On the Telly, Part 2

[Content Note: Misogyny. Part One is here.]

Here are two tropes I notice constantly in television sitcoms, especially but not limited to shows centering around straight male characters who are nerds and/or Nice Guys:

1. Women's interests are totally stupid. And, naturally, in this context, "women's interests" are thoroughly stereotypical: Shopping, rom-coms, babies, gossiping, blah blah fart yawn. (Not a commentary on the value of those pastimes, but their invocation as the only things women like.) And they are mutually exclusive from men's interests (which are themselves equally stereotypical). But women's interests are frivolous dreck, participation in which is beneath men, while men's interests are Important Pursuits, which would be demeaned by women's participation.

2. Women being in men's spaces is totes yucky. The height of hilarity on virtually any US sitcom is a woman infiltrating her male partner's male space, by which he is totally humiliated just by virtue of her very presence. UH-OH THE WIFE IS IN THE MAN CAVE DURING THE SUPERBOWL! LET THE ZANY HIJINKS COMMENCE!

The constant juxtaposition of these tropes, often in the same show (see, for example, The Big Bang Theory), results in plotline after plotline in which men hate having to spend time doing the things their female partners like doing, or in which men are fighting to be left alone with their male friends to do whatever thing they want to do free of women (which is inevitably represented as a juvenile pursuit).

Meanwhile, every dude on every sitcom is trying to get totally laid. But also spend no time with anyone willing to fuck him.

The intersection of all of these tropes reinforces the idea of women as a sex class, who have absolutely no value to men beyond our willingness to provide sexual interaction on demand.

And that idea—that women are for fucking and men are for friendship—underwrites the shit we see in real life, off the telly, all the time. Cis straight men try to keep women out of "men's spheres," whether it's straight-up denials of access or creating environments dangerously hostile to women (and anyone else who isn't a cis straight man), and lose their shit when a woman shows up on the sidelines of a football game or when a woman criticizes a video game, fiercely defending their pastimes as the exclusive property of men.

Then they complain that women's interests are stupid and they have so little in common with women that they hate spending time with us.

Here's a tip, guys: If you want to have common interests with women, you could start by letting women into your playhouse. I mean, not for nothing, but if you want to still have loads of time to play video games while you're dating someone, then choose someone who wants loads of time playing video games herself. Just a thought.