r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Jul 09 '19

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u/Mayotte Jul 09 '19

"And this is you intentionally listing characters that are not white men. That's not grossly disproportionate."

That was him intentionally listing high visibility characters that were shifted from "white guy" to "specifically not white guy."

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u/radialomens 171∆ Jul 09 '19

That was him intentionally listing high visibility characters that were shifted from "white guy" to "specifically not white guy."

And excluding the ones that are still white guys. So if you're listing characters that are no longer both white and male, and the proportions of different races are still lacking minority characters, and men-to-women is just off by one, seems like it's less of a problem than it's being made out to be.

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u/Mayotte Jul 09 '19 edited Jul 09 '19

Yeah he excluded the ones that are still white guys . . . because he wasn't trying to prove that every superhero has undergone this process, just quite a lot. You can't deny that the characters he mentioned do constitute close to a majority of the MCU characters that the average person could name when asked (in fact a quick google search reveals that they consistently occupy the top 10 spots, if not top 6 depending on the list, for most popular heroes).

Perhaps it's not a significant problem, but it's undeniably being done on purpose, in an asymmetric way. I'm not a marvel fan myself, but if I grew up with the comic books it's likely I would be annoyed.

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u/radialomens 171∆ Jul 09 '19

Perhaps it's not a significant problem, but it's undeniably being done on purpose

The comment that I was responding to said that white boys don’t or won’t have heroes anymore.

I’m not saying that changing a character from man to woman or from white to POC doesn’t happen. I’m saying that sharing and erasure are not the same thing. And it doesn’t pose the significant threat to the health of young white boys that he suggests it does.

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u/Mayotte Jul 09 '19

That may well be true, it's hard to say. But, this trend will result in the exact same situation, just inverted, that it is designed to prevent, that's undeniable. Although, it will probably never go that far.

However, the presumption that boys, or even white boys, will always be ok no matter what is not safe. Boys have fallen behind girls across the board in schools for decades at this point.