maybe the team wouldnt need her anymore. The writers literally waited until they had another girl on the team and then made Felicity’s plot about pitting them against each other, despite the fact that Felicity and Sara had entirely different skill sets and contributed different things to the team. She is even written to act threatened by every woman in Oliver's life, going as far as to throw shade at his baby mother when her child was missing. Even in last week's episode, Felicity made a crack about Oliver taking Dinah somewhere to have sex with her, because the two were alone for a period of time.

- The state of Arrow's female count. Artemis is a traitor, Susan is a traitor, Thea was randomly gone for three weeks, Laurel's dead, and Earth-2 Laurel is locked up after trying to kill everyone, despite the fact that the writer's could have given her a redemption storyline and had her take the role of the Black Canary. - Dinah Drake is introduced, but as an attempt to course correct the massive misogynistic mistakes made with Dinah Laurel Lance. —Denying Laurel the mantle and giving it to her sister is not even remotely misogynistic. It's unfair on the character, but how the hell is it mysoginistic?

—And I'll quote the very article you linked: "to illustrate that female superheroes are disproportionately likely to be brutalized in comic books, usually to further the character arc of male super heroes". The point of her death, while probably initially just for shock factor, was not for the point of gore, it was to send Laurel into a spiral. Her sister. It wasn't any other character whose arc it was furthering, it was her sister's.

—"Every" character is subjective. And to be perfectly fair, Laurel was underexperienced in the field and thus she was outmatched plenty of times, a fact that much of Team Arrow tried to put a stop to. When she was finally a bit more experienced, she was a welcome member of the team.

—Oh no, god forbid men have a role to play in the plot. I'm sorry, if you're looking for every action that happens to a woman to be the result of another woman's actions, and likewise with a man, you're living way in the past, socially.

—It's as if you've never watched the show. Diggle and Oliver are both trained forces of nature. Felicity's expertise is with computers, so of course someone as badass as Sara is going to intimidate her. The same goes for Roy, he was incredibly experienced, what with having been brought up in the Glades. It was entirely circumstantial. In regards to Felicity's characterisation, no, that isn't misogynistic, it's just terrible characterisation for the most part. And oh nooooo, imagine Felicity making a joke that references the last time they were in Russia and the exact same situation occurred.

—Susan being a traitor has to do with the fact that she's currently Oliver's significant other; Thea being gone for three weeks has to do scheduling and the necessity to have her in the storyline; Laurel's death had emotional weight, but I guess you mustn't have watched any episode after her death; Oliver literally makes it clear that he hasn't lost hope, she's been locked up because she tried to kill everyone; literally all you've said about Dinah Drake is utter bullshit.

Please, dear god, learn to coherently argue and don't use bias, otherwise you're going to lose every single time.