Hello, Complementarian Greg Morse of Desiring God Site: Actress Says (Vintage) Disney Films Made Her Question Her Sexuality When She Was a Kid
This is too funny.
Just a couple of weeks ago, complementarian Greg Morse of the “Desiring God” site wrote a moronic essay lamenting how women in contemporary Disney films – such as Brie Larson in “Captain Marvel” – are moving away from playing the usual passive Disney Princess types of decades past.
Those very same sort of women characters who were nothing but accessories to the male characters in the movies.
Morse thinks that Disney women characters of yester-year are ideal feminine prototypes for women of today.
(Note: Complementarianism takes its cues from secular culture, as I’ve said in months past on this blog and at others.
Complementarianism is a capitulation to culture, because our culture has always been patriarchal. Complementarianism is not counter-cultural, it’s cultural.
But Complementarians insist that they are following the “Bible only,” while they argue that Christian Gender Egalitarians are “capitulating to culture.”)
Well, well, well.
Now we have actress Cara Delevingne saying that some of those very same depictions of women (and of men) in older Disney movies caused her to question her sexuality, to the point she is now “gender fluid.”
Here’s a link to that:
Does Morse still want to point to older Disney movies as ideals women should be emulating today, after seeing headlines such as that one?
I explained before in another post how complementarianism can actually create, not dispel, gender confusion in people, or create ‘gender shame.’
I, who am a woman, for one, never fit the complementarian idea of what they think a girl or woman “should” be, and it made me feel ashamed of myself when I was a child.
The message I got from complementarians as I was growing up is that I was not “doing girlhood” the correct, godly, biblical way, so God would be angry or disappointed in me for it.
As a girl, I did not care to subscribe to the sweet, passive, gentle, Disney type of woman character, or to wearing pink dresses and playing with dolls.
As a kid, I did not like the color pink, playing with dolls, and so on. I preferred wearing sneakers with cut-off jeans and climbing trees and watching ‘Batman’ on television.
The fact is not every girl watching a vintage Disney movie is going to identify with, or want to be like, the women characters on the screen, nor will they fit, or want to fit with, what complementarians tell them they “should.”
Christian Gender Complementarianism does not make girlhood or womanhood look appealing.
On the contrary, complementarianism makes being a boy or a man look more advantageous, exciting, and fun with more options available, so I had wished when I was a girl that I had been born a boy instead.
Complementarians, whether they intend to or not, send a message that God values and loves boys and men more than he does girls and women, so there again, as a kid, I had wished I had been born male.
I hated being a girl, due to these messages I got about being female from complementarians and the sexist messages I got from secular culture.
If a little girl today feels ashamed about being a girl as I once did, or has regrets about not being born male, but after sitting through movies with strong women characters such as Rey in The Force Awakens, or Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, or Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman, are those representations showing women being strong, capable, competent, confident and having fun worth it?
Growing up, the characters I usually related to most in movies, the characters that looked like they were having the most fun, were the men. So, when I was a girl, I usually identified with the male characters, not the women.
Is that what complementarians really want, girls who don’t meet the old fashioned, sexist, traditional gender stereotypes, to identify with men?
I asked this in a previous post:
Wouldn’t you rather the girls in your life identify with actual women on screen, such as Wonder Woman or Captain Marvel, rather than feeling they have no choice but to project themselves into the place of a male character such as Bruce Wayne as Batman, or as Han Solo, because the qualities those girls and women favor are shown more often in male characters – at least that was true for many years, until the last few?
Here we have an actress saying in 2019 that the way women, men, and relationships between men and women were portrayed in Disney films of years past, made her question her sexuality.
In light of that, and in light of my own past personal experience of being a tom boy who identified more with Han Solo than with Sleeping Beauty, it seems to me that trying to “force” or shame men and women into specific gender roles they aren’t interested in fitting into, can actually backfire.
Here are excerpts from the article:
March 2019
Cara Delevingne has said that watching Disney films as a child made her question her sexuality.
The 25-year-old model and actor has spoken about her sexual orientation on multiple occasions over the years, revealing that she identifies as sexually fluid – a term that refers to the idea that a person’s attractions and sexual identity can change over time.
In an interview with Drag Race judges RuPaul and Michelle Visage on the podcast What’s The Tee? on Wednesday, Delevingne opened up about her relationships, recalling how growing up watching Disney films led to her struggles with sexuality.
“I never really wanted to accept my sexuality,” she explained.
“I was like, ‘Disney princesses all love men’. That’s the way it is, and I’m not going to be a princess if I don’t’. You know what I mean?”
The model said she now realises that sexuality is represented in Disney films isn’t entirely representative, saying “the reality is that we’re all very [sexually] fluid”.
—- end —-
I don’t think pointing women to Disney characters as role models they should be copying has the consequences that complementarians had hoped for.
Captain Marvel Movie – More Rebuttals By Others to Sexist Essay by Morse (and Related)
Church of England Refuses to Define the Word ‘Woman’
Gender Complementarianism Contributes to Gender Confusion
Complementarians Ask Women and Girls to Be Small To Make Men Feel Big
Viking Warrior Discovered in Sweden Was a Woman, Researchers Confirm
For the First Time A Woman is Set To Become A Marine Corps Infantry Officer
Female Coders Are Rated More Highly Than Men – Except When People Know They’re Women
Miss Daisy Flower 