Thread by @Jenny_Trout

After I poked fun at Ghostbusters the other day, my mentions turned into Gender and Film 101 course held in a building with a massive gas leak. This morning, one of the points someone made was, "Why isn't the new Charlie's Angels all men?" and that got me thinking.

Whenever we see a traditionally male-dominated franchise flip to female leads, someone, somewhere says, "What if we made [movie starring women] with men, huh? How would you like that?!" The answer is, as far as any example I can think of, "It wouldn't make sense."

In the case of Charlie's Angels, for example, the entire premise is that these women are the perfect spies because they're so attractive, no one suspects them of being capable of anything beyond looking good.

This premise crumbles when you put attractive men in the roles. Attractive men aren't assumed incapable or unintelligent based on their appearances.

(I got distracted by a puppy)

So, now we start to look at other movies where it's an all-female cast. Can you switch Steel Magnolias out for men? Not really, because the entire point of that movie was specifically the bonds of womanhood.

What about male Bennet sisters in Pride and Prejudice? CLEARLY wouldn't work because again, the point was about how women had to navigate society.

The more I thought about it, the more I started to realize...

The reason you can't make swap men for women in movies about women is that movies about women are always about BEING a woman.

Now, this is the point where someone comes in and says, "But that's true of [other marginalization]." I'm not ignoring that, I'm just focusing right now on this particular thing because it's specifically what was happening in my mentions yesterday.

It's easy to swap men out for women in male-led films because men are the default. Nothing about being a man made the Ghostbusters' story different. Nothing about being a man was integral to the leads of Ocean's 11.

Men are allowed to be spies, race car drivers, scientists, presidents, etc. Women have to be lady spies, female race car drivers, women scientists, the *first* female president, etc. As with other marginalizations, there has to be an in-story reason that a woman is a woman.

So, if you're one of those people out there going, "It's not fair that they made [movie] with women instead of men!"...that's not women's' fault. Men set it up that way.

So, stop asking "How would you like it if they rebooted Titanic on dry land?" like it's a brilliant gotcha.