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Literally unpopular view of scene with Natasha below:
I am looking for other self-identifying women who didn't hear "I'm a monster because I'm sterile" in that conversation between Nat and Bruce.
What I heard in that post-shower conversation was:
Bruce: ALL THE REASONS WHY WE CAN'T BE TOGETHER.
Natasha: HERE ARE MY COUNTERARGUMENTS TO PROVE YOU'RE FULL OF SHIT.
His monstrosity was brought up - we've heard this tune before, set it to music, done the rap. Her monstrosity (as in killer, assassin, red in her ledger, etc) was brought up to counter it - again, been here, sang the song, hit the high notes. Then Bruce brings up his inability to give her Clint's 'happy families' life. Her counter is that she can't have that anyway because the Red Room made her infertile - a way of ensuring that there wasn't anything that might ever override the mission.
So I heard the phrase as "infertility + monster", not the "infertility = monster" that's pinging buttons all over my f-list and tweeple. And I seem to be one of the few women with this reaction.
Is it a North American/European thing? Is it a cultural gender thing? Is it just that I'm coming to this from a position of life privilege: a feminist brought up by a feminist brought up by a feminist (in China, moreover, even before the feminism movement was a thing in the west), with a social circle has never yet said or implied that I am lesser because I'm low-fertility and may not be able to have biokids?
No, I don't need the connection explained; I've heard the stories from my friends.
No, I am not discounting or dismissing your reaction; I know how much it hurts to have your worth tied to something that's beyond your control. (I'm female, too; it comes with gender.)
I'm just looking for people who didn't automatically hear it first time through. Most particularly female (female identifying, female experience) people who didn't. I don't expect there'll be many, but I just need to know that I'm not a freak in this.
I am looking for other self-identifying women who didn't hear "I'm a monster because I'm sterile" in that conversation between Nat and Bruce.
What I heard in that post-shower conversation was:
Bruce: ALL THE REASONS WHY WE CAN'T BE TOGETHER.
Natasha: HERE ARE MY COUNTERARGUMENTS TO PROVE YOU'RE FULL OF SHIT.
His monstrosity was brought up - we've heard this tune before, set it to music, done the rap. Her monstrosity (as in killer, assassin, red in her ledger, etc) was brought up to counter it - again, been here, sang the song, hit the high notes. Then Bruce brings up his inability to give her Clint's 'happy families' life. Her counter is that she can't have that anyway because the Red Room made her infertile - a way of ensuring that there wasn't anything that might ever override the mission.
So I heard the phrase as "infertility + monster", not the "infertility = monster" that's pinging buttons all over my f-list and tweeple. And I seem to be one of the few women with this reaction.
Is it a North American/European thing? Is it a cultural gender thing? Is it just that I'm coming to this from a position of life privilege: a feminist brought up by a feminist brought up by a feminist (in China, moreover, even before the feminism movement was a thing in the west), with a social circle has never yet said or implied that I am lesser because I'm low-fertility and may not be able to have biokids?
No, I don't need the connection explained; I've heard the stories from my friends.
No, I am not discounting or dismissing your reaction; I know how much it hurts to have your worth tied to something that's beyond your control. (I'm female, too; it comes with gender.)
I'm just looking for people who didn't automatically hear it first time through. Most particularly female (female identifying, female experience) people who didn't. I don't expect there'll be many, but I just need to know that I'm not a freak in this.
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FWIW, I'm a woman, in the eastern US, raised by gender essentialist non-feminists.
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(Luckily I had a friend around to talk me down. She contributed to my sanity a great deal.)
Maybe it's just that the people reading it that way are so loud and so negative about it, that it feels like there's nobody else who saw it otherwise? And if one didn't see it as a problem, one wouldn't be called up on to comment on it until you encountered someone who did.
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On Tumblr and LJ, yeah, it looks like the Natasha-stans were heavily invested in OTPs, and offline, it also looks like people were invested in Natasha being ALL THINGS TO ALL WOMEN (which is highly unreasonable, although not incomprehensible, given that there simply isn't enough female representation with agency in mainstream
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I think there's a strong attitude difference between "disappointed with how Natasha's storyline played out" and "everything is ruined because Whedon didn't depict Natasha the way I wanted". And yet both attitudes are still intricately tied-in to the "Natasha is the only female character in the movies with major character/agency and so I have invested in her". There are no other options for female representation that we can conceive male-oriented Hollywood taking, so we expect Great Things of Natasha.
For some shifted-sideways takes on the characterisation of Natasha:
Also: an entire post of meta links about AoU by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
endeni.
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(I have very strong feelings around pregnancy, childbirth, what you get to choose, and whether you get to choose. I damn well get upset at implications like that.)
I've always thought it was clumsy rather than deliberately trying to equate the two, but clumsy pretty much covers the whole Bruce/Natasha handling in the film, in my opinion.
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