Instapundit ran a post yesterday about the controversy the director of the latest movie in the Terminator series is trying to generate around the fact that the movie features a standard issue kickass female lead. As I write this there are 243 replies to the post, and not one reader stated that he didn’t like female action heroes. This is truly striking because movies are after all a matter of taste. But preferring male action heroes is one preference that is presently unthinkable.
As with the response to women’s soccer, the focus of the discussion was on assuring anyone reading that modern movie viewers are totally sex blind when it comes to action heroes. We love action hero gender bending, so long as the acting and story are good.
Several top rated comments featured animated gifs to prove how much everyone loves movies with kickass gals. In one, Old Jester featured an animated gif of Sigorney Weaver powering up her exo-suit from Aliens:
No, we just want the strong women to have a story worthy of them…
In another much loved comment, the same reader featured an animated gif of Sarah Conner doing pull-ups:
Oh, yeah… us SciFi Geeks hate the strong womenz… that must be it… Linda Hamilton is a badass and we all know it.
Another reader was aroused by such a badass display:
*Drool*…
Wait. Where were we in this discussion again? Oh, I’m a misogynistic SOB because I hated the latest Ghostbusters remake.
That there are large numbers of men, especially conservative men, who are enthralled by the kickass gal trope isn’t surprising. But it is striking that when it comes to a matter of taste, not one of the 200+ comments stated that the reader doesn’t enjoy a bit of heroic gender bending. Some of this has to be due to the Overton window in our feminist age, which would be telling enough. But I suspect that very few Insapundit readers make it a point of skipping action movies with female leads but were too afraid of internet disapproval to express their cinematic preference. The idea of not being sex blind when it comes to action heroes in our current age is simply unthinkable. Moreover, this is so natural to us that we can’t imagine an age when this wasn’t the case.
Related: How much girlpower is too much?
